November 2012
1 post
4 tags
On... The dangerous march toward Catalan...
There’s not a wall in the centre of Barcelona without a poster, flyer or graffiti message urging independence. The newspapers, TV stations, radio and general banter are dominated by this topic. This is big news that dominates public opinion across the region and ‘nationally’- by that I mean across other neighbouring, semi-autonomous and bankrupt regions that the rest of the world knows as...
June 2012
1 post
3 tags
On... Baby-changing bags
Description: A Changing Bag is a posh term for any large bag that you begin to use to cart around nappies, wipes, creams and all the other associated gubbins. If your partner chooses one it may well be ‘baby themed’ which means light pastel colours, embroidered bears or ducks, with lots of handy external pockets that only seem to be big enough to carry lipsticks and compact mirrors. If you choose...
May 2012
31 posts
4 tags
On... Baby legwarmers
Description: A bit like tights that don’t go all the way up. Think Fame! and you’ll be on the right track. Baby Leg Warmers are lengths of material – usually horribly garish in appearance – that are worn on baby’s legs for protection against the cold and protection against gravel and uneven surfaces when crawling. They make you dance better too. Put a pair of these on your child and she’ll be...
3 tags
On... Baby gloves
Description: You don’t need me to tell you what gloves are, but you do need to remember that you have two options – gloves with fingers and mittens. Pros: Gloves without separate fingers – mittens – are the way forward for both babies and toddlers. They are easy to put on and as long as they stay on, they’ll be keeping your baby’s hands warm while you’re out and about.
Cons: Gloves with fingers...
3 tags
On... Baby hats
Description: You know, a hat. A bit of material that you put on your head to keep it warm or cool. Well, your baby’s head that is. From the sublime to the sophisticated, from the serious to the silly, there’s a whole raft of hats for sale, specially designed for kids.
Pros: Err. Well, a winter hat will keep baby warm and a summer hat will keep him feeling cool. Simple really. In all seriousness...
3 tags
On... Winter baby suits
Description: In no other garment can a child look so cuddly and cute as well as utterly pathetic at the same time. His legs and arms don’t seem to work properly, nor do they fill all of the available space. Baby appears to be wrapped in so many thermal layers, it’s a complete surprise he doesn’t start to boil.
Pros: The temperature of babies can change drastically in a matter of minutes. They are...
3 tags
On... Clothing for babies
Whether you are a fan of designer clothes or not, it’s of paramount importance that you equip your child with the vast array of clothes necessary to exist in modern-day Britain. By that I mean she needs to be prepared for the best and the worst of weather systems. It’s all very well buying a selection of t-shirts for every day of the week, but what happens during the winter of discontent, when...
4 tags
On... Baby walkers
Description: Although this toy is very traditional, they are in fact incredibly contemporary – maybe not in design, but certainly in the choice of materials used. It is still possible to get a baby walker with wooden blocks but most are large plastic A-frames with all manner of knobs, squeaky things, buttons and dials to entertain and amuse your child.
Pros: Walkers, whether they’re made from...
2 tags
On... Playpens
Description: A play area for babies contained within mesh sides or bars. Usually playpens are a little larger than a cot, some have handy gates to get baby in and out. Playpens have nice soft floorings and once you’ve added a few of her favourite toys, it’s an Aladdin’s cave of fun for the little one.
Pros: Assuming that your child is happy to be penned in, then the playpen is a fantastic...
4 tags
On... Paddling pools
Description: Paddling pools can be straightforward inflatable containers to which you just add water, or they can be complex constructions featuring castles, slides and even trampoline attachments, but one thing is for sure, kids love them, and on a balmy summer’s afternoon, the larger ones can even accommodate Dad. Pros: Hours and hours and hours of fun.
Cons: There’s an obvious danger with...
3 tags
On... Outdoor playsets
Description: Again there are a range of products available to suit every garden and every pocket, but what you want for your money is some kind of climbing apparatus, maybe a tunnel or two, a slide and sometimes a swing or a fire-fighter’s pole. In a nutshell, your very own activity park – with the added benefit of not having to share the features with that horrible snotty-nosed six-year old who...
2 tags
On... Baby swings
Description: A swing is big and bulky, but how much kudos does it add to a garden? Lots. Especially when you are planning to sell to newly-weds who either are already or soon will be planning to have children. Swings can also make the most boring and barren backyard look appealing and fun.
Pros: Introducing a swing to the garden may mean an accident or two over the coming few years, but you’ll...
