This is a follow on from my last post – Tips for starting your online career. In terms of the types of functions we hire – let’s look at what any website needs to be successful: A great technical infrastructure, good looks, content that resonates with its target users and a growing and engaged audience. Finally, someone has to manage that entire process.

What we look for in a web developer
miggle is predominantly a PHP / MySQL-led business in terms of development and because PHP/MySQL is freely available we’d expect prospective web developers to have applications to demo. They might look shocking (the apps, not the developers), but we are not hiring you to be a designer. We’d probably want to see some ability at organising content, but the content in itself doesn’t have to be great – as we’ve got others who can write that, but the more your portfolio can show an empathy or knowledge of the elements that sit on top of the technical infrastructure, the better, in our experience.

Getting a web designer job
In terms of a site looking good, it’s all about the ‘front-end’ – the parts of the site that the end user interacts with directly. So a ‘web designer’ job isn’t just graphic design placed on a computer screen, there must be the ability to manipulate front-end code, e.g. HTML, CSS, etc. I think to be an effective web designer you must have a good overall knowledge of the technical infrastructure and some appreciation of information design and architecture – so in some ways it’s more of a ‘Front End Developer’ job.

miggle would have to get a lot bigger for us to hire a dedicated Information Architect (IA) – someone skilled in the art and science of organising and labelling websites to support findability and usability – but I think you can go a long way to being a great IA through gaining experience reworking front-end code to present efficient user experiences.

If you are a great graphic designer, but all you can do is the pictures, then I think you’d need to be bringing more to the table than just stunning designs if you are looking for a full time role on the web – but you may find you can cut it as a freelancer. Most of the pure designers we hire, we hire on that basis.

Getting a web journalism or content management job
Increasingly businesses are getting to grips with the fact that it’s the quality and relevance of your content that gets your site visibility in search engines, not back links and SEO sleight of hand.

At miggle we employ a lot of content managers, editors and copywriters. Many of these are fully trained journalists, but actually, their value to miggle and our clients is their ability to move users round a site. There are still jobs for journalists in the online arena, but they exist in the areas where editorial voice and political or social positioning are key. But whether you’re exposing yet more state corruption or seeing how often you can write the phrase ‘0% credit cards’ into your copy without it reading poorly or Google thinking you’re trying to hoodwink search, if you are writing for the web, you are going to need to know your way around a Content Management System (CMS). And depending on who you work for, that CMS is either going to be a dream to use, or a bitch, and you won’t know which one till you start using it.

At best, you’ll be in a position where you just have to think about your content, as the CMS will do all the legwork for you. At worst, you’ll need to learn some Photoshop skills pretty quick and some basic HTML. miggle’s first law of content management states that the bigger a website / business, the more proprietary (and therefore often painful) its CMS is to use. These guys are in the business of providing innovation and differentiation on a daily basis, so it’s very difficult for the technology behind it not to be playing catch up at some point, or being bent in some direction it was never intended to take.

Sales and marketing jobs online
Finally – getting that site in front of its target audience. Well, if everyone else up to this point has done a great job, then you are well on your way. A site built on a solid technical infrastructure, which is usable and looks good, with relevant content will be one that works well in organic search. But there’s still a job to be done in finding more audience for it.

We’re not at a stage yet – either at miggle, or maybe the industry a a whole, where we can wave goodbye to good old fashioned sales and marketing techniques, but gone are the days where your value as a marketing exec is going to be measured by the size of your budget. Online is making sales and marketing have to be more accountable. No matter how big your budget is, someone will always have a bigger one and so the trick is to make the most of what you have. While we’re not ready to say goodbye to traditional techniques yet, the most exciting online marketeers are those who can manipulate social networks and use Google like the suite of online apps it is. We don’t expect our online marketeers to do anything else other than build audience, but they have to share as much of a context of the other people’s role in the process as they can – and if they can squeeze a JPG till its pips squeak or mess around with an API then cool, we (and the rest of the online industry) will want you.

Online project management – the ‘internet producer’
Finally, someone has to manage the process. A site is no use to a client till it’s delivered and undelivered projects don’t tend to get paid for.

Several things need to be managed in a web project. Clients, expectations, staff, contractors, requirements, technology, budgets – the list goes on. The person whose head is on the block for delivery may not have written one line of code or content, or saved one image – but without them, there’s no site. If building web sites is about mastering the resources you have at your fingertips then the person who delivers that is as much a web designer as anyone. I, in fact, prefer to call these people ‘producers’. And producers just make stuff happen. If you can do this, and only this, then you can do what’s required.

I hope this has been useful. We’re not on the lookout for anyone right now, but we’d like to hear from people who read this and think this could be them. And, of course, I have to apologise to all the functions we’ve missed, the QAs, the PMs, the GUIs, the illustrators, the animators, the sound and video people – all key skills, all of which show how complex online can be.

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

How to avoid the old catch-22: you can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job.

