Privacy PolicyPrivacy Policy

Mintsalad Design Limited respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal information that you provide to us. This statement explains our policies and practices regarding the use and disclosure of your personal information by Mintsalad Design Limited. Please note that, Mintsalad Design Limited reviews and updates this Privacy Policy from time to time as needed without notice. Therefore, you should review the terms of this policy periodically to make sure that you are aware of how Mintsalad Design Limited collects and uses personal information. By using our web site, you consent to the collection and use of your personal information by Mintsalad Design Limited as explained below.

Personal InformationPersonal Information

You have complete control over your personal information. In general, you can visit our web site without providing us with any personal information. However, there are instances where we must have your personal information in order for us to grant you an access to our protected and secured sites. This information may include registration data (your name, address, email address, phone number, title, etc.), information request data and response data ("User Information"). When you receive your confirmation email or when you receive any email from the list server, you will be given instructions on how to remove yourself from the list.

Use of User InformationUse of User Information

We intend to use such information for purposes of supporting your and your employers relationship with Mintsalad Design Limited by designing a web site content that is suitable to your needs and alerting you to new product and service offerings as they become available. This User Information may be retained by Mintsalad Design Limited to verify compliance with the agreement between Mintsalad Design Limited and your employer, to keep track of the domains from which people visit us, to create a user profile to better serve you and your employer, or to simply contact you either electronically or otherwise. If you decide that we should not use your personal User Information to contact you, please let us know and we will not use that information for such purpose. However, please do not submit any User Information if you are less than 18 years of age.

Disclosure of User InformationDisclosure of User Information

Mintsalad Design Limited does not sell, trade or transfer User Information to third parties. However, we may share User Information with our business partners for marketing, advertising or product/service offering purposes. For example, we provide User Information to our service providers for direct emailing of our newsletters, online surveys or notifications on Mintsalad Design Limited Offerings to our viewers. We also disclose User Information if: we have your consent; we need to share it in order to provide you with the products and/or services you requested; we respond to a court order or you violate our Terms of Use. You may separately agree to provide your personal information to third parties that provide content for Mintsalad Design Limited Offerings, in order to access and/or use their products and/or services. If you agree to provide such information to these third parties, then your personal information will be subject to their privacy policies.

Accuracy and SecurityAccuracy and Security

The accuracy and security of the User Information is important to Mintsalad Design Limited. Currently, you may review and request updates to your User Information retained by contacting Mintsalad Design Limited. If you contact us to correct your User Information, we will attempt to correct such inaccuracies in a timely manner. Mintsalad Design Limited is concerned with the security of your User Information and is committed to taking reasonable steps to protect it from unauthorized access and use of that personal information. To that end, we put in place the appropriate physical, electronic and managerial policies and procedures to secure your personal User Information. We also continue to implement procedures to maintain accurate, complete and current User Information.

Usernames and PasswordsUsernames and Passwords

Access to certain content on our web site may be allowed under a written agreement between you or your employer and Mintsalad Design Limited and will require a username and/or password. In some cases, failure to provide personal information may prevent you from accessing certain Mintsalad Design Limited web site(s) containing certain confidential information, products, services, or promotional offers ("Mintsalad Design Limited Offerings"). By accessing and using our protected and secured web site(s), you agree to maintain the confidentiality of the username and password you selected to access such site(s) and consent to our Terms of Use.

Cookies

Mintsalad Design Limited uses "cookies". A cookie is a small data file that a web site can transfer to a visitor's hard drive to keep records of the visits to such site. A cookie contains information such as your username and password that helps us recognize the pages you have visited and improve future visits, but the only personal information a cookie can contain is the information that you provide yourself. A cookie cannot read data off of your hard drive or read cookie files created by other sites. Information stored in cookies may be encrypted, however, we do not store your credit card number in cookies. If you prefer not to accept a cookie, you can set your web browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator) to warn you before accepting cookies or you can refuse all cookies by turning them off in your web browser. However, access to some of our secured web site(s) may require the use of cookies, which you must enable only cookies that get sent back to the originating server. Otherwise, you can still access most of the features on our web site even without accepting a cookie.

External LinksExternal Links

Mintsalad Design Limited web site provides links to other third party web sites. Even if the third party is affiliated with Mintsalad Design Limited through a business partnership or otherwise, Mintsalad Design Limited is not responsible for the privacy policies or practices or the content of such external links. These links are provided to you for convenience purposes only and you access them at your own risk.

Terms of UseTerms of Use

Please also see our Terms of Use, which describes the restrictions, disclaimers, indemnification and limitation of liability governing the use of the entire Mintsalad Design Limited web site.

GeneralGeneral

If you have questions regarding our Privacy Statement, please contact Mintsalad Design Limited via our Contact page.





