UKFast Newsletter April 2005

Virtual hardhats are compulsory at the moment in the Reseller Area as our Research and Development team leave no stone unturned to enhance the services. The most recent being a new system to allow you to order ADSL on a quarterly and annual basis. 

As ever, if you have anything you’d like to share, please feel free to get in touch with me at jonathan.bowers@ukfast.net

Inside this Issue

UKFast news – Join us for the Ashes.
Widnes Under 9's take on Premiership Rugby.
UKFast sponsored Charlie makes the Lions.
Spotlight on The Client - E-learning with Atlantic-Link.
NEW UKFast offer of the month.
Hot Topics - The Paper Clips that link you to new clients.
Top ten - Online April Fool pranks.

With the weather brightening up, we’re looking towards the

summer and the hotly anticipated Ashes tour.

Pundits are touting this year’s clash with the Aussies to be the most closely fought of the century so far and UKFast want you to be a part of it. 

The Third Test of the series comes from Old Trafford in Manchester and we’re opening the UKFast corporate box on the final day to existing clients.

Sunday August 14th could well be a crucial turning point in England’s fortunes as they go for 10th time lucky. It was back in 1987, the heady days of Botham and Gatting that England last got up close and personal with the Ashes.

If you’d like the chance to join Lawrence, the UKFast team and more importantly Michael Vaughn and the England hopefuls then please send me an Email. 

As always there is a catch! We can’t fit you all in, so we’ll have to put your names in a hat and announce the lucky winners nearer the time.

Good luck one and all!

Back to top

In the February Newsletter, we featured our Junior Rugby competition, which turned out to be a great success. Winner, Jack Andrews gave his whole team the chance to share Edgeley Park with International Rugby stars.

On Good Friday the Widnes Under 9’s were guests of honour as Sale Sharks took on the London Wasps at home. Jack and his team mates took to the pitch before the game to receive their prizes.

At half time team kicker Harry Gagen, Jack and his Dad Alan Andrews got hold of the ball and showed the professionals that grass roots rugby is alive and well in the UK. Jack was also presented with an individual prize of a Sharks jersey custom signed by Sale and England Captain Jason Robinson. 

Many thanks must go to Our Kids Sports for co-organising with us, and Nathan Bombrys at Sale Sharks for getting the kids on the pitch on the day. 

Our competition campaign began with Sale Sharks as Lawrence Jones is very keen to promote youth sports and the nurture of our youngsters. “Junior sport in this country needs a massive boost. You only have to look at youth sport in Australia to understand why they tend to be quickest off the mark so often.”

Jones continues, “Encouragement is just the first step. After winning the Rugby World Cup in 2003, the sport is experiencing a rebirth in this country and more and more kids take an interest. Through our competitions, we’re able to reward young enthusiasts with a day they’ll never forget.”

At UKFast we are keen to run more competitions with our clients and we’d love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on this topic.


In other Rugby news, Manchester’s Albert Square celebrated in style on Monday as Charlie Hodgson received news of his call up to the British Lions tour of New Zealand this summer.

Charlie and fellow Sharks Jason Robinson and Andy Titterrell lent support to the Sweet Chariot RFU Roadshow. The three Sharks along with Andrew Sheridan were picked for the side.

Charlie expressed some relief at the news. “I’ve always kept hope for this tournament and over the last 6 weeks with the six nations there have been a lot of highs and lows for me. A fair bit of criticism has come my way and I’ve taken it in and looked toward the positives. All in all, I’m delighted to have been chosen for the lions squad.”

As Charlie’s official sponsor Lawrence Jones was thrilled for the fly half. “It’s so lovely to be involved with a talent like Charlie when he is potentially at the peak of his career. All season he has been world class, especially in open play and this call up cements his position within the UK’s rugby elite. There is one disappointment in the announcement however”

Jones, who used to play Rugby at Altrincham Kersel with Mark Cueto thinks he has been very unfortunate to miss out on selection. “Cueto has acquitted himself admirably for England and is a massively gifted player. The Lions will lack a little magic on the left wing without him.”


Back to top

on the client - E-Learning with Atlantic Link  

If you could create software that facilitated learning in a matter of hours instead of weeks – I reckon you’d be pretty popular. Well, as far as industry leaders HSBC, Sainsburys, and DaimlerChrysler are concerned Atlantic Link is flavour of the month. And they might well be every month. 

Atlantic doesn’t hide its secrets. The company openly reveals the reason for success and that’s partnership. And it’s not just their clients that are impressed. Atlantic-Link recently received the ‘Connect award for services to e-learning’. MD Tony Reddington collected the gong with praise for his team. “This award is only given once every five years and we are very proud to have received it, thanks to all the people that made this happen.”

This ethos of collaboration is perhaps crucial for a company selling learning systems that could in their very nature seem quite impersonal. In my limited experience of e-learning, which extends to Spanish for the generally impaired, I have found it tremendously difficult to interact with the screen and get the kind of experience that I might in a classroom.

Having had the chance to test drive a number of Atlantic’s courses I have however picked up a sense of why the systems work so well. You only have to get to grips with the DaimlerChrysler Dealer Connect course to notice that the design feels and looks like the stylish cars users are training to sell. Quite simply, the eye on the end product helps the customer to feel the part. 

This coupled with the convenience and ease with which the system guides you through a demonstration make it obvious that Atlantic have placed themselves at the centre of a sector offering a training product that any company would have trouble turning down.

They have got themselves there and seem to have the insight to remain. The team at Atlantic are awash with new inventions. They seem to spot a hole in the market from a thousand paces.

