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Cambridge American Cemetery Madingley

madingley american cemetery cambridge Cambridge American Cemetery

The Cemetery

In 1943 University of Cambridge donated the 30+ Acres of land as a temporary cemetery. After world war 2 it was made a permanent cemetery. The cemetery serves to commemorate those servicemen and women in the American forces who died during world war 2.

Access is free and there is ample parking. It is located at Madingley outside of Cambridge.

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Spring 2018 Ads and Commercials We Like and Why

jermaine-jenas-jj-jacamo Hardly A BIG bloke but the viewers ARE!

A small roundup of Ads wether tv or online etc that caught our eye and are worthy of a mention.

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GDPR Data Protection

gdpr checklist GDPR - Did they think it through?

The GDPR stands for the General Data Protection Regulations. It is a strict act and lawful across the world. I have recently taken a course on the GDPR to understand the implications for myself and my clients. This is an online guide and an aide memoire. You might find some of the links and information interesting and useful. 

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Advertise with Instagram and Facebook

instagram-ads-cover

I thought I would share a few key stats and some intel on our experience with advertising on instagram and facebook. This is real social media marketing, yes there is so called organic social marketing where you push out tweets and posts on your own channel and grow your audience, of course you should be doing that. However you must also realise the power of being able to reach audiences you really want to reach with pure advertising. Making sure that you have great ad copy is essential and better still as you will see video is a key and works best. Video advertising can also be very affordable these days, it makes sense to invest in video.

80% of people follow a business on instagram. 

Over 200 million people look at a business profile every day. 

One in three small businesses say they built their business with Instagram.

In 2018 eMarketeer estimates that instagram ad revenue will be 6.84 billion.

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Mac Mail Issues | Cannot Open Links in Email

mac mail open links in chrome issue

Are you finding that post updating Mac OSX now in the default Mac Mail client you can't launch Chrome? I got in touch with support and interestingly they push you to try with Safari. Great browser and at the moment I am now using this as a default. Why? Because I really love opening links from email. It's not that links from chrome didn't open it's very awkward to get the url and do it as well. 

So it's not a fix if you like Chrome. Perhaps it could be a Chrome issue. Would like to see the comments you have on it.

 

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Playing With Aerial Footage Cambridgeshire

cambs digital aerial footage

I finally got some time to play with footage I took with our in house drone. An aerial shot shouldn't cost you the earth with the technology of today- but look at what it can give you! 

Our Business From The Air!

We offer web design and digital marketing for cambridge and Cambridgeshire.
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Greggs Vs Costa

greggs vs costa

 If you hadn't noticed Greggs have been trying to get in on the coffee revolution that took over the high street and by and large they did well. Take myself and friend after swimming we would visit each of the establishments.

Our local Costa was often not fast and we got a bit fed up so thought we would try Greggs. And you know what it took me a while longer than I want to admit that I noticed the small size of the standard coffee at Gregg. Compared with the normal size of Greggs as you see in the image you get through a Greggs coffee much much faster. 

Both coffee's taste good but Costa is better. So now we battle the queues at Costa despite some wins for greggs, Greggs also charge to sit down and the cost was really comparable between the two. Greggs have much more of a choice of foods but don't quite compete if you have a cake and sweet tooth IMO. I don't look to do that in a coffee shop however greggs soups are great. Also the Greggs app is pretty good and worth the download and acts as a loyalty scheme - costa do the same with the card, I don't own their app. 

greggs coffee
A festive twist

I am willing to bet that cup size might be very similar across franchises. So long as costa continue to be much better value for their coffee then we will brave the queues. I think Greggs have something a little wrong. Would value your thoughts.. To stay in and drink the price of the coffee - cappuccino in this case is around 2.70 for both. The large Costa size is huge! I don't go for that. I think Greggs have the chance to get some of the cost market but they need to lower the cost of sitting down and increase the cup size. I am less into the harder seats in both and I think both need to sort that ratio better..

I shall add to this post so subscribe if you want to keep updated. I would value your opinion on your coffee preferences.. 

​If you are a lover of latte then the costa mugs are a bit of a hassle, they are tall and top heavy. The cheese and mushroom toastie is excellent however.

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Logo work for Nasa Taxis

logo in photoshop

A few graphics and thoughts that I went through while designing some branding for nasa taxis.

I wanted to use and get a color combo that was not in direct relationship to a competitor though the client did like those yellow and black colours..so experimenting with purple and yellow seemed to work. 

