Yes people do seem slightly more cautious. But this is partly to do with the fact we were told we were heading for recession. I remember backing out of a property deal after the Nothern Rock crisis. Thank goodness Gail and I plucked up the courage and pursued the deal, it was Castell Cidwm, the UKFast training property which is now an integral part of our successful recruitment and training strategy.

The reason for my comments are not flippant, I know a great many people have been through difficult times, my point is this. Is this a recession, or is it merely a change in the way people do business? What do I mean by this? Well, it is safe to say that people have changed the way they buy things.

When you purchase something there are 2 decisions that you make.

1/ do I want/need this product or service?

2/ where shall I buy it from

In the old days! People went to shops and bought there and then.

Then came the internet. Now people looked online, researched and then once they’d narrowed down what they wanted, they headed to the shops and bought it there.

But, then came the new era. An era of confidence where people simply go online to do research and then simply buy it without hesitation.

Well this is a massive shift. It surely makes sense that if you as a business have not embraced this you are going to be in a huge amount of trouble.

I believe the cultural shift in how we buy is SO extreme it is literally wiping businesses out who do not have a credible online presence. Look at Woolworths, they felt that the internet would not work for their business. Yet Argos who embraced it is now one of the biggest online retailers in the world.

I was at a round table this week discussing the economy and budget. I heard numerous businesses explain that they had zero growth. The same businessmen stated clearly when I asked them do they use the Internet to attract new business, “people  in our industry do not use the internet to research our product!” The irony is I have helped a few businesses in the exact same sector generate millions of pounds worth of new business, all via the internet! But how do you educate people who simply do not believe it is possible. These sort of limiting beliefs are lethal and often are the main reasons why businesses simply stop evolving.

If only I got a pound for every time I heard business people say “my customers wouldn’t use the Internet!”

Over the years, I have won a few £1 bets to people I have met at Sale Sharks who said, exactly that.

Caunce O’hara, now giants in the Insurance industry were about to spend a fortune on a website. I asked them to consider a different option. For less money I helped design and build a new system that not only worked out an accurate price for the insurance premium, it took the money and attracted new business. I won my pound.

It’s not a business model I’d advise people to follow, I am lucky enough to be able to do this as a hobby as I have a huge R&D team, I also have done this enough times to know, I’d succeed.

I have done the same in a variety of industries. Debt management, clothing & retail, one business in particular (again who said it cant be done) is now invoicing more than £1,000,000 per month from online sales!

I can guarantee these people dont think we’ve just been in a recession.

The problem is, “you don’t know what you are missing until it is too late.” It’s people’s own shortsightedness that is simply holding their businesses back, or in some cases damaging their business.

I have 15 year old kids who are customers and a great many small businesses who are doing extraordinarily well. It’s never the brands who are riding the crest of the wave, they simply think they are. A lot of the high traffic sites are below most peoples radar. The people who win, are the ones who realise that customer experience is everything, and they build a super fast and effective site and host it on a dedicated server for that added umph. Before they know it, they are getting customers from Google, and the customers are coming back in their droves because the experience is perfect.

When we explain to people that their site is slow, they don’t understand. They look at their own site and say, “it seems fast to me!” This is the biggest misconception. They are ususally viewing a cached version of their website on their own local machine. What does this mean? Well basically, your machine stores images of sites that you visit regularly. So it stands to reason that when you look at your own site, you do so though rose coloured spectacles. You are in effect getting an artificial view of how your business is really NOT performing.

On the flip side through your customers eyes, it doesn’t hide the harsh truth, that for new visitors, your site is like jelly waiting to set.

This is particularly noticeable for people who end up hosting in the US to save money. People can simply drop out of the UK arm of Google once the search engine picks up the foreign IP address. Google simply assumes that your main focuss is probably aimed at the foreign market, as your site will perform better in the country where it is hosted. Some of the largest hosting providers in the UK, host their customers in the US and Germany. Rackspace host thousands of their clients sites in the US on their Cloud environment. One and One (1&1) a German company who also own Fasthosts, who market themselves a the hosting worlds market leader , host their servers in Germany!

Personally I believe keeping it simple is the best way. Host your site as near to your customers as you can. We are lucky, by being in Manchester we couldn’t really be more central to the whole of the UK.

I hear horror stories all the time on this subject. One thing worse than going abroad to host, is taking it in house! The ultimate in stupidity. Let’s stick our server on the end of our broadband connection or a leased line. So what if it is 100Mb. You may as well attach it via string! Yes it might work occasionally but not enough to get noticed on the search engines. Telcos for years simply resold 100Mb lines time and time again, and guess what? They attached them to a 100Mb line. The ultimate in bottlenecking.

