Why ‘busy’ and ‘Flashy’ web sites are as useful as a chocolate fire guard!

Firstly, ‘busy’ web-sites:

This is a basic mistake that most businesses fall into. Most websites are saddled with expensive and complicated sites, resulting with a near death experience when it comes to viewing on a mobile device, such as an iPhone or iPad.

Next problem, what’s wrong with using ‘Flash’ Macromedia?

The main problem with Flash is it isn’t available on the iPhone, iPad and many other mobile devices. According to Adobe (the owners of ‘Flash’), 98 percent of desktop computers and laptops currently support Flash, but the truth is it’s not compatible with all browsers including those on the iPhone, iPad and cell/mobile phones. Unlike Flash, jQuery supports screen reader accessibility.

It is worth knowing that tablets (eg. iPads) and smartphones (eg. iPhones) where less than 2% of internet use in 2009, now they are 7% and set to double as a share of internet use every 3 years. And internet use through a mobile device is growing at 300% faster than through a normal desktop/laptop computer.

The future is to find ways to simplify the user experience, which also goes hand in hand with reducing the bandwidth (time required to down load the full web page) to get to the point of your web page.

As ‘app’ mania continues to gather pace, the simplification and ease of use will gain in momentum – hurray, I her you say, well so will your customers.

Never has it been so important to have Less to make More from internet users.

Get your food businesses website analysed – our experts will research your site and send you a free ‘Web Marketing Report’…

Apply NOW: http://bit.ly/free_web_marketing_review

For simply and practical help in making your website more successful at being simple, and effective.

take care,

Rob
Rob Ward – Founder of www.FoodMarketingNetwork.com & www.MyFoodTrader.com

The secret can’t be held back any longer – BIG company bully boys

can’t STOP you finding out about this revolutionary NEW service.

…It’s time that the 10,000’s of frustrated small to medium sized food businesses had a simple and affordable solution to finding their ideal businesses to trade with. Case studies…

Natalie Walker Green Fields Farm Shop Award winning Farm Shop and Deli in Shropshire, prides itself on being the best at sourcing local and national speciality food. “MyFoodTrader.com …is a great way for us to source products either within a set distance of our shop or from a specific location…”

Clare Downs Monkhouse Marketing Marketing, Packaging, Media, Print & Design Agency. “Clients include regional and national food businesses ranging from food producers, farm shops, deli’s and national trade associations. MyFoodTrader.com … is a straight forward and affordable way to find new clients”

Jane Shepard 4u2 Foods Ltd An innovative new snack bar product focused on the ‘mums to be’ and ‘new mums’ market. “We were looking to buy raisins for a new product that we are launching – thanks to MyFoodTrader.com … we were matched with a cost busting supplier from California.” “… surprisingly simple to discover new suppliers that would normally be impossible to find…”

Your FREE matching service is ready NOW, including £50 FREE credit for you to use in your advertising account. Start matching NOW! MyFoodTrader.com UK: 0845 643 20 60 International: +44 845 643 20 60 Skype: robwardskype rob@myfoodtrader.com

It’s a salutary lesson to all businesses (particularly small ones) despite owning a Trade Mark, having the finances to defend their name in court is another challenge altogether.

With court fees averaging around £250,000 ($350,000), owning a Trademark, could be too costly experience for the defendant.

Here’s the Article:
Organic co loses Woolworths court stoush

An independent organic food supplier has lost its bid to halt an advertising campaign by supermarket giant Woolworths starring celebrity cook Margaret Fulton.

The supplier claimed Woolworths had infringed on its trademark by using the words ‘Honest to Goodness’ in its advertising push, launched two weeks ago with television commercials, recipe cards and a website featuring Fulton.

Organic Marketing Australia, which trades as Honest to Goodness, applied in the Federal Court to stop Woolworths using the phrase until the matter was resolved.

The boutique wholesaler and retailer, started by Matt Ward and his wife Karen nine years ago, said it has used the trademark since 2003.

But on Friday Justice Anna Katzmann refused the interlocutory injunction.

She urged the parties to consider mediation, rather than taking the dispute to trial.

Woolworths, which is fighting the case, said it was pleased with Justice Katzmann’s decision.

“We remain strongly of the view `honest to goodness’ is a commonly-used term which Woolworths and other parties should be free to use,” Woolworths spokeswoman Clare Buchanan told reporters outside court.

