We are not far off now when it comes to a significant changes that is coming up on Google. Over recent years we have been recommending responsive websites which are accessible on all devices (mobile, tablet and desktop) which is why all our websites are responsive and built with a mobile first approach to suit the needs of the ‘always-on’ customer. While current website design clients have had mobile websites delivered, there are many websites and business owners who simply aren’t ready for this change and could face penalties from Google by not keeping up with the market.
As of 21st April 2015, Google will be increasing the importance of mobile friendly websites when ranking websites in the search results. This is a global change and Google is stating that this is going to have a significant impact in the search results. Is your website ready for this change? If you are unsure, then the first thing you need to do is visit these pages;
Once you have tested several pages on your website, then you will have a better idea about how mobile friendly your website actually is. Unless you have recently implemented a responsive website, then the likely chances are that you aren’t ready and you need to look at reskinning your website so that it is responsive. Depending on the technology you are using will depend on how easy or difficult this process actually is.
There are many differences when it comes to mobile websites and many nuances related to search engine optimisation which can impact the success (or failure) rate of the project. Simply having a website that works on multiple devices often isn’t enough and can actually harm the traffic to your website if you get this wrong.
You will be glad to know that we have been through this process many times before so understand the pitfalls, technical challenges and important areas to focus on. If you are serious about your business online, then it is essential that your website is updated before this time to avoid losing traffic and ultimately sales through your website.
Would you like to find out more about how this change impacts your website? Then get in touch and we will happily review your website to see what changes need to be made before this deadline. Make sure your website is suitable for the current and future needs of your customers to avoid losing sales.
Following on from our success last year we have continued this theme into the New Year as we have been shortlisted in the finals for the prestigious Hive Business Awards in Blackburn with Darwen in the following categories;
Creative Agency Award
International Achievement Award
Young Entrepreneur Award
The Hive Business Awards have been designed to celebrate the success of businesses based in Blackburn with Darwen. Blackburn and Darwen have a fantastic history and is still home to world leading brands such as Graham & Brown and Crown Paints, so it is fantastic to celebrate achievement from local ambitious companies.
Within the awards we have been shortlisted for (full finalists here) we are in the run up alongside leading Blackburn companies employing in access 300 staff and operating on a global scale. For a small business less than 2 years old, this is a fantastic achievement for us and really celebrates the work that we do and the ambitions we have as a business.
You would have thought that a company the size of PayPal would have this problem solved, but they haven’t. So here is the solution to a problem that affects many businesses and website owners as they start to scale their payment solutions. Before we jump into the solution, to recap for those not too familiar with PayPal and IPN, let’s take a look at what this is and where the problem actually lies.
PayPal IPN
PayPal has functionality called Instant Payment Notification (IPN) which will automatically inform your website, web application or other URL when ‘something’ happens. Within your PayPal business account you manually set a single PayPal IPN URL which is a page on your website. This page on your website then listens for information from PayPal when any transaction related changes are made.
To understand more about PayPal IPN and its purpose, this information extracted from the PayPal website helps to explain this;
Instant Payment Notification (IPN) notifies merchants almost instantly about transaction events, such as:
Payments received, including Express Checkout, and Adaptive Payments.
Credit card authorizations.
eCheck payments and related pending, completed, or denied status events.
Recurring payments and subscription actions.
Chargebacks, disputes, reversals, and refunds.
Merchants can act based on the information they receive. For example, they can:
At first glance if you haven’t used this before, this sounds seriously awesome. And you know what, it is. But there are a couple of problems with this which can cause problems and that comes down to the PayPal IPN URL that you specify. More information about PayPal Instant Payment Notification can be found here and here.
Problems with PayPal IPN and why it may not be working
By default, the PayPal IPN URL is set at the PayPal account level. Another point to note at this stage is that you are only allowed one personal PayPal account per bank account and one business PayPal account per bank account. More information about this can be found here, here and here. In addition to this, many systems that utilise PayPal for their payment gateway are legacy 3rd party systems which are difficult, if not impossible, to customise. And herein lies the problem.
When using industry leading software that utilises PayPal as the payment gateway, this software will generally work out of the box and override the account level IPN URL to use a different IPN URL. This means that when a payment is made through this system, then PayPal will inform the IPN URL that is sent to PayPal as part of the transaction, rather than the IPN URL that is contained within the PayPal account. This is great and is how most systems should function, or at least have the flexibility to function in this way.