If you imagine the internet works on the basis of regions. You can host your store on the main high street, the Oxford Street or you could host it on a back street. Which gets more traffic? Obviously the high Street. Yet so many businesses spend 10′s of thousands of pounds on their websites, yet they think they dont need to invest in their hosting. They think they can simply stick it on some shared space, or a cheap dedicated server (down a back street). Even worse, they dont realsie why it doesn’t work properly or why they dont get awesome results.

At the same time, we come across small businesses who take our advice or dip their toe in the water with UKFast. Experience the speed of the UKFast network and then get addicted. These companies listen to their customers and upgrade every time their site slows down by a fraction. These are the businesses who are the next generation. It is not the brands you know about, these are the new kids who a carving out a new horizon. They not only get my vote, they get my help and support in every way. They are the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

So be warned. If you have a business and you are NOT taking your online marketing seriously, or worse still you are spending the bulk of your budget on the design and leave nothing for the location of your window to the world, you will not get the results you are wanting, but you will get what you deserve.

This does sound harsh, but it is a really harsh world out there.

If you are a web developer or you run a business designing sites, if you are hosting your sites on a single server to save money or to create a revenue stream, although you may think you are doing your client a favour, you are actually suffocating their business. If you wish to try a server to see the difference, drop me an email at UKFast or post me a comment. Every business I have tried this with has increased sales. Its not  rocket science, but it will certainly pay for one!

We have been down at the Internet World trade show at Earl’s Court. The Internet is a very male dominated industry being a techy lead industry. Sadly there are not enough women in our industry. A statistic we at UKFast are doing our level best to change. Women in our work place are essential. They are great communicators and organisers, and life would be very dull without the dynamic that mixing men and women together brings.

That being said, why is it that people automatically assume a pretty girl dressed in heels on a stand is not as smart as those around her? It is funny though, there were a few people (mainly women I am sad to say) who got a bit of a shock after making comments like “get yourself a proper job!” That particular comment was addressed to my personal assistant who takes great pleasure in being part of the team at these events and she manages the girls and their taxing schedule. If only they knew. Rachael took the comment on the chin, smiling at the lady as she laid into the commercial director Gail Jones (dressed in shorts too!) “why do you let them do this to you?” Gail simply said, “I want to dress like this. Last year I wore a dress, but but it’s too hot. The shorts are great and I love the atmosphere we create.”

The girls on the stand all work for the UKFast team. Most of whom have just come back from Verbier. They have the toughest job in my opinion. 30 hours in heels is something I know I couldn’t do! I admire their spirit immensely. I make sure I spoil them as much as I can. They work long hours and never grumble. They all have roles with in the business, some in sales, account management, customer care, but they enjoy the responsibility of representing UKFast publicly at all our sponsored events and client facing hospitality.

For me it’s imperative to have people who work for UKFast all year round representing us and not to outsource. The difference between the UKFast Girls on our stand and the others was so evident and the majority of people who came on to our stand commented, showing their surprise and pleasure that the girls all were able to understand their requirements and business needs, talking comfortably on subjects like clustering and load balanced environments.

But I think this is evident when you look at UKFast. We are so different when you take the trouble to look a little closer. This is why in the week Gordon Brown called someone a bigot for all the wrong reasons, sadly there are bigots out there, maybe someone needs to explain the meaning of the word to him, and for those real bigots, you should take the trouble to look a little closer, stop stereotyping and be a little nicer. There is a place for everyone in this world, and I am only glad the ladies said these hurtful comments to the UKFast Girls and not others who may not be as tough or as confident.

As Rachael my PA put it, “If only they knew, I have been in 4 countries in 10 days, they should have a go at trying to manage your diary.”

That being said, even superheros have to sleep, and boy, do they deserve it. To all the Girls on the UKFast stand, especially Laura, thank you for the energy you put into the event, you are amazing! Lads, you weren’t bad either.

They are human after all

It is a good question. I often wonder how and why I ended up in a career so similarly named to one I had been involved with in a previous life.

As an event organiser, I essentially hosted parties for businesses. It involved the ultimate in commitment and service, a degree of attention to detail you seldom see and passion to keep you striving when the going gets tough. First up, last to bed….. it is a thankless task behind the scenes of a busy event.

The business I had that specialised in this field I sold to Granada at the end of the 90′s. they did me a massive favour. I stayed and learnt so much about bigger business, “how to and how not to run my next venture.” It was great time of my life, but one I treated as a learning experience and I was glad to move on.

And somehow I ended up continuing to host again. This time, people’s lives and peoples entire businesses. I thought managing and hosting peoples parties required the ultimate attention to detail, however this new world really does take my responsibilities to another level.

So, what is hosting? And, why is it called dedicated hosting? It should be called dedicated hosting because my team and I are dedicated to ensuring you have the perfect platform to run and host your business. Actually, it is called “dedicated hosting” because the infrastructure that manages your website or application is dedicated soley to you and your business. This means no neighbouring business can impact on your service if they damage their machine or if they hit a busy period.