Online Is Where The Growth Is

Robert Dallas - Monday, June 21, 2010

Its true, shoppers and businesses are now turning to the internet to find a terrific variety of products and services. This is of course partly due to the economical nature of online advertising as opposed to more traditional forms of marketing activity. However, it is also evidence of a more significant shift in the arena of marketing. The message has changed;

 

Don’t sell to everyone – Sell to someone

Nearly all traditional forms of marketing relied on broad brush campaigning. Its a numbers game, approach enough people and percentages state that you should get a good proportion of customers from the drive. Now we realise this approach is expensive, harmful to the environment and to be quite honest, ineffective.

 

A far better method of marketing is to identify your target market and personally approach them. Obviously very difficult with traditional methods but with the digital age this is exactly what we can do. A search or a click through is a direct request from a prospective client about the service or product you are selling. You know that they are interested because they clicked.

 

How we then deal with the enquiry is one of the most important areas of development on the web today. We need customers to remain on our sites, find what they want and have clear calls to action as to what their next step should be. We should also profile the customer so that we can market to them in the future.  If you would like more help to define your marketing strategy and take advantage of a growth market in a shrinking economy then the web is where the smart money goes

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Is there a magic SEO solution – or is it just hard work?

Paul Bushell - Monday, June 21, 2010

OK - You have invested in an all singing all - dancing website, it looks great and it really tells the world what your company / products / services are all about. You are proud, and rightly so as not every company reaches even these standards!


Still there is a problem… you have seen more traffic on a country lane in the deep of winter. The odd visitor drops in but not the open floodgates you were expecting and definitely not enough to provide the return on your original investment.


‘Its OK we can pay for advertising!’ comes the cry…and in comes the bright spark at Google with one of the most incredible money making ideas anyone has ever had. This employee of the century realised that even more unfathomable wealth was available to Google by simply charging everyone for each click on the number one search position, Genius!


Still anyone who has started down the PPC or Pay Per Click route, has soon realised that this is a very expensive way of generating a very fickle client base. In other words, when you stop paying they stop coming!


Here is where the alchemy that is Search Engine Optimisation or SEO steps in.


What exactly is search engine optimisation?

Quite simply it is the process of optimising your website so that it is ranked more highly by search engines resulting in higher traffic levels.


OK then, how do I optimise my website?

And here lies the big question and also what is one of the most common mistakes on the web today. For a long time businesses have been trying to trick search engines in to ranking them highly. They have abandoned real information for code workarounds and paid advertising.


There is no magic solution, and the ‘get ranked number one in Google - guaranteed’ claims are lies. Effective SEO is a constant and ongoing battle waged on multiple fronts with millions of adversaries.

So here are the basic rules:


1) Content, content & more content
Firstly ask the ‘So what?’ question. I have found your website and so what, now you have to capture me with information that I really want to read or see. This is your content, if you have something really interesting or informative to say about your product or service then get it on your website.


2) Get linking
One of the primary ways that search engines decide that you are an interesting site for people to see is that lots of other websites are linking to you, preferably sites that have a lot of traffic on them!


3) Get a professional to build your site
We don’t get our mate Derek who can build a CD tower from Ikea to build our extension, and for the same reason you should be careful which company you choose to build your website.


4)  Get the code right
Now the reason for getting professionals to develop your site becomes apparent. You are not a programmer! Accept this limitation and concentrate on what you should be doing. What you need to do is effectively communicate what your company / product / service is all about to your web developers – oh and did I mention WRITE GOOD CONTENT!


5) Keep adding to it
If you stop changing your website or adding new and pertinent content to it then it will gradually fall away in the rankings. Good ways of adding new content fall under the banner of news, blogs, articles, interviews, product reviews and a host of other meaningful pieces of information.


6) Market your website in other ways
Don’t just rely on search engines. Approach your customers; make sure your link is on your business cards and on your emails. Spread your link around in every way possible. The more traffic you get to your site the more highly you will be ranked.


7) Set targets and apply budgets
Just like traditional advertising you can enlist the help of an agency to help with all of these methods of SEO. As with all business decisions you should set realistic goals and then apply a sensible budget to achieve your return on investment.


If you would like to know more about SEO and require impartial advice on this area of digital marketing please feel free to contact me.

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Harnessing Social Media

Paul Bushell - Monday, June 21, 2010

I’m sure you are recently becoming more and more aware of the various social media terms such as Twittering, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, Stumbleupon and many more. A lot of our clients also discovering how this new wave of social awareness is changing the way leading brands approach their consumers.


Social media empowers the consumer with the knowledge to sell your product or brand within their group or community, however most brand or marketing managers have little understanding of how to harness the power of a consumer promoting their products. Companies are also undecided who owns this new responsibility internally within the organisation as this article points out;

Harnessing Social Media


The kinds of questions your company should be asking about social media are;

  • What exactly are our consumers saying about our brand / products / competitors? 

  • Can we control what the consumers is saying?
  • How can I measure activity and respond to my consumers moods, likes or dislikes?

  • How do I make social media work for my brand? 

  • How can I measure the success of my social media campaigns?
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