“But we continue to be open to discussion with the applicant to resolve this issue.”

She said the campaign so far had been very successful.

In her reasons, Justice Katzmann said the damage to a small business may have a greater impact than the same amount of damage to a large enterprise.

“On the evidence before me, however, the damage to Woolworths far outweighs any damage to the applicant’s business that the continuation of the campaign may cause in the period until final judgment,” she said.

©2011AAP
Keywords: woolworths, Honest to Goodness, Margaret Fulton
Comments:

Simple, free tool that makes recording a food businesses reputation the real deal.

A breakthrough for businesses that are proud of their reputation (disaster for those that aren’t). The Reputation Badge TM independently records customer comments about your business. You have the right to reply and all comments are emailed to you before approval, so that you can check they are genuine.

You can ‘pin’ your Reputation Badge anywhere online, your own website, email broadcasts even in your Facebook site.

Adds weight to your SEO ranking and is a brilliant way for you to promote genuine appreciation about your business to your prospective customers.

Here’s ours at the Food Marketing Network:

>>>WATCH SHORT VIDEO HERE TO EXPLAIN MORE<<<

Get yours for FREE at www.MyFoodTrader.com and start to protect and build your reputation NOW.

]]> http://www.foodmarketingnetwork.com/reputation-badge-innovation-tool-to-revolutionise-marketing-for-food-businesses/feed/ 0 http://www.foodmarketingnetwork.com/is-food-inflation-unnecessary/ http://www.foodmarketingnetwork.com/is-food-inflation-unnecessary/#comments Mon, 14 Feb 2011 10:29:41 +0000 robward http://www.foodmarketingnetwork.com/?p=1379 Food inflation is predicted to continue rising around the world.

This is not news, but the possibility that this rise is unnecessary, is.

Is it necessary?

For instance, only 8% of the fuel used to transport our food is used to ship the food, 82% is used to move the trucks around (Ref. 2). Combine this with imbalances in the supply system which often leaves healthy food to waste in our fields and factories.

‘This waste has to stop,’ claims Rob Ward, food campaigner and entrepreneur who has invented a novel system to help food business overcome wasted resources.

Highlighting a key example of inefficiency that exists in the supply from producer to consumer. Add to this is an increasing drop in worker productivity as a result of information overload.

The world’s digital data is doubling every 18 months (487 Billion Gigabytes of new data in the next 18 months, Ref. 3). This is causing 62% of office workers to admit that it’s difficult to maintain their focus on the task in hand, getting distracted by the constant flow of emails and other information.

Alarmingly, 73% admit to disregarding or deleting business emails without fully reading them (Ref.1). ‘Information overload is getting out of control,’ claims Rob Ward, ‘and it’s starting to reduce our productivity.’

Information overload is officially reducing productivity in business and the food market is no exception.

Too much time is given away to constant interruptions, dealing with the wrong suppliers and trying to find new customers. ‘Finding out who is the ideal business to trade with is getting harder,’ claims Rob Ward. He believes this is wasting time and money and making our food cost more than it should.

This why he believes a solution is urgently necessary. An antidote is needed to counteract these challenging issues for the food industry.

Rob Ward has created a system that helps small and large food businesses by matching the ideal businesses together, making their supply system and work scheduling more efficient.

‘We have built the worlds first online dating site, for food businesses,’ he explains. They have created the same style of online system as the familiar dating, relationship finding websites, which has then been combined with a trading format, similar to eBay.

This is a completely new trading platform for food business to connect and trade together. Its purpose is to match food businesses on their relevance and reputation. This service intends to reduce wasted time and spare capacity to make the food industry more efficient.

How do you know who is the best to trade with?

His plan is to create a process that records businesses reputation, using their innovative Reputation Badge system, businesses can publish their records of their customer feed back in all their communications. It is regarded as very difficult to clearly define the truth behind testimonial claims companies make, this system provides an independent record that represents a real scenario of what other businesses think about them.

This international online business, called MyFoodTrader is the brain child of Rob Ward, originally a farmer and farm shop owner from Shropshire, UK.

‘Over 5,000 businesses have registered from more than 62 countries around the world,’ claims Rob Ward, ‘and that’s only in the first few weeks. We expect this to jump rapidly into the tens of thousands very quickly.’

MyFoodTrader.com could be a breakthrough for small businesses, often not able to compete with mass advertising budgets of big businesses – but often these smaller businesses have excellent reputations.