I do think my previos life has helped UKFast massively. I was talking to a senior official at Microsoft (who incidentally we host too) and he said the level of service we provide is so much over and above even our nearest competitor. He explained he felt this was to do with our attention to detail and sheer passion for customer service. “In a technical environment UKFast are just on another level. Where businesses in your sector are usually driven by process and techies, we find ourselves focussing on people and their needs.”

Thanks for that observation Bill. Most kind. Ironically, having the passionate people around has made us focus more on the technology side of things and 10 years later we find UKFast not only the market leader in the dedicated server area, we also deliver our product faster than any other provider on the planet. Our network is focussed too on speed. And there is no coincidence that we released information about the link between FAST websites which become more successful and gaining better rankings with Google.

I am confident, we are something to do with Google letting the cat out of the bag towards the speed link after we got a letter from Google asking us to remove the information with Speed and Googles rating of faster sites. After a few letters backwards and forwards I finally wrote to the lawyers at Google asking one simple question. “So what you are saying is that there is NO link between faster servers and higher search engine results.”

We were immediately engaged with the big G, who were intrigued with our confidence. What no one knew is we have been testing all the major networks around the world for a decade and we even have servers on our main competitors. Each one is used to test various sites and the results they produce. By 2006, UKFast had already deduced there was a significant link between speed and happy customers.

Aptly named UKFast! Interestingly it comes from the importance I put on customer service and the fact that I believed that the internet will be no different to every other walk of life. We want everything NOW!!!

It is very funny though. I have some awesome quotes from angry competitors about some of our claims. They really thought that the thing was a marketing ruse. Little did they know we have had servers with them for years and we still do. Knowing ones enemy is an important part of the game in my opinion. how else do we develop if we cant identify strengths and weaknesses efficiently and accurately.

When a business describes themselves as “fanatical” for example, I want to know to what extent? I am always intrigued to hear other business owners claims, just as they are to hear ours. I don’t blame them for misunderstanding them. You’d have to be a little over obsessive to go to the lengths we go to to drive our business harder and further than everyone else. Nevertheless that is what we do.

One day I’ll publish some of the ridiculous comments that the leader of some of the largest hosting providers have said. “there is no reason for speed to improve peoples results,” “It is irrelevant” , “what about all the money you are missing out on by contending your network…. they will never know….. we make millions from the excess bandwidth charges.”

For me, whatever you are hosting… customer service is key. Keeping your client happy is the ultimate game. Being honest with your clients is the only way. Yes it might take longer to build an empire, but it is then built on stronger foundations.

I asked a couple of members of the BA staff, does BA stand for Bloody Awful, after the worst experience I have ever encountered of substandard behaviour by representatives of BA.

I was checking in proudly to my first class seats at the BA counter in Manchester, when I met the second rudest woman I have ever had the misfortune to meet. We had telephoned the night before just to ask advice on the recently introduced ESTA. (An official government document required if you are flying to or through America.) The advice we were given by BA was “don’t worry about it, arrive at check-in in the morning and we will deal with it then as technically you don’t need one as you are not staying in the US.”

We trusted the advice and when checking in, told the lady at the First Class counter why we had not filled out the ESTA as per our instructions from the BA staff the previous night. At this point she categorically refused to check us onto the flight and promptly blanked us. I asked for help, and pleaded with her for someone more senior who could assist.

Enter (stage right) the rudest woman I have ever met. She arrived with a plastic smile that she maintained for the best part of 45 seconds before laying into my wife who was beautiful in her calmness. The BA official told us we should have filled out the ESTA online and that we should have and I quote, “put that you are staying in Miami in the destination box.” I explained that our final destination was the British Virgin Islands, I didn’t dare tell her it was Necker. “we advise people who are traveling through the US to the Caribbean to put down they are staying in the Continental in Miami.”

I explained that this would be incorrect and that this was a US official immigration department document!

Without another word the 2 rude BA staff disappeared.

We were kept waiting 40 minutes. Powerless and no other members of BA staff were prepared to help. When we asked for help, they said, “we are not getting involved.”

It really was like a farce. And if she hadn’t made my 6 year old burst into tears I’d have have been laughing in disbelief. We had turned up to enjoy the first class experience.

Enter Simon, a scruffily dressed man in jeans and a creased polo shirt.  ”Because of the delay at check in and that my staff members had not known how to deal with the ESTA, we are able to board this flight to Heathrow, but unfortunately it was now too late to attach the luggage to the connecting flight.”

He advised us that he had personally seen to it that the plane to Miami would wait for us. He apologised for the behavior of the 2 staff and he assured me we would be met by ground staff and hurried through at the other end.

It was clear this man just wanted rid of the situation. He was working on the principal, Out of Sight Out of mind. (perhaps a new management course BA are running)

My 6 year old asked me , “Daddy, why was that lady so rude?” and I was unable to defend her.

This farce had actually delayed the plane leaving Manchester and stressed 100 or so other people also connecting to Miami and other destinations.