In the shot below I started bottom left and worked up, quickly moving to a faster looking font verdana italic and I incorporated the rhomboid shape that is iconic for taxis. I played with the lines and fills thicknesses and colour. The  bottom right would have been my pick as I think the rhomboid hasn't lost anything here. But at the end of the day I am here to please the client and I absolutely get subjectivity. 

Responsive Website Design

I am building Nasa Taxis a wordpress site because before this they just had a facebook page which was not easy to market and impossible to rank in google search. His new website is going to save a lot of money in the end and also give his new customers a lot of confidence moving forwards.

Quick facebook pages can be created by anyone! And that's the problem if you are serious about your business you need a website.

Nasa Taxis Website

The Final Logo

Well for me it's not the final final logo. For getting the website started I need colours and a logo. It is very difficult to design a website without some kind of brand guidance. 

If you liked this walk through of some REAL WORK then share this post as it really helps thanks.

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Photoshop 3d for your company branding

3d postcard

It's not that often that I get to play with 3d anymore so it was with surprise that I see how far photoshop has come when it comes to 3d. You can really achieve some impressive looks quickly which is important when you are on a creative budget.

You need to be quite good at saving out files or at least organising yourself as you can't easily go back to 2d world. That being worked out you can create primitive shapes like cubes and postcards which you can arrange lighting for. You can quickly setup a nice visual or 2. I did see few rendering options for the version I have but results as you can see seem pretty ok to me. 

Perfect for flyers and corporate design like van decals etc..think about how your brand looks in 3d.

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Content Marketing

Turn Your Coffee Budget Into Clicks

The wider term content marketing is misleading as it can mean so many things you need to clear up the context quickly. For the purposes of what we do at Cambs Digital and this post Content Marketing is referring to advertising creative. Once thought to be the preserve of big brands now the florist around the corner can get a creative marketing campaign for the price of her coffee it seems. Well the Ad says so anyway.

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seo
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SEO and Web Design as a Marketing Strategy

web-design-mac-laptop

Using SEO and Web Design for Your Company's Marketing Strategy

Digital marketing is now more important to business than ever, especially because a majority of consumers are avid Internet users. This makes online channels a useful tool in communicating with them and a website is a foundation for a wide range of digital marketing strategies

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admin
I do love that minimalist design is coming back, less IS more and the image is taking us centre stage making us FEEL something.... Read More
Wednesday, 08 November 2017 19:57
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Fenland for Business Network Meeting

Fenland For Business

I had intended to just visit the Fenland for Business meeting this morning for half the duration but ended up staying and calling off my 12 O'Clock appointment. The reasons for this were:

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Using Letsencrypt to Make Your Website Secure [https]

Let's Encrypt

Thank goodness for Let's encrypt. Google is the monopoly on internet search maybe because Bill Gates is more interested in curing the world of Malaria. So much so is Google a monopoly it is running into issues we know it will get around because it's almost God. So why is LE GREAT? 

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White Swan Conington

biker meetup conington

Noteable for bikers who have a nice meetup tuesday evenings. The White Swan is the only pub in Conington Cambridgeshire. 

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How to Use Wildcard (GLOBBING) in Robots.txt [SEO TIP]

crawl-error_20170712-090141_1

I am making a note of this for anyone that is not seeing any documentation for robots.txt and using patterns sometimes called globbing patterns. Here is a decent resource on using Robots and wildcards but to add to that which I do now you need something more powerful.

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Why No Padlock? - A Tool For Fixing HTTPS or Mixed Content Issues

why-no-padlock

A quick shout to this site which saved me trolling through some (a lot) code to find in a secure (or so I thought) webpage the problem loading an insecure item. An insecure item has a call to a resource that is using the unsecured protocol HTTP, not the secure HTTPS one.

TL;DR -> Go visit this helpful website now -Why No Padlock

In this case, it was an image for Expedia which was found to be loaded via HTTP, not HTTPS.

If a webpage loads scripts or any resource from a non-encrypted server it is a potential (albeit unlikely) security hole and browsers will show an annoying padlock with a warning to the user....this looks worse than no secure page in fact!

If the page has a web form on it (elements for the user to input data) the worry is that the data entered will pass across the web unencrypted. This is totally fine for a lot of the web's traffic like an image (no user data involved).

But if we can send everything encrypted it's better!

Google wants all sites to be https. It makes things harder from a technical standpoint but there are some compelling reasons why it is a good thing. The cottage industry that was Web 1 is going to be lost- that is a bit sad. Edit: Technology to the rescue of the little guy! Let's encrypt allowing the little guy free certificates to enable him/her to go https for free. Link to their project below.