Now, these businesses can be found simply and easily using this new system. ‘What I have created is a simple system that is focused on helping food businesses that have the best reputation to win business,’ Rob Ward says.

Whether he is right or not, the case is clear, food inflation is a problem for all of us, the more food businesses can do to help reduce this growth the better for all of us.

References:

Ref 1: LexisNexis International Productivity Survey Ref 2: Inefficient supply chain report: Noelhodson.com ‘foodtubes project’ Ref 3: Infoniac.com Digital Data growth report

MyFoodTrader.com

WRITER BACK GROUND:

Rob Ward, Originally a Farmer and Farm Shop business owner – has worked for over 20 years in food production, distribution and retailing. He now works internationally with food businesses to help grow their businesses.

Following an international tour (sponsored by HSBC Bank) he discovered a great deal about local, regional and specialty food markets across the world. During that tour, what struck him was there were far more similarities than differences in food businesses around the world.

From this experience, he then went onto create an international network of food businesses, call Food Marketing Network. This network shares ideas and experiences together to help make sure good ideas are know about.

The purpose of MyFoodTrader.com is to provide a local and international trading platform for food businesses to connect and trade together.

Creating a completely original system, based on a combination of dating software and online trading, MyFoodTrader.com matches food businesses together based on relevance and reputation.

He has considerable experience working in media and is available for more information:

Please contact: rob@foodmarketingnetwork.com

MyFoodTrader.com UK Tel: 08456432060 Skype: ‘robwardskype’ International Tel: 00448456432060

key words:

food producer, food business, food retailer, food buyer, food supply chain, food marketing, food trading, farm business, restaurant business, food distribution

Following North America’s lead, UK is about introduce new laws (1st March 2011) that will heavily fine businesses for making misleading marketing claims, online. [Europe and other leading, consumer economies, are guaranteed to follow.]

These new powers, which have been live in the US for over a year, will focus marketeers’ minds on what they can (and can’t) say about their products and services. Already, we have seen dramatic changes to how food businesses in US, now use testimonials in their marketing.

We know that testimonials provide essential evidence to support credibility. Now, testimonials have to indicate an average result from buying a product or service, not the BEST.

Your Reputation?

How can you possibly work out what is average? When is a testimonial misleading? Is it worth the risk?

Incase you didn’t know, there’s is a new (and FREE) way for food businesses to independently monitor their reputation with their customers.

www.MyFoodTrader.com

Launching on 14th February (yes, Valentine’s Day) it will be the first of its kind, revolutionising how food businesses can celebrate their reputation. The system builds a live profile that constantly records what your customers think about you. Using a ‘Reputation Page’, you can build an independent profile about your business. Giving you impartial, and therefore enhanced credibility, with your existing and future customers.

You can also have a live link to your web site through a ‘Web Widget’. This tool constantly provides a live feed directly onto your web site, so that you can use it to demonstrate genuine customers appreciation.

[By the way, customers comments have to be approved by you before they go live.]

This Reputation Page will also be great for your SEO with Google, considerably supporting your existing web sites internet ranking.

Don’t forget this Reputation Page is totally FREE…

Good luck and may your reputation count, for good -

Rob

P.S. – what are you waiting for, register NOW www.MyFoodTrader.com

P.P.S. – If you think this free service might be useful – Please forward this message to other food businesses…

speak soon,

Rob Ward – Founder of www.MyFoodTrader.com & www.FoodMarketingNetwork.com

“UK’s Leading trade magazine…”

“Website offers to pair up perfect trading partners…”

Looking for the perfect partner? Somebody who can cater for your needs and give you just what you want? Scarred by a previous relationship that turned sour?

"Perfect Match, is Good for Business..."

If this is you, then look no further than www.MyFoodTrader.com - a new website modelled on dating software that will ‘match’ the specific requirements of food and drink buyers, sellers, growers, packaging suppliers and logistics companies that register.

Matching will commence on St Valentine’s Day, the official launch date, although companies are already signing up…

(read FULL article and discover a the latest food industry news)

Written by Richard Ford, Fresh Food Reporter – The Grocer

The Art of the BIG Conservation Part 3

Click here to view the embedded video.

To Watch The Last and Concluding Video:

http://www.foodmarketingnetwork.com/art-of-the-big-conversation-final-episode/

Register NOW and Start To Change How You Trade For Good