On arrival at Heathrow, there were no ground staff waiting to assist us between the planes. Luckily everyone else just managed to get their flight to Miami, but no surprise, we missed ours waiting for our luggage.

I saw the striking BA logo with the words CUSTOMER SERVICE in massive letters. Fantastic I thought. I’ll pop over and get some help.  The 2 ladies (who reminded me of Les Dawson’s characters) with folded arms grunted back at me when I politely said, “I don’t suppose you can help and tell me where to go, we have missed our flight.”

“We’re baggage.” I continued and the other one piped up, “have you a problem with your baggage?” “No” I replied, “well we can’t help you then. Like my friend told you we are baggage” They carried on talking and I couldn’t help pointing out the irony in how they described themselves.

Walking away I pondered, does BA stand for Bloody Awful. It should do!

Eventually after a series of equally idiotic encounters with various Bloody Awful staff I found someone who was lovely. She was kind and called Jeanette. However the damage was done. The brand was dead in my eyes.

She did start quite hard like the first Bloody Awful staff in Manchester, telling us that as we had missed the flight and it was more than likely non refundable. First class tickets can be as much as £9000 each I didn’t dare ask Gail how much she had paid. I must have turned white with the sick feeling. 4 tickets wasted. 3 demoralised girls, 2 hours extra waiting and 1 missed flight! Jeanette quickly realised what had happened.

She explained the check in staff in Manchester were all agency staff. She fixed the ESTA issue in a few minutes putting “IN TRANSIT” in the destination box.

She went on to explain they had not had a pay rise in 2 years and that they had no idea if their jobs would even be here tomorrow. “The spirit is dead, and I am so sorry you have had all this trouble.”

Every cloud has a silver lining. And thank God, Jeanette booked us on to a Virgin Atlantic seat. One of our daughters, the 3 year old had some sort of anaphylactic reaction on the plane and needed emergency care. 2 doctors on board helped out giving her adrenalin injections, oxygen and salbutamol. Nikki, the Upper Class Senior Cabin Crew team leader was amazing, along with her team particularly Ross and Sacha.

We sat on the floor of the cabin outside the cockpit. The captain regularly came out to check on our 3 year olds well-being and after nearly the entire flight she recovered miraculously as kids do!

So how does something so great, become so Bloody Awful? Fancy not rewarding your staff and undermining them so they don’t know if their jobs are safe. I can’t imagine the people at the top have had similar pay problems?

British Airways is overweight in some areas and anorexic in others.

In our business if you have a potential weakness in an area you invest in it, and you allocate the best, strongest most aligned individuals. You certainly don’t cut back.  The problem with BA is they have multiple areas of weakness, so as fast as you build relations with the likes of Jeanette you have sledge hammer Customer Services or disconnected agency staff with their own challenges. Invariably you destroy the brand value.

I think one of the issues BA also has is whilst they are busy infighting, arguing over pay and bureaucracy, the Virgin Atlantic team is taking conflict very seriously indeed. Going about their business with the Sun Tzu approach.

“He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.”

Well, in my mind BA does stand for Bloody Awful and although I have enough free airmiles to fly around the world 7 times, I’d sooner pay to fly a proper airline. Britain’s best airline Virgin.  And I wouldn’t swap our seat on the floor next to the loo for a BA Experience.

Lawrence Jones
UKFast

In fact if it wasn’t for a pretty horrendous experience when trying to register and host a domain called theGallery.com, we’d never have changed direction and set up a business in the hosting arena. And I suppose it was the “bad experience” which forged the direction we took to provide the very best in service right from the outset. It was this start which also gave us an understanding of exactly how a client feels when the hosting provider goes wrong or doesn’t listen.
If you are a client of UKFast and you ever have a problem, write to me or pick up the phone. I hate having matters left unresolved and I cannot settle when I know a clients server is down.

Although it is a decade ago, I remember choosing the name UKFast very carefully. The name needed to reflect exactly what we were about. UK, obviously for it’s location, Fast, because we hated slow service and slow connectivity, .net because we were a network and hosting related. Partly too because the .co.uk version had already been registered. It took us 3 years before we were able to acquire the UK TLD version of UKFast.

We must have trawled the who-is directory for 3 days trying every name possible. It was during the boom so the world and his dog were registering every derivative of every word. Design agencies were popping up everywhere linking colours to animal names. Blue Pig, Black Sheep etc. You can almost pin point a company and its date of origin from the style of the name.

So 10 years on what has changed? Well just about everything, in fact it is easier to highlight what has NOT changed. Neil Lathwood, then a teenager working in a computer shop, found by my wife on a search for someone who could network some machines I’d sold. He came in a for a days work experience and never left. He is now the IT director and one of the most well respected boffins in our industry. It is safe for me to say, I do not know a harder working man on the planet. His desire to continually learn and stretch boundaries is only matched by an identical skill inherent in my wife. Together we formed a solid senior management team and 10 years on we continue to disagree and challenge each other. We are considerably more beefed up now with Jonathan Bowers, communications director and Paul Harris, marketing director, yet we all still have to learn new skills every year to ensure we are capable of managing a continually changing business and horizon.