If you are using just a single system, then there isn’t really a problem here. The problem comes as you start to scale your business, websites and web applications while looking to keep financial management simple by using a single payment gateway for all of those systems. While we would always prefer to work with leading software and systems, the reality of website and web application development means that this is not always the case and we often deal with legacy systems or more basic functional systems that perform different tasks within a business.
An important point to note here is that while you can override the PayPal IPN URL if you are using standard payments and systems, you cannot override the PayPal IPN URL if you are using recurring payments. When speaking with PayPal about this issue, apparently this is something they are aware of and are working on which should be live ‘shortly’. We will see.
The problem here is that if you have multiple systems that don’t have the functionality or flexibility to override the PayPal IPN URL then this leave you with a bit of a problem. Because you can’t go creating another PayPal account as this is against PayPal’s guidelines, and you can’t go customising the systems as they aren’t capable of doing so. So you have either two solutions, either use different payment gateways for different systems which means that your payment information is going to be all over the place and difficult to manage, or you could hack a solution together that works.
Solution to Multiple PayPal IPN URLs
Thankfully, there is a solution. It is not a very elegant one, and one that I would personally prefer to avoid. Although there are no perfect systems, so this is a solution to one of those imperfect systems. The solution is to create a broadcasting script which acts as the default PayPal IPN URL. For example, this could sit on your website at www.your-website.com/paypal-ipn-listener-broascaster.php.
The purpose of the broadcaster script is so that your Instant Payment Notification messages can be picked up in a single location and forwarded on to wherever you like. This could be a single URL or multiple URLs. As the IPN messages contain transactional details and references, if another website, web application or system picks up on a message about a transaction that it knows nothing about, then it will simply ignore this message. So if you have 5 systems receiving messages from the broadcaster script, 4 of the systems are going to ignore the message and one of the systems will be able to tie this message to the specific transaction back to the correct piece of information and take the next steps required.
What this also means that if you start using systems that are capable of overriding the PayPal IPN URL, or PayPal get around to implementing the official solution for multiple IPN URLs within the account, then this solution does not interfere with this.
This can be a little difficult to picture, so here is a brief representation of what happens;
Summary
While you more than happy to use multiple payment gateways when looking to scale systems, many businesses want to keep things simple and use a single payment gateway for multiple systems. If the payment gateway that you have chosen is PayPal and you are looking to solve the problem related having multiple Instant Payment Notification (IPN) URLs, then it would be recommended to look at creating some kind of broadcast script that will handle all messages from PayPal and forward them on to where you would like. Depending on the software, programming languages and more that you are using, the implementation will clearly differ. If you need any help in relation to this, then get in touch.
Selecting the right digital agency partner can determine how successful your digital marketing campaigns are…or aren’t. Many businesses often work with who they like personally rather than the agency that can deliver the best results for their business to meet their growth ambitions. We enjoy working with ambitious companies who understand the value of selecting the right agency for the right reasons.
You will no doubt have heard the famous saying, “If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys” and this is even more true within the digital world whereby every recent graduate who can use Facebook is now apparently a digital guru. Let’s be serious here and make smart decisions when selecting the right partner to work with and always remember;
The work that we do doesn’t come cheap and we make no excuses for that. We work extremely closely with our clients to look at the options that work for their business. With a no-nonsense approach to digital marketing, you can be confident that we don’t try and baffle you with digital jargon because we have no need to try and impress you with waffle. Instead, we let our results speak for their self. And it’s ok, because not everyone is a perfect fit for us either. We often actively turn clients away because they simply aren’t ready to work with us and if we did take them on board we would be in a situation whereby results would be difficult to deliver and not provide a positive return on investment. This is not a good solution for either part involved which is why we are always honest with businesses we speak with.
