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May Newsletter
Dear Newsletter Subscriber
Welcome to the UKFast newsletter!
This month a few brave members of the UKFast team have been raising money for charity by completing The Great Manchester Run. In addition to this, our tech team has been working hard to bring you an expanded range of packages and some advice on sanitising your data input.
Our marketing minute offers some ideas on how to recycle your content and the spotlight focuses on Caunce O'Hara, a UKFast client which has used their website to achieve phenomenal online success.
As always, it is great to get your feedback on our newsletter. So please get in touch with any comments or suggestions for future editions.
In this month's issue
May@UKFast
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It hasn't been difficult finding a theme for our May newsletter round up as over the past month sport and charity have come together on more than one occasion for us at UKFast. First of all, 19 of our very own budding Seb Coes completed The Great Manchester 10k Run on May 18. Well done to each of them and a big thanks to everyone who sponsored the UKFast runners. We have already raised a significant amount for our charity Factor5 0 with more to come in.
Following on from this, UKFast directors Lawrence and Gail Jones have pledged £10,000 towards a new MRI scanner for The New Manchester Children's Hospital after winning a charity auction for a pair of Mohammed Ali's boxing shorts. Lawrence and Gail were attending Ryan Giggs and Max Beesley's charity golf day at the De Vere Belfry hotel at Wishaw.
Back at the office, the tech team has been working behind the scenes to offer all of you trading through your websites more options in the SSL arena. Within the next month we will have expanded our range of SSL certificates to offer 14 comprehensive packages that should accommodate every ecommerce need.
Our busy and dedicated team enjoyed a welcome interlude when the mayor of Denbighshire visited in early May to officially open the UKFast HQ on the 28th floor of City Tower in Manchester Piccadilly Gardens. Mayor Colin Hughes was given a tour of the office and was introduced to all the staff.
Another recent visitor to UKFast was budding British tennis star Naomi Brody. As a committed supporter of local talent and local sport, UKFast is delighted to be sponsoring Naomi and her younger brother as they take their formative steps in their exciting tennis careers. Take a look at this month's video to see Naomi in action.
Sanitise your data input!
This month's tech tip is an attack warning for all our Windows server clients. With the recent spate of SQL injection attacks we're advising you to sanitise your data input! Over the last few weeks malicious intent has been targeted particularly at MSSQL servers.
This can affect your server if you have, for instance, interactive elements on your website such as online forms or comments boxes after new stories. Hackers can input code that might retrieve passwords and other personal data from within your databases. This attack is particularly prevalent because it takes advantage of generic structures within Microsoft databases.
In response we're urging all clients to ensure that any data input allowed by your end users on internal and external facing websites, is sanitised for code injection. This shouldn't require much extra code but will ensure your database stays safe and secure.
Talk to your programmers and make sure that you are protecting yourself.
Recycling your content
Trying to come up with new, unique content for your website is often time consuming and arduous, yet it may seem that some website owners are churning out fresh content and articles day after day.
The secret to these online marketers success is the recycling of content in different ways to appeal to different audiences. Not everyone responds to the same medium in the same way, for example some people like to read articles, while others prefer a structured training program.
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You can apply the same principle to your own website content. Here are some ideas:
- Web page content such as product reviews and descriptions are a great source of information for "how to" articles.
- Documentation such as training manuals and client case studies make great web page content.
- That silly staff team bonding video might make a brilliant viral marketing tool.
- Different categories of FAQs would make for an interesting webinar or video blog.
- A group of case studies could be made into a free white paper.
The more ways you make your content accessible, the better. So re-package your knowledge into articles, web pages, press releases, podcasts, white papers, videos, blog posts and recycle that content!
Caunce O'Hara take entrepreneurialism to the next level
One of the beauties of internet usage is the speed in which customers can get services and the ease with which they can pay.
Insurance brokerage, Caunce O'Hara, has created an online resource where customers can get an insurance policy within 20 minutes, without ever once picking up the phone.
The company launched its ecommerce site in September 2006 and with a well-thought out marketing plan the site has grown to turnover more than £3.5m per year. This year they won UKFast's Best Enterprise E-Commerce award which followed on from receiving the Most Effective Use of E-Business award last year.
Caunce O'Hara works with dozens of resellers who all need to feed into their online system in order to produce their policies. Their innovative online policy has worked as well for the resellers as it has for their clients and themselves.
It was a pioneering move from Caunce O'Hara as they were the first in the industry to sell professional insurance services online. They chose to focus on specific policies such as professional indemnity policies.
Enterprise ecommerce tips:
- Don't be short-sighted - with the right site and a sound marketing plan, you can sell anything online.
- Be pioneering - if there's no precedent for your industry online it's up to you to change this.
- Reliability and speed is crucial - be prepared to open the flood gates to massive amounts of traffic with a powerful infrastructure in place. Slow and unresponsive websites are a real turn-off for potential customers.
If you're part of a young enterprise, why not follow in the footsteps of Caunce O'Hara and see how far the internet can help you to grow.
Visit the Caunce O'Hara website today: www.caunceohara.co.uk.
Please get in touch with us if you would like more information on any of the articles mentioned above.
Until next time, we hope everyone has a very prosperous June and a sunny one at that!
Best wishes,
The UKFast communications team
For more information on the range of UKFast products and services go to http://www.ukfast.net
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