So what lies ahead in 2010. I am so excited by the challenge ahead this year. Even more so than usual. Last year saw UKFast able to compete with a bigger marketing budget. It is one of the challenges of funding a business privately and not borrowing form banks. We have seen many businesses fly past us on our journey, a lot now we have caught up, some we have overtaken, the others give me the challenge and the determination to continue to grow UKFast to be the best of the largest business to business hosting providers in the UK.

Last year we saw the benefit of the Castell Cidwm acquisition, a hotel at the foot of Snowdon in the National Park in Wales. It is an invaluable asset used for training and team building. It is a place where status is removed and replaced with rack-sack and compass, a place where team members can see their managers in as much pain as they experience themselves. We have run more than 40 trips touching more than 100 staff. Put simply it cements all the people who invest time and energy down there and lifts camaraderie when we are back in the office.

This coming year we are focussing on growing the business further and we have some exciting announcements expected in 2010. We are also exploring the opportunities of some potential acquisitions and some new services which will compliment our existing offering.

In the mean time, to everyone who has helped UKFast grow, people past and present, thank you for your ideas and contribution. To our amazing client base, thank you too. By having such a strong client base we are able to invest in infrastructure that ordinarily none of us would be able to afford singly. Thank you for having the foresight to choose UKFast and if you are not already a client I look forward to meeting you one day on our quest to speed up the Internet and improve the way we all do business online.

Happy Christmas.

Lawrence Jones

It is a difficult answer and to define one event as anyone in business will know it is a fast paced journey of peaks and troughs and no 2 days are alike. The most difficult challenge I face and continue to face is the pace I am required to develop.

10 years ago the skill set I had to set up a small business was very different to the one I now have running a multimillion pound organisation. That in itself presents challenges year after year.

I know if I’d walked into a business the size of UKFast 10 years ago, I could not have managed it. Yet I dont feel I have changed that much. However it is very easy to under estimate the experience you gain from being on hand day to day.

If I take a snap shot of me a decade ago and me now, along with the aging process on the outside, the inside is very different too. Eight years ago I was interviewed on Granada News by Lucy Meacock. Last night at the National Business Awards in the Hilton Hotel in Manchester Lucy Meacock was the presenter. We had a chat afterwards and she remembered Gail and I, however she could not believe how much we had changed over the years. It made me think, she is right, I just assume I am the same person. I often describe myself as a man with “no qualifications” and this may be true, however I now have experience, and that is priceless.

Jim Collins describes “great businesses” in Good To Great as having leaders who grow from  within. It makes perfect sense now. Experience out ranks qualifications.

So why then do some businesses grow faster than others? Is it safe to say people are gaining experience at different speeds. I think the answer is obvious. This then explains why businesses evolve at  different speeds. It is relative to the amount of learning and experience the entrepreneurs with in the business encounter.

One of the responsibilities Gail and I have at UKFast is to continue to learn and every year we regroup. We go off to the Maldives for a 3 week holiday. 2 weeks of family fun and 1 week of intense preparation for the year ahead. We write huge lists which fill books and we review the lists from previous years. And we tick off our accomplishments and those we miss we carry forward. Imagine a graph that is steadily rising. This upward curve represents everything we do in our lives. It is easy to peak and trough in life, so we then draw a horizontal line at the highest point we are at at present. This line now becomes the platform for continued growth. Anything below this line is considered an area of dissatisfaction, there is only one way to grow.

So if that means, if I had done 6 hours a week of exercise in 2008 and if we consider being in good shape important to maintaining our growth, I would set a goal to increase that to 7 or 8 hours.

We apply this principal to everything we do.

To be truly successful you have to be disciplined. On that journey to achieve whatever you set out in the early days, you will be tempted to ease off, take your eye off the ball, but I have never met a successful person who was not incredibly disciplined.

Take Lucy Meacock for example. She was employed to present the awards at the ceremony last night. Her schedule of responsibilities from her employers that night would involve arriving early for a rehearsal, and being ready to perform between the hours of 8 and 10 o’clock. During those hours she is on show. She will be required to perform her duties at the highest level. For that she will have received her fee and her rider.

Yet she is the consummate professional. Once the show had finished she took the trouble for the next 2 hours to walk around the entire room greeting and thanking everyone for coming. This is a discipline which not only made her successful but keeps her at this elevated level.

I will give you an example of a fallen star. Do you remember Victoria Wood? The comedian. In a previous life before hosting dedicated servers I had a small business that Granada aquired from me called MDC (The Music Design Company). I organised events. I was lucky enough to win the contract for a charity fund raiser, Christies for Cancer. I chose the venue, The Palace Hotel, Manchester (a place I later got married in).

