http://www.katalysis.net Katalysis Net : Our Blog http://www.katalysis.net/who-we-are/blog/2010/1/14/keep-in-touch-with-katalysis-marketer/ What is Katalysis Marketer? Katalysis Marketer our all-in-one email marketing software includes everything you need to create, send, track email marketing - but it doesn't stop there. It also includes powerful tools to completely automate your follow up marketing and customer feedback loops too: Follow up with prospects automatically using autoresponders. Send a series of personalized email messages to new leads at intervals you define. It's like having your own dedicated sales team working for you around the clock. Optimize your email click thru rates with split testing. Send a few variations of your email to a sample of your list and have the best performing one sent to the rest automatically. Automate your list management with triggers. Automatically convert leads to opportunities when they open a specific email, remove inactive leads from your list or even send a follow up email when a particular link is clicked - automatically. Keep your lists clean and up to date with automated bounce processing. Invalid email addresses can be removed from your list automatically based on "smart bounce rules", helping keep your deliverability rate high. See the complete activity of a lead with event logging. Every time a lead opens your email, clicks a link or performs any other activity, it's logged against their history making it easy for your sales team to qualify their desire to purchase. Solicit and track feedback with surveys. Using the drag & drop editor you can create customized surveys and feedback forms which you can link to from your email campaigns or autoresponders and then blast to your list in minutes.  .... Thu, 14 Jan 2010 07:14:00 GMT http://www.katalysis.net/who-we-are/blog/2009/8/24/katalysis_is_the_uks_first_concrete5_services_an/ Katalysis has become the first UK Services and Hosting partner for the Concrete5 content management system. We are now building sites on the excellent Concrete5 system and we'll shortly be announcing a number of design and build and hosting packages for Concrete5. Find out how we chose Concrete5 in the blog..... Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:54:00 BST http://www.katalysis.net/who-we-are/blog/2009/1/25/laying_the_foundations_for_concrete5/ At the end of last year we decided to look again at Content Management Systems (software that enables site owners to edit and manage their web site). The CMS we’d been using, although flexible and powerful, didn’t seem to be moving forward and left many clients scratching their heads when they came to update their web sites. We spent some time reviewing all the likely options, resulting in a short list of three applications for our CMS ‘Build off’.  By the time we started to install test sites on each system we had a good idea what we wanted: Really simple editing and site management for clients Inherent search friendliness An architecture that allowed us to use one system for both our simplest and most complex sites Low maintenance overhead (easy to manage updates etc.) A development team who were committed to taking the product forward We were surprised how soon one content management system stood out from the others. With Concrete5 we were able exceptionally quickly to edit templates and content and have the test site looking exactly as we wanted.  We were delighted by the intuitive way of working for both developers and content editors. We needed to find out more about Concrete5, it seemed a mature and well-developed application, although we’d not come across it before.  Digging deeper we discovered that the first version of Concrete had actually been launched in 2003.  Concrete’s developers in Portland, Oregon, Franz Maruna and Andy Embler, had been refining it and developing their own projects on it ever since. Concrete5 was reborn in 2008 as open source software and Franz and Andy are now putting considerable resources into promoting and supporting wider use of the platform.  We like this business model, it offers users all the benefits of open source plus the reassurance that someone has a commercial interest in keeping development moving and resolving any issues.So what is it we like about Concrete5? Quick and intuitive for site owners Flexibility to use on large or small sites Updates may be applied across many sites at once (we spend less time updating and more ensuring sites work harder for our clients) Open Source licence backed by commercial developer The Concrete5 team are enthusiastically pushing platform forward As of now (early of January 2009) we have three sites being developed on Concrete 5 with launch dates in February and March.  We‘re responding to the terrible economic climate with a great value entry-level Concrete5 site package and looking at ways we can get Concrete5 fully integrated with our hosting setup..... Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:06:00 GMT http://www.katalysis.net/who-we-are/blog/2009/5/18/handmade_belts_web_site_goes_live_on_magento/ We're really impressed with Magento, a fully featured state-of the-art eCommerce system issued under an open source licence. The new site we put together for Handmade Belts went together quickly, looks great and works wonderfully. Magento's low cost of ownership means that we can put together a start-up store within a very reasonable budget and yet still be confident that the platform will be scalable and give our customers almost unlimited potential for future growth. The Magento system is packed with all the features online merchants need. We'll put together a more complete appraisal of Magento in future but for now there's lots of good information at www.magentocommerce.com. If you're considering an new or upgraded web store call us for a chat on 01582 715130 or email mail@katalysis.net..... Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:55:00 BST http://www.katalysis.net/who-we-are/blog/2008/11/19/search_engine_optimisation_explained/ Search Engine Optimisation is essentially the design and configuration of web site pages to rank as highly as possible in search engine results. Google and other search engines send out 'spider' software that regularly copies web sites to their servers for indexing.  This information is used to generate the results you get every time you search.  To decide which results it feels are most relevant Google will analyse the elements that make up the pages in its index using a complex and unpublished formula. The challenge of search engine optimisation is to control these elements on your web pages so that Google will see them as highly relevant to their subject matter and rank them well. So what are these page elements and how can you control them?  The web page you see in your browser is actually constructed from a large number of different code elements that contain words and graphics. The text content of each of these - titles, headings, links, image names etc. will be evaluated by the search engine when it 'reads' your page.  It will look for the 'keyword density' of 'search terms' across different areas as well as for associated words. Here are just some of the 'on page' elements the search engine will look at: Web site URL  - www.katalysis.net Page URL - /search-engine-optimisation-defined.html Page Title - Search Engine Optimisation Defined Heading Tags - What is Search Engine Optimisation? Page copy - should include references to the search terms Link text - Search Engine Optimisation Defined Is that all there is to it? Unfortunately no, while optimising your pages will certainly boost your search engine ratings, sometimes this is not enough to reach page one of the Google results. Search engines will also look at 'off page' factors when deciding where to rank your site.  Among these factors are the number and quality of other sites that link to your site, the age of your domain and the geographic location of your web host.  We'll be taking a look at these aspects of internet marketing in another blog article soon. When should we start the process of search engine optimisation? The short answer to this is as early in the development cycle as possible.  Given the importance of search (In July 2007 UK web users clicked on over 1.3bn search results) it makes sense to think carefully about structuring your web site with search in mind. For businesses that are particularly focussed on the internet search engine optimisation should form an essential part of the business strategy. How can I be sure my site is optimised for search and where can I get advice about including search engine optimisation in my strategy? This is the easy bit. We have a lot of experience not only in developing search optimised web sites but also in thinking and talking to businesses about search engine optimisation. Call us on 01582 715130 or email mail@katalysis.net to tell us about your project and we'll let you know where we can help..... Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:11:00 GMT