ITP Global Conference, Jordan - "Moving Forwards"

27th January saw the start of the recent ITP Global Conference which was held in Jordan at the Evason Ma'In Hot Springs & Six Senses Spa Resort close to the Dead Sea. The theme was "Onwards and Upwards" reflecting the increase in the size of the ITP Network and future development plans regarding Business Travel.

The Conference programme was very focused on Sales and included 'one-to-one' partner meetings exploring specific commercial opportunities.

Ian Epps, ITP's Director of Partnership Relations, summarised the development of the ITP Partner Network in terms of coverage and also quality. ITP now has travel management partners in 39 countries and, Epps added, "We are currently gaining one new TMC partner every month”.

Virginia Palla, General Manager, outlined recent developments with products and services including fares portal eGlobalfares and the redevelopment of the ITP Website.

ITP's management team outlined ITP's Business Development and Training strategy, at the same time requesting feedback and ideas from the ITP travel management partners.

The Conference was moderated by Peter Dennis of Time Communications Group, who also provided an overview of threats and opportunities in the Travel Industry. Dennis told the delegates that "the rising price of oil is the biggest threat to the Industry”.

Guest speakers also included Carey Limousine and Travelport.

The definition of a web designer

A web designer is a person, who designs and at times, creates websites, along with other applications. As it is, web design refers to creating presentations of content which is delivered to the end-user through the internet, with the help of a Web browser as well as other Web-enabled applications such as micro-blogging clients, Internet television clients as well as RSS readers.

A designer might or might not be a programmer. However, most of them have some sort of programming skills. Several web designers are web programmers as well, which means that they are not only the architect of the page but they also implement their designs through programming. Designers can therefore be called writer as well as computer expert.

An extremely important task of the designer is creative design of the web pages, which is generally worked out with a client who expresses certain needs or that the web pages are required to fulfill. Web designers usually have proficiency in graphics software, such as Photoshop, and many of them are also quite good with programs such as Java. A web designer usually has to work with a number of media programs. Overall, the objective is to create web pages with a particular design, a standardized graphic set, as well as eye grabbing details. A designer might also write contents for web pages, depending upon the requirements of the client, although sometimes they simply edit or program contents that the clients provide.

There may or may not be any difference between a designer and a programmer. As it is, programmers might only implement designs through programming in XTML, HTML, and several other languages. They might set special functions such as shopping cart software. Apart from that, they may also be responsible for the maintenance of the existing web pages as well as introduction of new information. A web designer, particularly one with a lot of talent might also do this. As a matter of fact several designers provide both design as well as programming services.

A designer should always keep himself/herself updated with the latest trends of the Internet industry. He/she must have knowledge of what services have been expected, he/she should also know as to what graphics would be liked and enjoyed, as well as how high a webpage would rank in the search engines results. Apart from that, they may also assist clients in formulating plans on increasing the visibility of the web pages.

In today’s world, where the internet is getting bigger with every passing day, a web designer has an increasingly important role to play.

Web Standards and its disregard by all major search engines?

I'm a big fan of that little icon which you stick on your website 'To show your readers that you've taken the care to create an interoperable Web page, you may display this icon on any page that validates.'. (Do a Google search you'll find it fine!). My main question is if we're all supposed to follow this (and I've been advised on many occasions it helps with search engine optimisation) then why the hell do the major search engines not bother to follow more or less ANY of these standards?

I checked Google, Yahoo, AOL, Ask. None of these search engines follow web design standards?

Is it because the search engines don't need to be found?

An odd trend in exclusive venue hire..

It is amazing that despite the recent hard hitting recession there has been a growing trend in the hire of exclusive venues for functions, corporate events and weddings. So why is there this growing trend in the hire of these properties? Well, just for starters, imagine being the king of your very own castle in one of these luxury venues! But aside from the fantasies the truth is that the rise has been due to two main client bases – weddings and businesses’.

For a wedding, there really is no better setting – the sun sets at dusk, with friends and family living up the lavish lifestyle of their own private venue. These aren’t just event rooms, these are the real thing – beautiful mansions, romantic wedding venues, manor houses, 5* hotels.

Promoting a restaurant Website

Because of the economy being all over the place at the moment, it is now more important than ever to use your website as a tool to get new business. Because of this, many restaurant owners are now looking to expand their presence on the web rather than use it merely as a source for a menu or opening times. So how can you promote a restaurant online? Before I begin, you could maybe consider a couple of the following points to convert those web visitors into bookings:

* Is there something special you can 'push' about your restaurant?
* Are you able to offer discounts on orders found from the web?

You will need to decide which keywords you wish to be coming up for in searches. For example, 'Italian restaurant' is going to be far too vague if you've only got one premises. Maybe 'Italian restaurant Sussex' may be more fitting. (The county appended to the end is a commonly used search for local businesses). Of course, if you're a national business, then you may wish to be appearing at the top for 'Italian restaurant'. OK, let's say for arguments sake you chose 'Italian restaurant' as your main search term. In reality, you would usually choose two or three keywords. Search engine optimisation is a term for collectively carrying out the following tasks, to get to the top for your chosen search term may however require working harder than some other keywords depending on the competition. This next stage is divided into two stages, on-site and off-site optimisation. This is by no means a comprehensive list but should get you off the ground at least.

On-Site Optimisation

OK, I'm going to summarise with bullet points here - in the previous example of 'italian restaurant' on-site optimisation would involve:

* Sufficient use of H1 tags - with the keyword 'italian restaurant' in there. (Basically you want a relative heading which makes use of H1)
* Ensuring the
* Ensuring the webpages load quickly - even it todays modern era - if it's taking too long, the Googlebot will leave without indexing any further.
* Create a page specifically for the term 'italian restaurant' with 'italian-restaurant' in the url. It might be index.php?p=Italian-restaurant, it might be Italian-restaurant.html depending on your setup.
* Now with some good thinking, fill the Italian-restaurant page with plenty of text about Italian restaurants. Obviously as a business, I expect you don't want to publicise other businesses - so why not do a page on the history of Italian restaurants?

Off-Site Optimisation

Now comes the tricky part! Google gives each webpage a value, for the purposes of example, let's say your rank value is 1, your opponents rank value is 4. If you're both competing for the same keyword, your opponent will rank higher as they've got a higher rank value for that keyword. To increase this rank value for your site, you need to build links to your website from relevant websites. Surprisingly, this process has been given the term 'link building'. So how do you build links? Today, I will just explain the legitimate, what we call 'White Hat' techniques for building links to your site.

* Setup a signature link on any forums you post on.
* Submit yourself to as many web directories (manually - avoid auto submissions).
* Find 'eat out guides' and submit yourself to as many as possible.
* Find review sites, submit yourself for a review.
* If you regularly visit blogs always leave a comment with your URL.

One last thing to note - when you're building links try to always include the term 'Italian Restaurant' in your anchor text. For example, this may involve submitting yourself to directories with the name of 'Angelos Italian Restaurant' in order for you to get the relevant anchor text. Remember - with blogs, only comment if you feel you can add something of value to the discussion - and at least read the blog - that is somebody's website so don't be rude! So there it is - some site promotion tips, this should be enough to get you started at least. I wish you much luck in the promotion of your business.

Google Pagerank... Gone!

OK, So Google recently announced they've removed the Pagerank stats from within webmaster tools. And today it would seem - they've taken down their datacenters. I tell you something, I feel all naked and unhappy within my shiny green bar at the top of the page!!!

Any comments?
Stick that on your power cord!