I wanted Steve Coogan ( a then rising star) however Angela Rodden the MD insisted we went for Victoria Wood. Between her and my PA I was out voted. What a big mistake. Steve Coogan was a mega star by the time the event happened. They both commanded the same fee. £17,000 for the hour.

I should have known when I saw Victoria Woods rider. Her list of particulars was ridiculous. I had put on events for mega pop stars with smaller requirements.

We provided everything to the letter. The flowers (a particular length) were ready in her dressing room, the particular alcohol, the flesh coloured microphone that she taped to her forehead, the Steinway grand piano and the spot light that resembled a bomber tracking light from World War II, we did everything. 

I went to her dressing room and introduced myself. My God, what a rude woman! I politely explained that Angela (who had chosen her) was a massive fan, and would it be possible for her to have a photograph with her at some point before the end of the evening. It was a flat “no” “you have employed me to do a stage show, and that is what I am here to do!” or words to that effect.

We got the last laugh though, when she was doing her stand up, the sound engineers tripped over a wire and switched off the spot light mid act, which was being operated by Jonathan Bowers who is now UKFast’s communication director.

But this sort of attitude explains why Victoria Wood is no-longer on our screens. It is a great lesson, whatever your profession, always be professional. I have a rule that I only do business with people I admire or have the greatest respect for. If somebody’s standards slip in any way, ethically or performance wise , I will not want to do business with them. I have been known to turf suppliers out if they have not stuck to an agreement, either verbal or written. If you agree something, stick to it. Honour it at all costs.

I had a supplier who  cost me a great deal of embarrassment and stress not so long ago. When I confronted their acting MD on the matter, I was told to read the terms and conditions. He said “I think you will find we are doing everything we are contracted to do.”

Two weeks ago, I wrote a cheque for almost £3,000,000. That supplier who has had a monopoly in Manchester on the service he supplied is about to find he has a very passionate competitor in his midst. At a time when they are planning expansion, they are about to loose their biggest customer and find out they have an exodus of existing clients who we already have undertakings with that they are coming on board with our new venture.

Lack of professionalism isn’t a one off. People who are unprofessional are consistently unprofessional, day in day out. And, if you want to be successful, in whatever profession, stay alert and learn from everything that goes on around you. Be disciplined and be a great person. Follow these simple practices and you cant go far wrong. 

I’ll see you at the top! Or on that great journey.

Lawrence Jones @ UKFast

If you have managed to attract someone to your web site to learn more about your product, it is essential that you do not give them any reasons to doubt your capability or question why they should use your business over a competitors.

In my opinion you shouldn’t just give your contact details, you should make it even easier and provide a free phone number to encourage communication. More often than not, if the web site is well written you will not receive a call as they will have all the information at hand. However if you are providing all the information and your product is perfect, you will lose the lions share of business as people may doubt your ability to deliver the service or your credibility as a business.

After all, if you go into a shop, you are able to ask a question, you are also confident that you are able to return to the shop if there is a problem. Would you be so confident buying a product from a street seller? Probably not, as you have no guarantee that you will be able to locate this person in the event of a problem.

The same questions are applied over and over again, wherever you shop. This is why certain businesses do very well and others fail. This one detail if omitted from a site would stop me from buying, and it has done many times.

In my opinion it is absolutely 100% necessary to show potential clients you are available and accountable should someone require assistance. Always put customer service first.

Ironically the longest queues were experienced with those trying to log in online.

The biggest area where we see consumers being unforgiving in this instance is when they cannot access the Internet site to view or transfer their money. We are all programmed to expect to access our regular and favourite websites 24 hours a day.

So often I come across clients who spend a fortune on their web site and then underestimate the environment where the site then resides. Ironically, the hosting of the site is probably the most important factor in both winning new business and retaining clients, as it directly affects the customer service your users will experience.

Google keep their cards close to their chest with the rules that may give one company a competitive advantage over another; however one thing that is clear and has been apparent for a few years now is that clients investing in servers that provide a better experience to their customer receive a better ranking from the search engines.

If you are unsure on the importance of a fast site over a well designed but slower site, it is easy to demonstrate. How many times have you come across an ugly text based site that ranks highly on the search engines yet the clever flashy ones selling a similar product appear much lower? It happens all the time. The answer is Google rates sites on the speed they deliver their information.

The Northern Rock’s online calamity is indeed unfortunate. It is always difficult to predict the extremes; however it is possible. In fact it is easier to do now than ever before.

The simple way to do this is create an environment that is scalable. At the same time you need to minimise the risk of downtime and probably the best way to do this is, is with database replication. It may sound complicated, however there are companies who specialise in this type of hosting.

Tick these 2 boxes and you are some way to creating the perfect online environment. Capacity and resilience are key to guaranteeing your customers get the best experience.