When you are selecting the right digital agency to work with it is important to look at what you actually want to achieve. This is significantly different than what you want them to do. If you want a digital agency to “Do that Twitter thing” for you, then you may not be the right type of business to work with us. Instead, you may be better off employing an apprentice who can quite happily play around on social media all day and look busy. Compare this to if you are looking for a digital agency to “Significantly increase social media engagement from current fans along with increasing targeted fans by 20% in 6 months”, then this is when we would step in and create a serious strategy to grow your business. And again, it’s ok if you are in the former category. Every business needs to go through a series of stages as they grow and always remember;
The final point to make about the importance of selecting the right digital agency is to make sure you have the right people in place to get you to where you need to be. You wouldn’t employ a book keeper to fulfil the role of a Financial Director would you? No, you wouldn’t. The same is true with people working in the digital industry. Just because someone can use Facebook doesn’t make them good at digital. Just because someone can build a pretty website doesn’t mean they know how to generate serious results in terms of website traffic increases and revenue increases. And again, it’s ok if you choose to employ a book keeper to fulfil the role of a Financial Director. This isn’t where we fit in, instead, go and employ a recent graduate at a lower salary until you are ready to seriously invest in digital. When you are ready to get serious results for your business, let’s have a coffee and see how we can help your business fulfil its potential. Many businesses simply aren’t ready to hear about the right solutions, they are too busy doing what they have always done or taking the advice of people with less experience because there is a huge lack of understanding for most businesses around what digital actually is. So remember, when you are ready for the right solutions for your business, we are the ones holding the wheels and we are ready to chat whenever you are;
Already in a position to talk seriously about digital? Then get in touch and let’s meet up to see how we can help your business grow with the right people, the right technology at the right time.
It’s time to say goodbye to our long standing client Superfast Lancashire. The programme has unfortunately come to an end after an extremely successful sprint of fast paced workshops helping local businesses utilise digital technologies to grow. We have been involved with the programme since the very early days, delivering a wide range of workshops varying from how businesses can utilise collaborative web based tools to save time and money to workshops covering digital marketing in the modern age and how to increase website traffic, sales and enquiries.
The programme has helped over 700 businesses throughout Lancashire, many of whom will have attended one of the many courses, workshops and training sessions we have run throughout the programme. It’s been a great pleasure being part of the programme and I only hope that Lancashire County Council, Funding Providers and other similar groups who are responsible for these types of projects do address the gap that is being left wide open with the programme ending. In the meantime, we are running regular digital marketing events for those still looking to learn about the latest technologies and marketing opportunities. Here is a quick summary of the programme;
This type of support is hugely needed throughout Lancashire, where many businesses within the small to medium sized business bracket are actively looking for support for how to integrate digital throughout their business. Fingers crossed that something comes along to replace this in the coming months. As mentioned, in the meantime, why not pop along to one of our events.
Still being under 30 myself along with running a digital agency, I have quite a different perspective than the traditional decision makers in charge of the strategic direction of town centres. Looking at the ever declining high streets and town centres, I believe this is due to local authorities missing a trick or two when it comes to future planning with far too much focus on ‘the good old days’. We shouldn’t be trying to re-create what we once had in the town centres, instead we should be embracing the changing world we live in and create town centres worth visiting. The concept of a town centres has to change significantly to cater for the needs of the modern person.
Traditionally, town centres were the place where everyone visited on a regular basis to buy things. Whether this is visiting your green grocers, butchers, fish mongers, bakers or shopping for clothes, video games and other general things. Nowadays, we have seen these traditional shops disappear in general (we’ll ignore the ‘artisan’ movement for the moment…), with them being replaced by budget bakeries, charity shops, pound shops and other rather non-exciting businesses. People still shop in these types of shops if they are heading into the town centre anyway, but let’s be serious, no-one at all is going to go out of their way to visit one of these boring shops. With much more fun places either at home online or exciting venues to visit, why would you ever head into a town centre?
The term town centre can be misconstrued, so just to clarify, I’m talking about the town centres for…towns…not cities. Cities have a very different feel about them and cities are already thriving places in general. General town centres are very uninspiring with nothing to excite and inspire people to visit the centre. Town centres have lost their mojo.
It’s time for town centres to get their mojo back. Let’s look at the realities of retail and the changing expectations of customers. Traditional retail on the high street in town centres is never going to revive the town centres. People can purchase goods and services online for cheaper and with a wider range, so why would you ever go into the town centre to purchase goods? Going back a generation or two, it was seen as a tropical holiday to visit Blackpool in the summer. How times have changed. People of my generation think nothing about travelling a few hours for work and play with many people I know personally having migrated from various countries to work in bustling cities. The world has significantly changed. Yet town centres haven’t. They are still focused on getting people back into the town centre to shop. This is never going to happen. Looking at the many towns within Lancashire as an example, what do they offer that Manchester city centre cannot offer in greater forms? Generally speaking, nothing.
