As a small announcement: our folks from Game Development department are creating an office building in Second Life, the most popular virtual world out there. This will help our animation folks to have the real track of benefits which organization can achieve by having the presence in virtual world based on the results of using our own office there. Besides that, the main aims that drive the development of the office for our company are the following:

• We would like to give to our customers a visual understanding of our department structuring, roles that people play, their positions: all the office space will be broken down into the rooms simulating the departments that we have at MoveYourWeb;
• Held corporate and client meetings. We practice weekly corporate meetings which all employees attend, which is rather tricky, given the fact that MoveYourWeb has several production offices. We use broadcasting to wall screens but it might be nice to play with virtual world company meetings;
• Attract additional talent. Our HR dpt reports that a small percentage of our local developers have Second Life accounts and spend their time in that virtual world. By opening our presence there we would be the first local IT company to welcome them;
• Seminars. Given that we have several offices it might be convenient to held thematic internal seminars held in Second Life, because employees from different offices can attend.

We expect to deliver early October and that will be deffinetely featured on this blog.

Tags: game development, office in second life, second life
Posted in game development, internet marketing | No Comments »

Keeping a web site updated is something that a lot of companies fail to do. Each 10th web site on the web seem to have outdated copyright string – without mentioning the actual web site content. The other interesting tendency is that a lot of web development companies are busy and consider updating their web site the last priority which puts their web site into ‘frozen’ status for years (they don’t eat their own cookies, hah?).

Here at MoveYourWeb we consider our web site to be a powerful marketing and sales tool. In fact this is our virtual front-end which customers see instead of our offices (you need to take the plane to visit us, which is not always quick and easy) so we need to make sure that we are displaying the updated and relevant information helping potential and existing customers explore our company and service offerings better.

Here goes the list of front end updates which happened during the first part of 2008:

• We added Case Studies section on the web site featuring the accomplished projects. You can browse and select case studies by service, solution, platform and industry. The old-styled web design portfolio section is not here any more (we evolved from being offshore web design studio 5-6 years ago into a reputable outsourcing company which handles sophisticated web development, animation and online marketing);
• Our home page became more interactive by displaying featured case studies, recent blog posts and even audio presentation of the company (JustMyVoice does perfect audio recordings). Our conversion rate increased by 2.1% after that step alone;
• Services page was sorted to display the most relevant information about over offerings;
• Partners page features our new Early stage startup funding program as well as Build-Operate-Transfer offering;
• 50% of the pages were updated to display latest information (e.g. seo page now proudly displays Google Certified label).

More updates are coming as this is typically an ongoing process. Stay tuned.

Tags: audio recordings, case studies section, portfolio section, web site maintenance, web site updates
Posted in general thoughts, management, outsourcing | No Comments »

As you might already know we invest substantial part of our marketing budget in SEO. We successfully provide Search Engine Optimization services to our customers and eat our cooking as well.

While looking thought our monthly performance in Search Engines I noticed some traffic with the following keyword: number 1 web development company. After checking it in Google I noticed that we naturally rank TOP5. WOW – what a funny surprise which we can be proud of (this keyword if of our typical promotion list of course).

Tags: engine optimization services, number 1, search engine optimization services
Posted in SEO, internet marketing | No Comments »

Visitors of resort hotels are normally getting  questionnaire form at the last day of their stay – the one that asks to indicate if you are satisfied with the service level, quality of meals, swimming pools and many other things (the more expensive is the hotel the bigger the list is). Several times I’ve seen 2+ page questionnaires – all put under ‘help us serve you better’ sauce. The thinking I have in such times: please don’t waste my time asking to do homework with estimating the service by numbers of criteria. I’m having vacation here and have my own long to-do list. C’mon this is the last day of my trip and I still haven’t purchased souvenirs for my family and friends. I’ve seen some happy campers returning such maintenance along with the keys while they leave, however I always skip that (guess that the majority of regular travelers do the same). Those regular travelers are the most valuable customers: who will come again if they are satisfied, spend their vacation budget and pass the word around similar folks.

Now the solution to this could be use of ‘Thank you for your stay letter’ with the questionnaire form with the SINGLE question: Would you use our services again? YES/NO. Simple as that, takes 3 seconds to check the right box, doesn’t distract visitors and supplies the statistics to the management. Besides this is the role of management team to decide which service areas are worth improving and polishing. Customer cannot determine this, especially when important customers are passing this voting mechanism. Seeing if the customers are satisfied generally (e.g. 95% of visitors staying for a week stated that they would like to return in future). Those figures can be shared with the employees as well on weekly meetings as an immediate indicator of progress achieved. Very easy and that’s why powerful concept.

The management can even put this statistics on the web site and what’s more an established hotel review directory or tourist portal can launch a widget displaying such stats and allowing hotels to put on their web sites. As a result of this: a. visitors will be able to reply to the questionnaire online b. managers will upload all results stated in papers c. employees, managers, visitors will be able to see real stats online d. hotels will engage their audiences better e. online service providing this widget will get targeted traffic and free advertisement on the web sites on the hotels. Feel free to use this concept and make life of travelers better – fits perfect for established travel/holiday web portals.  Our web development department will be happy to assist with the widget development if needed.

Tags: hotel management, hotel questionnaires, resort hotels
Posted in general thoughts | No Comments »