2 tags
On... Shape sorters
Description: Plastic or wood, it really doesn’t make much of a difference. This is basic problem solving and a game that you can very much involved in. The task at hand is to squeeze the correct coloured shape through the corresponding hole. Not dissimilar to your or my own attempts to make babies in the first place – simple, yet tricky, and it’s a lot of fun trying.
Get it right and the piece...
2 tags
On... Push and Pull-along toys
Description: Whether it is a caterpillar, dog or random unidentified animal on a string, it really doesn’t matter. Sometimes babies bond to their pull-along toys as if there might actually be a maternal or paternal bond. Don’t worry: this is obviously a load of rubbish. They really do love you, but sometimes a bright red dog or a yellow caterpillar just has more appeal to your little one. Sorry,...
4 tags
On... Door bouncers (for babies)
Description: Always fancied a go at parachuting? Well, this won’t help, but for a brief second when you first see your baby strapped into one of these contraptions you can wonder what it might be like to jump head first from a Hercules at 15,000 feet and imagine that all that’s getting in the way of certain death are some lengths of material sewn or fused together by an under-paid machinist in...
5 tags
On... Baby Gyms
Description: A soft, comfortable surface over which hang two arcing poles and under which events may dazzle and amaze the onlooker – not dissimilar, in fact, to the new Wembley stadium. Or more precisely, a selection of toys and soft cuddly things suspended from above that will entertain your baby as she tries to focus on this strange planet she’s just arrived in.
Pros: Baby gyms show you, the...
4 tags
On... Baby Training
We all want our children to be fighting fit and ready for the many challenges they will have to face throughout life. Those first trials happen early – from day one, really. The speed with which your baby starts to crawl, stand up and walk marks a new milestone every time. They are also highly competitive rites of passage. Try as you might not to get involved, you will invariably be sucked in –...
5 tags
On... Pram Riders/Boards
Description: A pram board is a plastic plate that attaches to the back of a push chair allowing you to cart a tired child around as you push your smaller infant now that the new baby has stolen the older child’s carriage. A pram rider is a far more exotic mobile seat on wheels, not dissimilar to a motorbike sidecar that again attaches to the pushchair but allows your older child to sit rather...
4 tags
On... Bike seats for children
Bike Seat
Description: Err – a seat that you attach to your bike for a baby or younger toddler to sit in. Not a lot to it really. Most are secured to the saddle of your bike and the bike seat sits neatly over the rear wheel, but you can also get smaller seats that fix to the front of the bike.
Pros: It can be more reassuring for you if your baby is up high behind Dad, rather than trailing...
5 tags
On... The Bloke's Guide to Pregnancy on Hollyoaks
With both The Bloke’s guide to Pregnancy and The Bloke’s guide to Babies featured on Hollyoaks this week, it was interesting to see the instant and measurable effect this had on traffic visitors to my site.
I can’t see the reference resulting in increased sales, because the show’s audience demographic (ages 16-24) aren’t really in my target audience, but for sure the books were noticed,...
5 tags
On... Trailer Bikes/Wheels
Trailer Bikes/Wheels
Description: Basically it’s like sticking half an extra bike onto the back of your own. What you are creating is a tandem bike, but I must say it looks a little bit cooler and, when Junior’s not about, you can easily disengage it from your own bike and pretend the whole thing never happened.
The Trailer Bike works in a similar way to the canvass Bike Trailer, in that it...
5 tags
On... Bike trailers for kids
Bike Trailer
Description: You don’t just trade in the racing green MG-F for a beige Volvo estate when you become a dad. Oh, no. Even your new mountain bike is no longer safe from the ever-pervasive effect of having children. Just as you’d got your 10km sprint down do an admirable time, you arrive home to find that you’ve got a bike trailer. What can you do? Well, the simple answer is to attach...
5 tags
On... Hip seats/rests for babies and toddlers
Description: There comes the time when you need to pick up your offspring. Quite often, actually. That’s fine; it’s not so bad for the first five minutes or so, but then time begins to creep by, your partner has disappeared into the thick of the party or the frozen food aisle of the supermarket and you’re left on the periphery…waiting, wondering, wishing…and carrying a very heavy baby. The hip...
6 tags
On... Papooses And Baby Back Packs
Description: Harking back to the halcyon days of your Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expedition, or your early boyhood dreams of soldiering, it’s time to load up and move on out . Permission to wear a funky backpack in public and get away with it! A papoose is nothing more than a rucksack with two holes in the bottom for your baby’s legs to stick out of. There are various options in terms of rain...