So what should town centres be focusing on then? Entertainment and lifestyle. People are looking for different, exciting and new things to do on a daily basis – so let’s give it to them. Forget traditional shopping and think about fun things that people can do. Events, festivals, special markets, food, drink, parades, celebrations and more. Let’s give people a reason to want to visit the town centres.
Lifestyle and entertainment is the only way to bring our town centres back to life and this naturally includes bridging the gap between online and offline – the way the real world works, a good blend of the two. Currently we live in a world whereby online and offline are treated as two separate things, particularly at a local level, this needs to change so that fun things are communicated in an effective way. This is what people are looking for, so let’s look about giving it to them. Artisan shops aren’t the whole solution. Independent shops, restaurants and bars are needed but they will only thrive in a bustling town centre, they aren’t going to create the buzz to drive people back in on their own.
You need to look no further than the regular events that happen throughout various town centres to see how these can work effectively at bringing people together, an awful lot of people attend these types of events throughout the country. 10k runs, Tough Mudder, Chinese New Year, bonfire night, Pride parades, carnivals, beer festivals, chocolate festivals, Christmas markets and more. Why can’t all town centres make a commitment to running an event at least monthly to give people a reason to visit, something fun, entertaining and inspiring. There is no reason why this cannot happen.
The one of the current solutions to bringing people back into town centre often comes about in the form of Business Improvement Districts which are tasked with boosting business and creating jobs. Printing a few flyers and handing them out to people who are already using the town centre is not a solution. Neither is a flashy website with information about the projects, which often aren’t going far enough and simply list businesses in the form of a directory on the website. Boring – I can find this basic information on Google. This is not enough to give people a reason to go out of their way and visit the town centres. When you compare these activities to the amount of people that congregate when fun events are put together as outlined earlier, this is how to bring people back into the town centres – give them a reason to visit, not just locally but other neighbouring towns too.
Promotion is key here though. Simply putting on an event is not enough. And by event, I mean something that is actually good. Not putting up a temporary ice rink at Christmas when there is a permanent Ice Rink less than 5 miles away, nor creating a fake beach in a town centres – I can get a flight to Spain for £40, when parking in the town centre is over £5 for the day. Yes…these are real examples of projects designed to bring people back into town centres…Difficult choice to make, fake beach in a town centre or Spain…
While on the topic of car parking though, this is an important one because this is actively putting people off visiting town centres, all for the quick gain for local authorities to use as an additional revenue stream. Remove the barriers to entry and more people will visit town centres. Online deliveries cost less than paid parking in town centres. Again, why would people visit a town centre to buy products they can purchase cheaper and more efficiently online?
Looking at promotion though, this is essential to communicate fun things with local people, both in the town and in neighbouring towns. Placing an article in the local newspaper, which no-one is reading, is not going to cut it. Digital advertising and communication are essential to making events a success. How many times have you personally found out about an event, after it has happened, even though it was in your own local town? This happens far too often. Promotion using digital channels is one of the most effective ways of communicating with local people.
Town centres must change or they will die. Personally I can honestly say that I have had no need to visit a local town centre for well over 5 years. I have passed through or visited multiple town centres less than a handful of times in recent years as I can get everything I need online or in major cities which have more to offer. When I have visited more local places, this is because of lifestyle and entertainment reasons – events, festivals, special occasions in the year, parades, food, drink and more. None of this is the traditional shopping related activities.
Have a think on this personally and look to see for yourself how your own habits have changed over recent years. For most reading this, either you are also in a similar position or you are during the transition period working towards this. Most people don’t visit the town centre for shopping activities on a regular basis anymore.
Then what do we do beyond special monthly events? How about we look to make towns more exciting and a fun place to be for people;
With so many opportunities to turn towns into vibrant places that people want to visit, there are no excuses to see failing high streets and town centres. It’s time we started to look at what the modern consumer is looking for and start to cater for this digitally enabled and socially active market. It’s time for town centres to get their mojo back.
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