When I first started working online, in 1994, all you really needed to know was HTML and how to save JPGs and GIFs. It wasn’t because that was all that web browsers could support – but it wasn’t far off that – and in any case, such was the web’s infancy that those who wanted sites built weren’t looking for much more than a few simple info pages. Web browsers were basic, and so was the software you needed to know to build a page. A Photoshop-esque package and Notepad. That was it. There were no web and new media courses pushing out highly trained graduates every year, so the competition for work was not as fierce.

Web design is a broad church
If you’re graduating in 2009 it’s all completely different. The Internet has become vast and as such the variety of roles within the industry have multiplied exponentially. Of course, you can still have an aspiration to be, and can succeed in being, a ‘web designer’, but the knowledge and experience of various systems and packages will vary hugely from job to job, as will the degree to which you need to be a master of one skill or a jack of all trades. To get that dream job online, you need to try and accrue as much experience as you can – but of course, there’s the old catch-22 that you can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job.

So how can you start your online career?
Use the beauty of the web. There are no barriers to entry in terms of making a site. You can still make a site in 2009 in the same way I made my first one in 1994. Sure, that’s going to look shocking, and in any case, you’re probably way beyond that level already, but there is nothing to stop you just building, experimenting, trying things out, dipping into different technologies. If you can build a credible portfolio of sites, be they for mates, family businesses, or if it’s just to try something, anything, in Flash or Dreamweaver, then you will broaden your skills, the stuff you can talk knowledgeably about and you’ll have something to show on your CV and at an interview.

What skills do you need?
Do you aim to become an expert AJAX coder, a PHP developer or a graphic designer? What skills do web agencies and companies look for? It depends very much on the type and size of the company.

Most companies that are involved with online run on extremely tight resources. You may want to be a JavaScript programmer, but there are few firms that can have the luxury of supporting someone in such a dedicated role, and these are likely to be bigger companies. And big firms, unless they have graduate recruitment schemes, are likely to want to see some vocational experience.

Smaller firms prefer all rounders – people who can competently perform a number of duties, show some adaptability and good time management skills. Here the focus will very often be on simply getting stuff done and so, if you can demonstrate projects that you’ve got up and running on your own, you could be well on your way to getting your foot on the ladder.

So, if you are starting out, don’t pigeon hole yourself early on. You may have left uni a great PHP / MySQL developer, but in two years’ time, you could find that your real strength lies in project management, front-end development or information architecture.

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

In the fight for credit crunch business, grabbing the attention of your target audience can be extremely difficult. To paraphrase Alick in his previous post – A website is just the beginning – you can’t just hope for online business to find you.

The solution? An integrated business blog and subscribable RSS feed, like our very own miggleblog. An inexpensive, simple tool, it can give you direct access to millions of prospective customers worldwide.

The benefits of a blog:

Reach more people, and make money
The likelihood is that only your existing customers will read a news section on your website. With a blog you can reach out and find new prospects. Google’s Feedburner is an invaluable tool that can help you publicise your RSS feed content and make it easier for people to subscribe. By participating in the FeedBurner Ad Network, you can make money from your pearls of wisdom.

Build customer relations
It’s far harder to get business from new customers than it is to get more business from your existing customers, so keeping in touch should be one of your top priorities. An interactive blog is a friendly and fun way to keep your existing customers up-to-date with all your new offers and products, so that your business will be at the forefront of their mind when they need your products or services again.

Better search engine rankings
The migglemedia team always recommend that a business blog be hosted on the main business website, as the more people that read your blog and link to posts on it, the higher your website will appear in the search engine rankings.

Bring in more traffic
Google search loves frequently updated websites, therefore a blog can bring in a surprising amount of new traffic to your website through natural search terms. Blog posts are rapidly indexed by the major search engines and can be extremely profitable.

Start a buzz
Blog about your new products, drop hints about forthcoming events, publicise your research – grab the attention of the press! Blogs are increasingly quoted and cited in the mainstream media, and as such are a great way to score free publicity for your company.

Become ‘the guru’
If your business occupies a niche sector of the market, why not share your knowledge via a blog and build a reputation as a go-to person?

Test your ideas
Thinking about a change of direction for the company or expanding into a new range of products? Blog about it and let your customers tell you exactly what they want from your business.

>> How to profit from social media

>> Drive user engagement with a newsletter

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

This is the next post in Alick’s series on our miggle website fundamentals, “a functional website is just the starting point for an effective online business”.

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I always have this vision of a guy – maybe back in the 1930s at the height of the last depression – sitting in his office, elbows on desk, head in hands, staring at his brand new telephone and waiting for it to ring. He’d heard that all his competitors had got a phone and thought if he got one too, the business would come. So he got it installed, but never figured out why it didn’t ring.

I see a similar thing happen with business websites. How many can say that their site’s working for their business the way they want it to?

For the purposes of this post, we’ll assume your website is a great website – focussed on the needs of your audience and/or current and future customers, providing the features or functions that match those of your competitors in a way that makes it easy for users to get what they want and encourages them to come back for more. But we’ll also assume that its not delivering the return on the investment you wanted – so why is that?

In most cases it’s because too much focus, time and money was placed on the build and the design – and not enough thought given to what time, money and resource would be required to get it seen.