The Atlantic guys love abbreviations. Their ICMS – is an Intelligent Content Management System allowing rapid production and maintenance of e-learning, without programming expertise. The LMS – Learning Management System provides monitoring of learners as they progress through the content of their e-Learning programmes. 

And then there’s ‘Content Point’, which is the first authoring system to use Web services and the .NET framework to allow collaborative authoring remotely from anywhere in the world.

From ‘Content Point’ to ‘Contact Point,’ they have studied your business to a tee to offer solutions that keep rapid pace with the advancement of online learning. Take a tour of www.Atlantic-Link.co.uk and you’ll be satisfied that they have got the whole market neatly covered. 

Once again – it’s fresh evidence that the developer is holding the reins in the Internet race.

Back to top

NEW UKFast offer of the month

Fly away! Right now you can migrate to us for free!

If you’re not already taking advantage of our resolute high-speed Broadband network, then this month we’ll let you fly our way at no extra cost. There’ll be no set up fees and we’ll even beat the price you’re paying now.

If you’re ready to bring the home connection up to speed with your office network, or family and friends desire more download capability in their leisure time, let them share in the springtime madness and give the sales team a call on 0800 781 7818.

If you still don’t have broadband then get in touch and we’ll come up with a solution that suits you.

Please note that we are unable to extend this offer to our ADSL Reseller’s Clients.

Back to top

The 'Paper Clips' that link you to new clients

I used to hear people talking about Internet ‘Paper Clips’ and thought they must be clever site linking gadgets. Well…it felt logical! Just as I got used to the idea, I discovered my folly and ‘Pay Per Clicks’ like many topics before opened up a vacuum in my online knowledge.

As you no doubt knew long before me, the advertising phenomenon that is Pay Per Clicks manifests itself in the sponsored results that have been appearing on search engines for almost 5 years. 

Websites pay for a place within these results. Usually the more they pay, the higher they appear. Sometimes this factor is combined with the frequency they are chosen and the relevance of the search terms used. The title comes into it’s own in the fact that you only pay if and when someone clicks on your link.

Google’s AdWords and Yahoo’s Overture (Now known as Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions) are unsurprisingly the global leaders in Pay Per Click Advertising. 

Yahoo claim they are “the most trafficked Internet destination globally” and their alliance with Overture provides “access to the largest set of search marketing and brand advertising solutions on the web.” 

Google are similarly assured. AdWords is “the largest and fastest growing in the industry and provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results on the largest search engine on the World Wide Web.”

How can anybody possibly compete with two giant paper clip merchants like these? Well – as in the broadband industry there are a veritable plethora of vendors who offer their variant on the theme. Espotting, Ask, Mirago and Webfinder are 4 other engines. And there are many more that key into the powerful engines mentioned armed with third party agreements to place their clients high up in the results.

I decided to test the systems and typed ‘Pay Per Click Marketing’ into search engines. A familiar name came up as first or second sponsored result every time. UKFast Gold Reseller Customer Guava is an expert in online business and marketing strategies and offers creative pay per click advertising solutions to its clients.

By forming close relationships with clients Guava aim to become a proactive and essential element of any team. Project Manager Jason Lock explains how they got into offering PPC services. “In 2001 we began using PPC to advertise our own services. We saw an immediate response and over time offered it as a service to existing clients. Back then, there were very few agencies running PPC campaigns with an understanding of advertising and very few traditional advertising agencies running campaigns effectively. Almost no-one worked it on a basis of Return on Investment, and so we began to offer our services for PPC to a wider audience.”

Over the years Jason has seen a general shift to online methods. “Top brass are demanding better accountability for marketing spend and with PPC’s detailed tracking you are perfectly positioned to deliver this. More and more budget is being moved online from offline, but as a rule it is still generally used as part of an overall campaign.”

With systems purporting to be so user friendly, many businesses choose to work direct with the engines rather than through an agency like Guava. But there are definite pitfalls as we discovered at UKFast.

Over the last few years Pay Per Clicks have become a good way to bring more attention to the UKFast site. But as Lawrence Jones explains, there has been a disparity in the results. “Almost all of the interest in the site this year has come from our Google Sponsored links. Our Overture account has been much less successful.”

Lawrence Jones was further disappointed by Yahoo’s Overture due to their inability to deal with customers on a 1 to 1 level. “In chasing a failure by their online system to delete a number of UKFast’s listings, my staff were confronted by unpleasant and patronising customer service of a deplorable standard from one of the Net’s biggest companies. 

“Again it’s an unacceptable example of big business sacrificing customer care. They create roles for employees who have no idea of their products or systems and seem to be there simply to stop customers from speaking to someone who might be able to help with their enquiry!”

Of further concern is the column inch in the press recently on Pay Per Click fraud - the practise of clicking repeatedly on ads to run up bills, with no intention of purchase. It is currently very difficult to track or counteract. Jason Lock sees this as a natural pitfall when dealing with a new form of advertising. “Abuses are still comparatively rare and the companies are developing sophisticated detection systems all the time to avoid such complications.”

The latest reports suggest that Yahoo and Google are in it together, colluding to overcharge and to continue overcharging. But what can you do? If you want to be seen on the web then can you ignore the two giants of the search world?

We’d be interested to know your thoughts on the various systems available. Perhaps you have had a success story with a particular company or a nightmare with another. Email me at jonathan.bowers@ukfast.net and let me know.

Back to top

Online April Fools pranks. 

There’s no better time to get one over on the public than April Fools Day and the Internet allows hoaxers to reach a global audience. 

Back to top

As ever, I hope the Newsletter has provided a useful insight into UKFast this month. I look forward to speaking to many of you before the May edition.

Best wishes,

Jonathan



For more information on the range of UKFast products and services go to http://www.ukfast.net/site/index.php