Big Purple Box - Creative Design

As of Janaury 2014 there are around 861,379,000 registered host names, which is an increase of around 350,000 compared to December 2013. However, the number of active websites recorded in January 2014 actually contracted by around 4 million to just over 180,000,000 - in other words, that's still a lot. In this sea of content, images, videos, and social media, it’s easy, as someone with a struggling website, to feel overwhelmed. That said, there is no greater tool your business or brand can have than a website that both promotes your product or service while adding value to your readers’ experience. By generating awesome content and engaging traffic tools to expand your reach, you can boost website traffic while simultaneously establishing yourself as a trustworthy member of the digital community. Here are 6 quick, creative, DIY ways to improve your website traffic. 1. Optimize your content for search engines To increase the visibility of your website and boost traffic, inco

Finally completed the process and I am now a registered Provider for NBSL’s North East Business Support Fund helping businesses to improve their competitiveness. Grants of up to £1400 towards a project worth up to £3500 are available, that's 40% of the project costs  - you can use the grant for almost any type of business support that will help your business to grow - from marketing and web design to financial or human resources planning. Applications are simple and straightforward, simply fill in an online application an adviser from NBSL will visit you, you choose your provider – we hope you'll choose Big Purple Box! We'll complete the project and finally you claim your funding and carry out a short review of the project. If you run a North East based business with plans to grow and you haven't received funding from NBSL since 2012, you may be able to access funding from the North East Business Support Fund. So if you're thinking of embarking on a mar

Okay I'll admit it's not the most exciting site I've put together what was interesting about this one was the timescale. From initial design to site going live was just over a week, eight days to be precise. More importantly it met the clients design brief and was comfortably within budget. For the future, we've got a nice print project on the go for a London Design business as well as a local artists portfolio site coming to completion. Add in a business identity for a Maintenance and Refurbishment business and it's easy to see why social life this month has hit a low!

It's been a busy summer and as well as keeping on top of all our day to day work we've got three website's all going live. Each one very different in content and style. The Perseverance is a well establish village pub and regularly holds music nights and special events such as a Blues and Beer Festival. Select Retail Solutions offer a complete fit out of concession style shopping in a wide range of retail outlets. Looking to create some more space, then get in touch with Outer Space Solutions a specialist loft conversion and extension contractor. Over the summer we've been asked about developing websites for holiday 'to let' properties. We've completed a few now so watch the next instalment of the Big Purple Box blog for a update. Or if you're interested in developing your holiday website or any other design or marketing activity, get in touch on 091 2802023 or email john@bigpurplebox.co.uk .

Sometimes a project comes along that you can really appreciate exactly what the client is trying to achieve. Late last year a potential new client got in touch after finding Big Purple Box via a Google search, a meeting was duly arranged to discuss the new project. David Holland of Northumbrian Tin Soldier arrived and we got down to business discussing a new venture that would require a business identity, corporate/brochure style website and a eCommerce solution. Fairly standard stuff you might be thinking, but this was different because David Holland is a wargame figure manufacturer and painter and our conversation quickly turned to different figures we had both collected, painted and wargamed with. In a previous life I was wargamer! Pretty quickly we were heading out for a drink to continue the conversation which took in a love of live music and classic rock! If it wasn't for the pesky bills we all have to pay I'd have probably done this one for free! Utilising two

We've been working with Robinson Optometrists for a couple of years now, here's what Nigel Robinson had to say about us. " Hi John. just a quick note to thank you for the latest advert you produced. Despite very little notice, you have once again produced an excellent result. This serves as a constant reminder  that taking Big Purple Box on board has been one of the best business decisions we have ever made. Thank you! " Robinsons Optometrists are up for two prestigious national awards this year, Technology Practice and Independent Practice of the Year 2014. We'd like to wish them good luck for the event. You can see more of our work by taking a look over our online print portfolio . Get in touch and lets see if we can help you with your business advertising or more! john@bigpurplebox.co.uk

We've been busy developing packaging for our favourite chilli sauces and have a new website going live! Crazy Fred came to us to develop some packaging and bottle labels for his excellent range of chilli sauces and chutneys. With a number of bottle sizes and labeling requirements we went for a colour coded approach, green labels are mild sauces, red ones hotter and if it's got a skull and crossbones on, then beware! You can buy them online from Freds website or catch the Crazy Man himself at Food Fayres across the region, in fact we're hoping to catch up with him again at Whitley Bays very own Food Festival on the 14th and 15th June. Time for Change : came to us to redevelop their old website and design a new identity for the business. They had originally made use of a 'free' service to develop their website, but like many found that they had outgrown the limitations of the 'free' service. Once we understood what Time for Change were trying to a

Let’s get back to basics. The most important function of metadata is not the ability to influence rankings, but its ability to encourage your content to make the best first impression possible. The Big 3 social networks all allow marketers the ability to provide metadata specific to the channel and therein lies the opportunity to provide titles, descriptions and pictures that resonate directly with your audience in a given channel.     Adoption of New Metadata The Common Crawl , which is an incredible resource that all SEOs should be at least mindful of, has developed a microsite called the Web Data Commons where they identify trends extracted from the Common Crawl corpus. Schema.org , the new vocabulary that search engines have forced us to learn without providing too much immediate benefit, appeared in 43.05% of the 1,811,471,956 typed entities that appeared in the 3,005,629,093 URLs on the 40,600,000 domains that make up the August 2012 Common Crawl Corpus. As you might i

Well after a difficult week, what with the heating giving up the ghost! It's now replaced and fully working again I'm sure you'll all be pleased to know. We've got some marketing material for a new client ready to hit the press as well as advertising for Robinsons Optometrists and a couple of websites all coming to completion for the end of this month. February will see us starting on some special 'single page' website designs including the launch of Roaring Silence, a website showing our music related projects as well as housing some useful resources for new or even established bands.