The common problems we see are:

* The front page never changes
* No new content gets added
* No promotion of special offers
* Worse still – as a combination of neglect on the three points above, out-of-date content is featured on the website
* Broken links – or searches on Google link to pages that can’t be found
* Offline advertising and literature are not referencing your website
* No money is spent on online advertising and marketing.

They exist because:

* No one within the business ‘owns’ the website
* No budget has been allocated to the website
* Somehow the business believes that because everyone can access your site, everyone will.

They can be mitigated by:

* Allocating a budget within your business to promote your site
* Ensuring someone has the skills and the time to make updates to your site to keep it fresh, accurate and reflective of your business
* Having a clear plan of what you can reasonably expect from your site.

Our most successful small business clients have got themselves to the stage where their sites have paid for themselves. In every case, it’s been because they’ve been prepared to spend at least the same again as they spent on the build to ensure their online investment returns with interest.

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

Internet advertising in Britain was the only ad medium to grow in 2008, rising 17 percent and bucking the overall 3.5 percent industry fall, according to the latest reports.

The reasons? Pay-per-click and online display advertising offer businesses what TV, radio, mail and press simply can’t – total accountability, the flexibility to adjust and test advertising messages in real time and pinpoint targeting of your desired audiences.

There are millions of places on the internet where you can buy advertising and lots of different ways you can do it. Advertising comes down to two things – you’re either building your brand or you want to elicit some direct response. There are distinct strategies for both.

In terms of building brand – it’s important to establish what kind of websites have a commercial offering that’s right for you and a relevant audience. You could buy an ad on the front page of Yahoo! and reach many millions of people from all walks of life – it’ll be priced accordingly. But you may find that there are websites that cost less and work better, helping you to access a relevant niche audience.

The migglemedia team can advise you on where you should advertise, what your mix of branded and direct spend should be, bargain advertising opportunities and how to design compelling creative.

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

New things happen on the Internet all the time. It’s an evolving medium – that’s one of the best things about it. This latest development has really got us excited though: the launch of .tel domains.

What’s it all about?

.tel is a new top level domain (TLD) like a .com or a .co.uk, yet different in one key respect: the way it uses the Internet’s ‘phone book’, DNS (Domain Name System).

Up until now, everytime you access a website, the address you type in is translated, by DNS, into the set of numbers that the website lives under. Your computer (or mobile phone) then busies itself with retrieving the webpages. With .tels, it’s all completely different as all the information in a .tel is stored by the DNS. This means that the DNS doesn’t need to look anywhere else for the info, so it can deliver the information that lives under yourbusiness.tel super quickly.

A .tel domain can either complement your existing website or act as a stand-alone website if you don’t yet have one. All the information that lives at yourbusiness.tel is viewable in a web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or FireFox) as a webpage.

Because of their speed, .tel domains have significant advantages for web-enabled mobile phones – many of which still download standard web pages quite slowly. Also, because you can publish pretty much any contact information on a .tel, customers are just one click from your website, your email or from making a call.

With a .tel domain you can:

Join a global online directory that provides you instant worldwide exposure…

Integrate all your means of communication in a single place under your control…

Update and manage your contact information and keywords in real time…

Increase your search engine visibility through descriptive keywords…

Provide a fast way for your customers to connect with you in a single click from any mobile device…

How are .tel domains different to .coms?

The makers of .tel reckon that .tel domains could be as big as .com. We’re not going to be as bullish as .tel’s inventors because the invention of .com was a once in a lifetime phenomenon. But .tel will be big and we think businesses should get on board – not just to have a cool domain name, because this is NOT what .tel is about – but to get to use part of the internet, DNS, the web’s engine room, that other domains can’t exploit.

Without getting too technical, .tel domains use of DNS allows them to deliver several advantages. The .tels work really quickly on mobile phones – putting users one click away from making calls, sending you a mail or browsing your website. And because changes you make to your .tel are instantaneous (or as near as), anyone or anything that references your .tel has access to the latest, most up-to-date info about your business.

Exciting new opportunities with .tel domains

There are a number of other exciting aspects to .tel domains – opportunities for social networking and location based services being amongst our most hotly anticipated. Also, .tel development will not stand still. Think of some of the first .com pages you ever looked at, back when your mobile phone was brick sized and no one had thought of putting a browser on it – how far they’ve come. .tel has also been developed with a view to evolve. Watch this space for more .tel news very soon.

At miggle, we’ll be building a few .tels of our own. We can build your .tel pages too. For more information on .tels, contact the miggleweb team.

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

Back in December miggle.co.uk teamed up with Brighton Music Scene to produce a short video interview with up and coming New Wave band, Transformer.

The brief was to create a professionally edited piece that used multiple camera angles, made use of the band’s music video and was punchy and modern in style.

Filming took place in Brighton’s PoNaNa club – a perfect setting. We filmed using a professional set up of three cameras, one fixed, one in front and one roaming. Thanks are due to Lee who directed and edited the film.

The results do speak for themselves and act as a great showcase for what miggle.co.uk can do with this medium and we hope to create more engaging, exciting video content soon.

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.