3 tags
On... Delivering on your CRM promises
Customer Relationship Management should be the cornerstone of your business. Without customers you have no business; so looking after them, their experience and their needs and wishes before, during and after they buy a product or service from you, is paramount to running a successful online business.
Managing expectations is all about living up to your promises. Do what you say you’re going to...
6 tags
On... Why Facebook shares will bomb
Facebook shares will bomb because we’re too busy communicating with our friends to pay attention to advertisers…
The Wall Street Journal - Deal Journal Blog published an article entitled Analysts offer bullish views on Facebook ahead of IPO on May 7th, 2012. Here’s an extract:
The company should be valued between $140 billion and $160 billion, says Evercore Partners analyst Ken Sena....
4 tags
On... Adding rich media to your site
Adding rich media such as videos, pod-casts, games etc. is a sure way to differentiate yourself from the competition, get noticed by other websites and invariably improve your visibility, content and reputation which in turn leads to a better natural Search performance.
Rich media was once the exclusive bastion of huge multi-national websites with marketing budgets to burn. Not now. With the...
5 tags
On... Blogging as a small business
You can look at blogging in two ways – like trying to keep a diary when you were young; in which you wrote furiously through most of January with the best of intentions but by February you were too busy and by March it was completely forgotten about. In simple terms, an annoyance. Or, you can treat blogging as a powerful marketing tool that helps build your brand, your customer base, links to...
5 tags
On... RSS Feeds and your small business website
Really Simple Syndication is a service you can add to your website to engage with users. Your customer or visitor elects to receive your RSS feeds and by doing so is opting in to receive information from you, be it your latest blog post, site update notifications or specific messages you write for your RSS audience.
RSS, is by name and nature, simple. Your chance to provide a text-based summary...
5 tags
On... Cashback programmes and incentivised traffic
Cashback
Cashback is a relatively new but exciting development in the world of affiliation. Traditionally affiliates earn a commission every time one of their users performs an action on an advertiser site, but the difficult thing was getting customers to come back to your website in the future.
Most affiliate sites earned only one commission from one user. Cashback was the solution. websites...
5 tags
On... Alternative Payment Solutions for eCommerce...
Alternative Payment Solutions
In addition to, or as an alternative to processing customer credit or debit cards online, there are a huge variety of payment options available which can be added to your website without the need for merchant accounts, long term contracts or monthly fees. Arguably the most popular is PayPal, which allows customers to pay for products or services without revealing...
5 tags
On... Payment Solutions for eCommerce sites
The most important aspect of any e-commerce website, whatever product or service you are providing, is the payment solution – allowing you to charge customers online.
To enable online payments you will need to set up a payment gateway and a merchant account.
Payment gateways are an interface between your website, or more accurately your server, and banks/card issuers around the world.
A search...
2 tags
On... Funny movie dialogue
Venus (Michell, 2006)
So, I was researching films with the title Venus – the working title of my biopic about Saartjie Baartman, better known as the Hottentot Venus – and came across a gem called, funnily enough, Venus which stars Peter O’Toole and Leslie Philips among others. Here’s the listing on IMDB. In the film Philips’ character Ian and O’Toole’s character Maurice are having a breakfast...
April 2012
30 posts
5 tags
On... Effective Press Releases for your new online...
Every online business is competing for press coverage. There are only so many physical inches of print media published every day and only so many online news or industry-related websites, therefore it’s essential that your press release gets to the right editor, is noticed, and the content gets transformed into a feature or article.
Good PR is all about putting yourself in the position of the...
5 tags
On... Radio & TV promotion for your online...
Radio and television, as with print media offer you two routes. The expensive advertising route, and the less straight-forward but ultimately more valuable free feature or editorial coverage route.
Paid-for advertising, certainly on local radio, can be measured and for certain services and products is an effective way to attract local customer base to your offering and create brand...
5 tags
On... Winning the hearts and minds of customers
To win the hearts and minds of a customer is a long process which begins the moment they see an advert, banner, link, business card or any mention of your website address. The customer’s journey and relationship with you begins on that first click and you’ve got to impress from then on. Is your homepage or landing page delivering on what the advert or link promised? How straightforward is it...
4 tags
On... Gaining Respectability
The fly-by-night nature of the web is both an advantage and a disadvantage when you’re launching your own online business. On the positive side, as you’ve learnt, you can quickly create a web presence which gives the impression of a large established organisation; done right, customer will flock to your virtual doors. On the flip side, because it is so easy to create a website and there exists a...
4 tags
On... Adding your contact details to your website
Contact details
Both a legal requirement and a courtesy – you must include a contact phone number on your website, to allow customers to contact you. Although the primary objective of your website may be to sell products or services online – this is not necessarily why somebody has come to your website. It is imperative that you offer users the chance to find out the information they want. This...
