Posted by admin on Nov 21, 2010 in
Digital Marketing,
General Gripes We moved into our new office ‘The Old Schoolhouse’ in Castle Ashby back in June of 2010.
One of the things that was pretty important to us as a digital marketing agency was the speed of the broadband, so we were fairly pleased when we found out that we should be getting approx 3.5mb downstream.
On the allotted day the man came and fixed it up, and after an initial period of 4 days where we had virtually NO bandwidth it duly settled down at 3.5Mb. But here came the problem. every time anyone uploaded a file, however small the downstream died- period. Now I know that ADSL stands for asynchronous and that the upstream is always slower, in this case about 300K, but we’ve had plenty of experience of ADSL elsewhere and never seen this problem.
BT’s response? That’s normal, but if you want an engineer to come and investigate its going to cost. Now, having had problems with lines in other locations and calling engineers out we knew it could soon run into billing of thousands of pounds for them to not solve the problem!
So we persevered, until it became untenable, and then we ordered a second line, just for FTP use internally to alleviate the problem.
Interestingly the BT survey this time told us to only expect 3Mb, so 500k less than before. We didn’t bite, just waited for the installation and then our IT guy set up the line through the same router as the other one, reserving the bandwidth to one machine at first.
We let the line settle for 10 days and then performed some speed tests. Bear in mind that this line comes from the same exchange, no difference.
The results? 7Mb downstream, 512 up! And that’s consistent. this one flies, and there is NO problem when you upload.
What does this tell us? Well either there is a fault on the other line, or there is another operational reason, and this is the one that got us thinking….
At our last place a couple of miles down the road, our unit was getting just over 1Mb, and there was no performance issue when uploading, but next door were getting 6Mb! We got fobbed off by the BT standard response of you are 5Km from the exchange so that is the best you can get. The unit next door was approx 12 feet closer to the exchange!
Putting both lines into the new building has proved that BT’s broadband infrastructure is at best a lottery, at worst an operational nightmare.
And the theory as to why the broadband lines at both locations showed such vast differences in speed? Well it could all be to do with the routing of the lines themselves.
The fast lines would appear to route straight out of the exchange to the locations receiving them, but the ones with poor performance may be ‘routing’ around the village before reaching their end destination therefore increasing the ‘distance’ that the broadband signal has to travel.
Either way, it is a complete lottery, and not even a ‘postcode lottery’ as The Old Schoolhouse proves. Maybe BT would like to respond with something more scientific or credible than ‘It’s the distance from the exchange mate, can’t do ’nuffink about that.’
Just so you know the score;
- Yardley Hastings Exchange to the Old Schoolhouse Castle Ashby (approx 3km)
- BT Business Broadband option 2 (2 lines)
- Line 1 giving download of 3.5mb
- Line 2 giving download of 7Mb
However, none of this explains the performance problems when uploading on line 1. The downstream just drops to nothing. Is this not a fault? Perhaps someone with some real experience might like to post an answer? Thanks!
As an agency we receive a lot of speculative B2B email but the one below takes the biscuit.
The warning. Always check your data lists before sending as you can do yourself a lot of harm. As these guys have done. We won’t be recommending them to any of our clients!
How to annoy your prospects with incorrect targeting. They actually sent this out to agencies!
Posted by airtimeandy on Jun 11, 2009 in
General Gripes,
SEO,
Web Design We had a prospect enquire about our small business web design service today, and as we were exchanging emails concerning his requirements he mentioned that a lot of companies had told him they would get him to show on the first page of Google as part of the package.
This kind of thing makes us cross, as we work hard to build everything to be as compliant as is practically possible and we use best practice SEO techniques during the build process. We know that for a new build to get indexed can take months, even with a sitemap.xml file and a robots.txt file in place.
These companies that make promises such as this need to be more transparent about what it is they are actually offering.
To be number one in say the search term plumbers is going to be impossible without a huge amount of post launch SEO trickery such as paid linking.
Some of these companies will look at phrases in the long tail and then optimise for that. They then tell you to search for something like specialist plumber in your town, and hey presto they you are. So you feel good about being at the top of Google. But hang on, where’s all the traffic, all the leads, the phone isn’t off the hook? Exactly! You are at the top of a mountain no one climbs, a desert for searchers.
To be featuring in relevant search you need to optimise for it. So if you are a Plumber in London you’ve got a dilemma. You could try and register a domain name like www.london-plumbers.co.uk but I doubt it will be available. maybe you could get something like SW6-plumbers.co.uk. Now a site on that domain could be optimised for searchers looking for plumbers in that postcode and you could show near the top of search. But in all honesty you’d probably find yell.com more cost effective.
Some other companies tell you that they will get you up there using Adwords and that it won’t cost you more than a small amount, say £50 a month. Again they will deliver on the promise, but usually in minor keywords, or they’ll get you showing on popular keywords for the first few days, and as soon as you stop looking they’ll discontinue your ads. When you contact them they tell you that your monthly spending cap had been reached and that you’ll start showing again next month!
Don’t be fooled by these guys, search engine marketing in popular keyphrases is very difficult. The top brands spend thousands trying to stay at the top.
