Leaving Castlebar after a 3 hour speaking engagement at 11pm, and with a BNI meeting the following day in Tullamore at 7am, meant very little time for sleep. Even though home is just 40 minutes further down the road I decided to try an overnight in Days Hotel Tullamore with a short trip down the stairs to their excellent conference room in the morning. Normally I sleep badly in hotels so it a tough decision, but that extra hour sounded oh so appealing and the welcome at Days is always just great. What was really unexpected was the acres of really seriously comfy bed, effective soundproofing and blackout curtains. I slept better than I have in any hotel of any star rating around the world. Despite a post 1am hour on the room WiFi sorting crisis occurring in the opposite timezone. Apparently there is some kind of bed policy that means you can get this sort of sleep in any Days Hotel. Brilliant idea, after all what else are you paying for but a good nights sleep?

Funny they don’t really capitalise on this on the various admirably branded but rather predictable and staid Days’ websites – take a look at Trip Advisor to see how their clients spot the difference. How do modern hotels establish USPs in such a crowded marketplace where hotel websites seem increasingly to be cloned ? Fine if you are the Castle Hotel Group with all that Georgian interest, the Mills Inn with the craic factor or Castle Durrow as a gastronomic experience par excellence. But if you are an ordinary modern hotel with an extraordinarily good sleeping experience does the bog standard misty flash banner or splash page do you justice?

Ideas please!

Easter weekend was a great excuse for indulgence,, a couple of days walking the beach and over indulging in Clonakilty Quality Hotel started with a real boob. Searched for great rates on Last Minute.com put in ‘quality hotel clonakilty’ up came one decent offer – booked it to find on arrival they had served up and I (in post training fugue) had booked the Quality Hotel Cork! Having said that the Clonakilty guys were really helpful and a)found a room and b) sorted the transfer of the booking by the next day. Wake up Last Minute – precise searches should retrieve precise and honest results these days…. we are not always fully awake or proficient in using the web…

One night left en route back to Offaly and we consulted Hidden Ireland for a real treat. These guys spent a fair bit improving their site last year – we audited the old one and it was found wanting. However there was one big snag. Pages are not printable in ink saving mode. And largely unreadable. Its a no brainer guys – make at least the direction pages printable. And help save the planet’s ink. My Easter wish is that all these nice hotels would check their pages are printable and if they are not – tell their web designers it’s done with Style Sheets!!! Very easy but often overlooked

Mobarnane House was wonderful but rather exclusive – we were the only couple in residence and the Hidden Ireland thing is kind of about the other crackpots you meet over dinner. Take a few friends though and live like lords of the manor!

Now off to Hotel Reviews Ireland to plan the next one…

More about how people book hotels here

Barely a week passes that some geek seems to be urging us all to write business blogs. Should SMEs blog? Will it help grow business?

Often blogs seem to be sold as a means of providing dynamic content when a website is static, neglected and never updated. But is it not better to keep your website up to date and interesting and then , if you have time and energy left (and something interesting to blog about) think about starting a blog.

Should you use a free blog on a site like www.wordpress.com  or set one up within your own domain? Search Engine Optimisers tend to recommend the latter but there are two schools of thought:

• Blogging within a community domain like WordPress can provide valuable backlinks and drive traffic to your website
• Blogging within your own domain can increase the ranking of your domain through dynamic content – whether or not you regularly change your main website content. But you do need to work separately on promoting your blog within blogging communities

So with this in mind we decided at last to create a WordPress add-on to SitesToGo. This blog is the first of those to go live and several clients are considering blogs currently. 

The acid test is whether blogs get used regularly and whether they do attract the interactivity they promised. The challenge is not a technical one – rather to help clients develop a strategy for sustainable blogging so that their new tool does not wither and die….

For sheer cool development and a great user experience it’s hard to beat www.mydeco.com Brent Hoberman’s post LastMinute excursion into online design.  Taking up where other developers left off and leaving the Dulux mood board looking rather single dimension.  Be warned though it is addictive and one of the best examples of web 2.0 thinking to emerge.  Sharing designs creates a community as well as the ability to build your own room sets from scratch.

After the Sunday supplements ran the story the site seems under pressure though, according to the error message the whole world is now designing room sets!

ISME E-Business Survey report 2008 This weeks ISME e-business research indicates that more than 40% of businesses agree that ‘Web Designers try to confuse us with jargon’ and that ‘commissioning a website was a confusing and/or frustrating experience’.

Given that three quarters of businesses agree their website needs improvement is the pain of web development an unavoidable hazard? What can businesses do to bridge the language divide?

The research report suggests that SMEs should choose web developers with a proven track record for project management skills, delivery of best practice, accessible and attractive website design.

OK so I wrote the questionnaire. I had a few theories but never imagined that level of agreement with the jargon thing. Why do we do it?

I guess any web developers feel they are judged by displaying their knowledge of technology rather than their ability to translate business goals into successful online strategy.  This creates an unnecessary barrier between them and their client from the word go. Every week we are asked to help business people who have secured a perfectly good web developer but don’t understand what on earth they are talking about. It is important to make sure your web developer has the technical capabilities to undertake the job in hand but you should also look for a web developer who is capable of understanding your business and how search engines work, both of which are essential for a successful website.

Look at their portfolio but also talk to their previous clients, ask them about their own business experience. Agree timelines and ensure they and you stick to them. Check your body language and if you find yourself cringing at the technospeak – tell them firmly it is not impressing you and to please speak plain English! And if anyone catches me talking gobbledeook please bring me back down to earth….

After a good year of resistance to the concept of blogging I have finally given in.  Actually I realised that after all I was really blogging all the time through the SitesToGo Web Knowledge Area so my resistance was futile. Deploying a simple bit of software means I can now call it a blog. Officially.

I can create categories in which to store serious stuff, categories to store rants and categories to talk about the important things in life like food and travel. And categories to review great websites.

So watch this space. And note that any SitesToGo website can now have a blog upgrade. its just you have to have meaningful things to say. Often.