3 tags
On... Defining "tone of voice" for your new...
Decide upon a distinct tone for all your communications and stick to it – it doesn’t have to formal, just consistent and in-keeping with your brand and your target audience. Having a unique tone can be the key to winning customer’s trust, winning valuable press coverage and ensuring that it’s your brand and your website that users click on and recommend to others.
It’s obviously possible to...
4 tags
On... Good Customer Service from your online...
Customer Services does not just mean offering a phone number or an email address on the site and hoping for the best.
To manage your expectations, if you’re operating an e-commerce operation, you’ll be very lucky indeed if your customer contact rate is less than 5-10%. This means for every 100 orders you ship, at least 5-10 people will contact you before, during or after their order. Of those...
6 tags
On... Pleasing your customers, everytime...
Your tone with customers (or potential customers) must at all times be professional and courteous – it could be that one initial email that leads to a huge order or turns out to be from a journalist writing a piece on your particular market. It could be that this same customer becomes one of your most loyal and constant clients recommending you far and wide. Your customers are your lifeblood and...
6 tags
On... E-mail marketing
Email marketing, managed correctly, is one of the greatest customer retention tools in your arsenal. Managed incorrectly, your message will be ignored, your company email address filtered straight into the customer’s Junk folder and very little chance indeed of any future custom or goodwill…
As well as being entrepreneurs, we are also consumers, and therefore you will be familiar with email...
4 tags
On... Rocking toys
Rocking Toys
Description: Cheap as chips and yet they offer so much. Why? Because kids love them, and once they’re able to get on and off unaided there’s no stopping them. That leaves you a welcome ten minutes to watch their endless pleasure while glancing over the supplements in the Sunday newspaper – and it’s been a long time since you were able to do that. Rocking toys are big and bold and...
5 tags
On... Wheely bugs / wheelie bugs
Wheely Bugs
Description: These are without doubt the last word in ride-on technology. Simple design, stunning appearance and it’ll keep your toddler amused for hours. Our five-year-old still plays with hers, three years on. The Wheely Bugs come in a number of designs, including a bee, ladybird, mouse and cow. They are available in two sizes – small (6 months–2 years) and large (12 months–3...
4 tags
On... Ride-on toys – with sticks for parents to...
Ride-on toys – with sticks for parents to push — Or… with rods with which to beat your own back!!
Description: All your favourite animals, cartoon characters and emergency service vehicles are represented, the only difference is that this time, you the parent are expected to get involved. That’s right, not only are there pedals or a hole in the floor for the little one to motor...
5 tags
On... Baby and Toddler ride-on toys – outdoors
Description: Often just big chunky hunks of plastic, these simple cars, trikes and trucks are probably the greatest value for money in terms of hours of pleasure for your pound.
Pros: For minimum outlay you get a toy that seems to transcend the age ranges, unlike practically every other product you will buy for your kids. For once there truly is lasting appeal, a real sense that your money could...
6 tags
On... Baby ride-on toys – Indoors
Description: Whether you choose a wild animal or a vehicle or even a children’s TV character design, ride-on toys are a fantastic way to give your toddler confidence in taking his first steps and will provide hours of entertainment once they are able to ride unassisted. The design you choose will no doubt be based on something your toddler really likes, or else it will have been be bought and...
5 tags
On... Pram Extreme-Elements Bag (Cosy-Toes)
Description: You’ve been pushing your baby along in the pushchair and your fingers have gone numb. You’re working your muscles and yet you are absolutely freezing and probably wondering why exactly you are out and about in such extreme weather. Well, Baby is thinking exactly the same thoughts – the only difference is that he isn’t working any muscles and is sitting strapped into a pushchair...
4 tags
On... Travel systems
Travel System
Description: Travel systems are a combination of all the above. You are buying a one-stop-solution to baby’s travel needs. Each travel system varies but basically you get a car seat and a pushchair/pram in one.
Pros: Getting Baby off to sleep can sometimes be really difficult. The last thing you want to do is wake her, but you might still need to leave the house again. The beauty...
5 tags
On... Buggy weights
Description: Small weights that can be fastened to the buggy above the front wheels. Why? Well, just adding an additional two pounds of weight to one end, you can hang nearly twenty pounds on the back of the buggy – and who said physics was a waste of time?
Pros: Essential to avoid the buggy-tipping scenario. Most buggy weights come with a piece of reflective material so there’s an added ‘be...