So why are Northern Rock customers unhappy, and are they right to be unhappy?

The answer to this is down to the fact that their confidence is dented. It is one thing having to get information second hand via the news or word of mouth. It is another if your site that you rely on disappears. Sadly I think Northern Rock should really have been ready for this sort of potential disaster. I’d imagine they may have felt that having the absolutely massive infrastructure to deal with this unusual problem was unnecessary as the chance of this happening was unlikely.

Worryingly they collapsed with real customers however the biggest threats on the Internet come from Service Denial attacks. These could happen to literally anyone hosting a site and they are very common these days. A service Denial attack is when a computer or multiple computers around the Internet all try and log on to a site at the same time, literally flooding the network, switches and servers. The result is down time.

Most businesses who take hosting very seriously will have this at the top of their agenda when designing their network. If Northern Rock had a scaleable infrastructure they would have dealt with this matter far more effectively.

Some of the larger businesses in the UK often suffer from wanting to host their main database in their office. This creates a bottle neck in the time of adversity and high bandwidth. The modern approach is to host your company data on the Internet in a purpose built datacentre, protect it as you would if it were in your own office and host it to as near the hub of the Internet as possible.

Do this and you are guaranteed success.

Do you ever see Google fall over? Google is a company who takes its hosting very seriously indeed, and they have got quite an impressive online track record!

If you ever want help on this matter, or if you have questions, drop me a line at UKFast. I love this subject. Clients who take my advice make millions literally. It is the future and it needs to be taken so seriously if you want to be successful as a business person.

For all the Northern Rock customers who have had a bad time, as the press dies down so will the traffic and eventually they will be able to deal with all your traffic again. If you move to another bank sadly you have no guarantee that they’d have been able to deal with a similar problem.

How they answer this question will mean the difference between success and failure.

The answer is “there is NO difference.”

The main reason that there is a high proportion of online disasters, is that business men and women fail to recognise the importance of good old fashioned customer care and communication.

How many times do you see a web site without a telephone number plainly visible? Yet the owner of the site may be perplexed why the orders trickle in. Simple failures can make a massive difference and it is all about percentages. If you generate 100 visitors to your site from your marketing efforts, the difference a telephone number and a helpful contact page with a downloadable map may be the difference between 2 leads and 20. Yet so many businesses feel that they do not need one.

I hear answers like “Google doesn’t have one.” Google is a phenomenon and trust me for the big clients that Google works hard to win and keep happy; they have account managers with access to people on mobile phones day and night.

Clear contact details is an obvious one, yet one people ignore, but there are many more. There are literally thousands of subtleties that used correctly may enhance your online presence and consequent will help convert customers to cash.

I bought 45% of a business recently called Property Find International. I met the Chief Exec Andy Biggar at a networking event run by Suzie Mitchell my business development manager at UKFast. Immediately I saw it’s potential.

I knew by changing a few simple elements of the site we could not only increase the traffic to its web site, but also generate more interest which in turn may be converted to new clients.

In the first 4 weeks of release of the first site for apartments in Bulgaria we sold 27 apartments! Our new clients had never been to Bulgaria, and had no desire to view the properties or the land. In fact the properties are not even built yet.

What we did was translate our belief and the highest level of customer care on to a web site, so clients knew that Property Find International is a brand they can trust. We then broadcast that on to the Internet attracting visitors from search engines and PR, which were promptly converted into very happy clients.

Done correctly it is so easy. If you get it wrong it is extremely costly and unfortunately it is easy to go very wrong. It is no different to placing traditional adverts in publications that your potential clients may never read, a costly mistake and difficult to measure until it’s to late. Take advice from professionals who have a successful track record, and don’t be embarrassed to ask for references. If you want to have a look at the site, it is www.bulgariapropertyfind.co.uk, better still, why not buy an apartment. They are a great investment.

Take a good look at your site, are you helping visitors to make that next step. Are you telling them what they have to do and making it as easy as possible?

You may be surprised to know that many sites out there have no “calls to action” – if you don’t tell the visitor what they have to do and make the process as easy as possible, you can’t expect them to do it.

If you use your site as a tool to prompt potential customers to call you, then tell them to call, and keep telling them. Make your contact details available throughout the site and easy to find. If your phone number is just on the contact page, it’s not enough. Don’t force visitors to search for the information they need. As they get lost in the site you may lose them.

If you want them to complete a contact form then put links to that form all over your site and make the form short and easy to use. Don’t put them off by asking for too much information but make sure you get the essentials, their name and contact details. Once they have completed the form, follow it up with a personal email, inform them you have received their enquiry and tell them exactly what they should do next. Believe it or not, they’ll do it.

If your site is an e-commerce site then make it clear that they can buy online and above all make sure it’s secure and visitors know it. Avoid using payment systems that have too many steps because customers will drop off in the process. Make any forms as concise and clear as possible so they know what information is needed and they can see that there is a clear destination.