Also don’t use search engine submission software as this could get you blackilisted by Google. Make sure you submit your sites to searche ngines, directories and reciprocal link directories yourself.
The best advice is to create a web site that works for your business and to promote it using local search with Adwords whilst you optimise on loaclised natural (free) search terms. Registering your site with the free index web sites is always a good idea as well and the list below is considered to be highly effective. Lastly attend networking meetings and hand out cards and flyers to promote the web site.
Just don’t whatever you do be fooled into thinking you can rank #1 on Google for a popular search term from a standing start.
Useful Directories to post your website to for free
www.lii.org
www.jayde.com
www.webworldindex.com
www.illumirate.com
www.turnpike.net
www.bizdirects.com
www.freeindex.com
Feel free to comment on this post…
Posted by rogerm on Apr 27, 2009 in
General Gripes Will we get help and support? Surely all businesses in the UK are asking the question, and what’s with the cent? Go to the country guys so at least we can have a change of government and have a realistic plan for recovery, staying put is futile, and based on your borrowing frenzy, downright dangerous.
The Darling Buds of May? No way!
Posted by admin on Feb 20, 2009 in
General Gripes Just got a letter from these people based in Milton Keynes offering me a listing in their registry of Executives and Professionals for free because I would be suitable as a biographical candidate.
Well a quick search on the internet throws up an interesting blog post from the US, see link below. And guess what? It’s a scam, barely legal and preying on our vanity to be seen as opinion leaders and experts in our field.
It’s just gone in the bin…
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2007/04/victoria-strauss-beware-whos-who.html
Posted by rogerm on Jan 28, 2009 in
General Gripes I’m loving the Wordle tool (www.wordle.net) and I’ve posted this on their gallery anonymously. Clicking on the image below will take you to a much higher resolution version where you can study the words in more detail.
But before you do, and I seriously recommend that you make that click folks, keep the following in mind. When you study the larger version look at how small the words England, Britain and UK appear, and then see if you can even find the words transparency, business, confidence and stability.
I run a small business in the UK, and I hear a lot about how PM Brown has our interests at heart, and that of all business in the UK.
Perhaps Wordle is food for thought for Gordon’s speech writers?
Click on and see for yourself
As ever, comments are welcome…
Posted by rogerm on Jan 6, 2009 in
General Gripes We moved premises recently, and apart from the usual strife of transferring phone lines and DSL lines, where the phone provider and BT Wholesale blamed each other continuously, delaying our move for nearly a month we were then assaulted with calls from so called business energy providers promising us the best fuel deal on our new premises.
The first one to call got blocked a few times before getting to me, but their creativity grew over a period of 48 hours and 6 calls…. I finally got passed the call as they were an ex-client! Can you believe that? They then proceeded to tell me that they were the UK’s largest supplier of energy and that they were previously known as the National Grid! I asked them for their company name, Network Electricity! Sounds grand doesn’t it? Alarm bells rang, and I asked them to call back in a few days.
Time marches on, and I have a busy marketing department to run, so when they called me back I was caught off guard, but whilst on the phone I ‘Googled’ the company name and discovered they had no web site, no PPC and at best just a couple of free directory listings.
Anyway, the salesperson was pushy and explained that she had a deal expiring the same day offering us a 4 year lock-in to take advantage of fuel prices, (non-negotiable with penalty clauses). All of which she said, despite the drop in energy prices that month, are still set to go up the next day. I said I needed more information on the tariffs and providers and she promised to send them via email that day.
Guess what, Our email spam detectors didn’t even let the emails through! Now with my suspicions aroused I waited for her to call. Which, give her credit for, she did 2 days later. I then asked her to send the emails to my personal Gmail account which she did, and I received the following email.
Good Afternoon,
Below are both OPUS & E-ON Rates which were discussed earlier on the phone.
OPUS fixed for 48 months
Standing Charge: 37.49
Unit Rate: 12.99
E-ON fixed for 36 months
Standing Charge: 30.81
Unit Rate: 13.28
If you have any problems please feel free to call me on 01204 898033
Kind Regards
Jenny
Network Electricity
Hardly detailed is it!
I quizzed her a bit more on the company she represented and she was still adamant they were previously known as the National Grid. I mentioned the lack of an Internet presence, and the fact that they didn’t look like a large company capable of selling utilities to business.
She hung up on me…
This was a real case of attempted sharp selling, What I will say is beware Network Electricity based in Wigan.
Since the first call, we’ve had over 20 different companies trying to sell us a fuel deal and I’m sure some of them are professional, but I for one won’t take another call from a fuel supply intermediary beacuse of the damage done to their collective reputation by the first cold caller.
Just beware these idiots on the phone, and warn your staff likewise. the major energy players need to take heed as well. If they weren’t offering MLM type payouts to these intermediaries instead of managing the sales channel themselves they wouldn’t be damaging their brand equity in the SME marketplace. After all, their consumer image is already pretty screwed isn’t it?
Come on guys, wake up and smell the gas, 2009 could get very tough for brands that don’t behave themselves…
