Latest news (11 Jan 13) - Stirling.co.uk gets a real time makeover.
From today Stirling.co.uk is getting a makeover. However, rather than wait until the website has been completely re-designed, we've taken the decision to let you judge a website by its cover. As you can see there have been some preliminary changes to the home page layout, although the navigation structure is the same. There are some fundamental reasons behind our reasoning for doing this.
The Stirling.co.uk website was first launched in 1994 as a tourism, community and business website with the initial objective of attracting various stakeholders to use it to meet their various needs. Just like original market towns developed as centres of trade and commerce, bringing buyers and sellers together, the vision back then was to achieve the same via the Internet.
Over the last 19 years the website has generated millions of visitors and pageviews, resulting in many thousands of accommodation bookings, restaurant table bookings, product sales and enquiries to local retailers.
The Stirling.co.uk website is older than Google and the URLs (web addresses) were first created during the initial development. As a result, the whole website and URL structure are all well indexed in all the major search engines. This has resulted in Stirling.co.uk being found by Internet users with over 28,000 different search terms in the last year alone. And not a penny was needed to be spent on Google AdWords to promote the website or any pages within it. There have been over 2 million pages views on the website in the last 5 years.
It currently has a Google PageRank of 5 (PR 5) which we are aiming to improve on further.
The businesses listed on Stirling.co.uk receive many enquiries or they would not continue to pay for their listing on it. This is why we've decided to complete the re-design in real time. During this process, we will monitor website traffic in order to ensure the URL's are not falling off the search engines radar, resulting in less traffic and less enquiries for the businesses listed. The URL's are not going to change. It's only the look of each page that will be improved upon.
The re-design process is going to take some time as we are working within the day to day tasks that any business has to undertake. The website is hosted, developed and content managed as part of our independent business. It is not funded by a local authority or government funded organisation, although many have commented that they thought this was the case.
The makeover is going to be a visual one initially. Interactive elements will include the embed facilities provided by various social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, as well as other online booking providers. If, at a later date, feedback suggests that stakeholders want more direct interactivity, then we will review the website functions again to meet those objectives. However, our focus for now is giving the website a fresh look whilst retaining the Search Engine Optimsation (SEO) that has been earned over the last 19 years.
YOUR SUGGESTIONS & OUR TASKS
If anyone has any suggestions for the website, please feel free to provide feedback as we go through the re-design process. We're not the sensitive type, so honest and frank feedback is welcomed. Do not be surprised if you visit the site to find changes to the look over the coming months, as this is part of the plan.
Suggestions of new categories to include or remove will be considered.
We are still working on the branding of the Stirling.co.uk logo.
If anyone would like to supply any decent photographs they have taken of the Stirling area, you will receive credit for them.
If there are budding or established writers, journalists or scriptwriters out there who would like to feature their work on the website, please get in touch. We'd like to feature any work that people are prepared to provide us relating to Stirling, Scotland or any tourism, community or business related topic. Again, full credit will be provided.
Finally, I'd like to request that you Like us on Facebook; follow us on Twitter; and subscribe to our YouTube Channels for StirlingOnVideo and MyTownOnVideo where we'll be making annoucements of when more updates have been made to the website.
BACKGROUND
My name is Tony I'Anson. I am the founder and Managing Director of Stirling Internet Ltd (1994) and MyTownOnVideo.co.uk Ltd (2007). I registered the Stirling.co.uk domain name shortly after graduation from Stirling University and I have been working in the Internet industry since then. Our small team have a plan and infrastructure in place to replicate the success of our work in Stirling, intially throughout Scotland.
Regards,
Tony I'Anson
Stirling.co.uk was launched in 1994 just before Mel Gibson came to town to raise crops and a family.
In the early days of newspapers, when they were the primary method of delivering the news, when something big happened, the publisher would not only publish the normal daily paper, but would also publish an Extra.
The newspapers were sold on the street, often by newsboys, who had a stack of papers and would sell them to passersby. When an Extra came out, they would chant "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!" to call attention to the fact that something big has happened, and an Extra paper has been published.