People will make a decision on their next move within 3 seconds of reaching your site. So unless you employ these techniques you stand a good chance of losing leads you’ve worked for. Get their details and start engaging with them and the sale has potentially begun. We’ll talk more about converting leads into customers in Step 3.

I noticed that Graeme Hastings from Harper James suggested I elaborate more on the hosting issues and the connections between fast well written sites and successful ones.

There is no doubt that speed is now a major issue on the internet, you only have to look at how our obsession with bigger and faster broadband connections is evolving to see how high up the list speed is on our agenda . Customers are becoming more demanding when using the internet. We have all done it, gone on to a search engine like Google and clicked on a link and straight away clicked back because it took too long. It is very rare to have a product that is so unique that prospective customers will actually wait whilst a site slowly chugs along. There is so much competition on the internet that you are only another click away from finding a faster more effective site.

I do it myself. I’d rather use a company that had a mediocre looking site that is fast, providing it has all the information I need, rather than a very flashy one that takes forever to download.

So what makes a site slow down? Firstly if you are checking your own site you have to remember that your site will always run faster when you look at it rather than if a fresh customer viewed it for the first time. Why? Because your computer is caching or storing a great deal of the site on your local hard drive. Secondly the speed of the site will vary throughout the day. Through the night or early in the morning you may find it is acceptable however at peak times when the server gets busy you will experience a bottleneck. This happens because historically clients host web sites on “shared servers”. This means that you may have between 500 and 1000 other websites all on the server at the same time. This is fine if the server can handle this, however as sites get busier and often one or two sites take up all the resources of the machine at peak time, resulting in a slow down and sometimes even a complete standstill. The same happens if there is insufficient bandwidth to support all the clients wanting to service their customer’s requirements at the same time too.

The antidote to this problem is what is known as a “dedicated server”. This is one server just for one website. This gives your visitors the ultimate experience. All the RAM and CPU just for you without anyone else hogging it. The result is no slow downs and seriously improved customer experience, which is quickly rewarded by happy clients who recommend and trust in your brand.

As your site gets even more successful it may be necessary to loadbalance your site. This is when your one site may have more visitors than the server can handle. Businesses who realise the importance of their sites uptime may even put a loadbalancer in place not just to improve the speed but it also to ensure that if one server fails, the other server automatically takes over meaning you have no loss of connection. It is this sort of commitment that wins business. It is also proven that Google and some of the other search engines will reward you for your efforts. Google is now taking into consideration the speed of the site when determining where on its directory you should be placed, so there has never been a more important time to take hosting seriously.

So in short, customers don’t like waiting. We use the internet to save time and therefore demand information at the touch of a button. It therefore makes perfect sense to give clients instant gratification and provide them with what they want; when they want it.

I have very definite views on this subject which are reinforced by my own buying traits. To me the very first stage when creating an online strategy is working out “how do I want to be perceived by my customers and am I prepared to deliver on my values?”

The answer to these 2 questions will probably determine the success or failure of your venture. To attract new business it is imperative that you demonstrate that you are a helpful organisation, so a well written site that has a clear navigation structure and helpful information is an essential ingredient. It is also a great investment and one that can save time and money in the long run. Make sure you show your address and include directions to show to prospective clients that you are proactive communicators. Are you yourself more likely to buy from a site that has all the information readily at hand?

Promising excellent customer service is one thing, now you have to deliver. Winning new business is important but keeping existing clients is even more so. It is important to treat your clients how you want to be treated yourself. So many businesses are great at winning contracts but then do not value the clients once they have them. Research shows that it is much more expensive winning new business as opposed to keeping existing clients happy. To ensure you deliver on the customer care aspect, I recommend you pay particular attention to staff training and motivation. A happy team will generate far more energy and positive communication which results in happy clients, than a mediocre or demoralised one. Unfortunately most business men and woman normally learn this lesson at the cost of their business. If you are able to learn this lesson early on in your business life, it will accelerate your growth.

Employing the right candidates in your recruitment process is also very important as it will be your team ultimately carrying out your customer service strategy. We have a very strict recruitment policy at UKFast, which includes a psychometric test which hones in on a candidates strengths or weaknesses. I am often asked, “is this a fair way to access staff?” I believe so, it is one of a number of points in quite a long process, however I believe it is important to help a prospective candidate find out about themselves too. There is no point putting someone into a position even though they have applied for it, when they are unable to perform the task. It will only create unnecessary conflict and stress in the long run. I have been in the fortunate position to be able to guide people into a career path which is more suited to their personality, giving them evidence explaining my findings. I have never been met with anything other than a positive response for my contribution and the overwhelming majority thanks me for pointing out something they already knew deep down.

So in short. Get the right staff from the outset. Train them to be passionate and diligent and make sure your marketing material online reflects this core value. It is rare in today’s business community and customers will thank you for it.