So this site here https://www.whynopadlock.com/check.php is for you.

Citations


Lets Encrypt https://letsencrypt.org/

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Guest — Gaurav Maniar
SSL checker tool is quickly check your URL to ensure there is no insecure link found in your website. Insecure link on your URL wi... Read More
Wednesday, 14 March 2018 11:44
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Setting up your email clients so that emails don't get lost

Time to read excluding links - 4 min.

Traditionally we had a single device for looking at emails and this was normally your work computer or your home computer. Those days are way gone but there are some annoyances that have resulted from having multiple devices access your email.

Each device has a software program on it called a mail client. On a mac there is a mac mail client that comes with the OS. Outlook is microsoft's mail client and now comes with a 365 tag but essentially it's the same thing - a mail client.

Mail Problem Scenario

You have programmed both your mobile phone mail client and your home desktop machine to access and send emails. This seems at first to work fine however if you use POP settings on either machine the email is popped off the server upon download. So then you go out and leave your desktop with the email sat happily on it and your correct expectation is that it will be on your mobile right ! Wrong. Here is more on IMAP Vs POP3

So why does POP3 still exist ? It is easier for some hosts to maintain POP3 emails and maybe some other lame excuses for using something that has long been superseded. You might be using a free email service or cheap nasty host OR your web developer could only get POP3 working for you, Insist on IMAP.

Solution

Set up you mail clients with IMAP it's a more modern recommended protocol to use than POP3 (POP).

Who has the settings ? Your host will have the settings and they should get them across to you using IMAP and a SMTP server for sending mail.

IPhone Screen Shots for Typical Email Settings

In the screens that follow pay particular attention to the INBOX setting for a prefix and ask your host about this one - try INBOX as in the image.

Tips

  • Always choose a secure mail setting if you host has it. Emails by default are not encoded so if you sent credit card details along with your name it could be seen by basic hackers with not so much knowledge. So use your email and password to use secure mail settings.Email security is beyond the scope of this simple article.
  • Test your mail after setup with friends and don't trust its working until it gives you clear confidence (assume you might not be getting your emails if it goes quiet)
  • Turn off your email if you want to get some work done for 30 minutes ;)

Extra Guff

Many confuse the domain name registrar (where you bought your domain) with thinking they manage the email. When you register a name you simply control the nameservers where that domain point to. Your email is managed at a host level. You CAN in fact point your domain email record to a different host to manage. This is called an MX record and is mostly not of interest to the reader here. 

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The Path to Purchase

WIP : Path to Purchase

Here is an interesting link that helps a marketeer see today's view of the path to purchase.

http://www.millwardbrown.com/docs/default-source/insight-documents/articles-and-reports/Millward-Brown-Digital_Navigating_the_New_Path_to_Purchase.pdf

Ok you will need a few days to fully go through this mega list of marketing tools. http://trackmaven.com/blog/2016/06/marketing-tools-list/

Understand Attribution Modelling

In the video below the guys explore a path to buying an apple mac book pro. With a traditional old school look at analytics you can measure the organic traffic through to purchase. However as discussed there was a ton of TOUCHPOINTS that the brand needed to make happen and won on.

We need more sophisticated tools to measure these 'hidden' touchpoints. Its a little bit related to that 'conversation online'.

How to evaluate Social Media Attribution ?

​There are a great many social media tools available for free - here is a list of some of them.
http://www.dreamgrow.com/69-free-social-media-monitoring-tools/

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This Week in Cambs Digital

This Week in Cambs Digital

An interesting Joomla update upset quite a few users - why ? 

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User Experience Signals

If you don't know what user experience signals are and you want to get good ranking then take a look at what Brian Dean and Larry Kim came up with. There are some serious suggestions here that it could be poor CTR that cause google to drop your site rank.


CTR's and User Experience Signals (UES) what are they ?

User Experience Signals is a metric that can now be accurately measured by at least google. For example from clicking on a search result how long did the user hang around on the page and the site that was linked to ? Did they BOUNCE that means leave right away - find out if you have some of these pages and eliminate them or improve them so people stop leaving. How to find them and fix them is in the article and infographic on User Experience Signals.

It is google finally able to be forcing the quality of websites on their search engines. Ask yourself how good have google search results been for me and did I stay with a decent dwel time ? If your site is not mobile friendly will this cause a low CTR ? It may well do and within google analytics you should be able to measure theses stat more effectively.

Graph from the infographic.
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