This is great news as it will allow us to use our extensive web marketing knowledge to help franchisees & franchisors get the most out of their internet marketing strategies.

Franchise World, a London based franchise magazine which was founded in 1978, is the longest-established magazine in its field and is acknowledged throughout the industry as the most newsworthy and authoritative. Our first article was published last month and coincided with the British Franchise Exhibition held at London Olympia.

It’s great to see that our work with other major UK franchises has not gone unnoticed. Our experience with the franchise fraternity will certainly help the readers of Franchise World!

ITV and the cast of one of the UK’s favourite soaps, Coronation St, spent time filming in the beautiful surroundings of Pullwood Bay, Ambleside.

Pullwood Bay is set within a 50 acre estate across from Ambleside, on Lake Windermere. The 1/2 mile driveway takes you from the B5286 on a winding drive through woodlands and past 1 of 6 cottages which you can hire. You then get to the main house, a fully restored building which offers 12, 5 Star apartments to hire. These Award winning luxury self catering apartments offer fantastic views over Lake Windermere. With over 1/2 mile of Lake frontage, and it’s own jetty, Pullwood Bay truly is a jewel within the Lake District.

Wyke Bay, where filming took place for Gail Platt’s honeymoon destination with new husband Joe, sits on the Lake and has its own private driveway away from the main Pullwood house. Although Wyke Bay was only shown during one episode of ‘Corrie’, enquiries flooded (no pun intended!) through the Pullwood Bay website, as well as calls to ITV asking where this location could be found. Forums were also buzzing with people asking the whereabouts of this place.

Wyke Bay is to be featured again on Coronation St in the next week or so as Gail & Joe return to the Lakes for a Valentines special. We don’t want to ruin the story line, you’ll have to watch it yourselves.

Pullwood Bay can expect another hit of traffic in the coming weeks, as well as enquiries, forum rumours, and plenty of links! Thanks ITV!

We are glad to have launched the 2nd Ovenu UK website, following up our Ovenu Franchise site that we completed last year.

Ovenu are the UK’s largest oven cleaning franchise with over 100 franchisees covering the UK. They also have franchises in the US, Australia, France &  Spain.

Mayfly worked around the clock to get the new oven cleaning website live in time for the busiest time of the year. The website benefits from a postcode search facility which links you directly to your nearest oven cleaner, a product area to buy oven spares and cleaning products, as well as a private forum for the Ovenu franchisees to share tips, advice and problems.

Website traffic, enquiries & conversions are at a record high for November & December, and franchise owner, Rik Hellewell had the following to add:

“Just a quick note by way of a testimonial to say ‘thank you’ for the recent works carried out on our behalf on our UK and Australian OVENU web-sites.

It is hugely refreshing to work with folk that understand a customer’s requirements and can implement such needs expeditiously and with the minimum of protracted fuss.

‘Getting things done’ has always been a massive part of the OVENU philosophy and it seems abundantly clear that Mayfly appreciate this work ethic and work to a similar style.

We therefore look forward to working with you and the Mayfly team well into 2010 and beyond.”

As Rik Hellewell mentioned, we have also started to work on the websites of the Australian arm of Ovenu. The franchise site is due to go live any day now, and the main Ovenu Australia website will soon be launched.

Yes, that’s right, ITV called us earlier today……ok, they did ask for another marketing company, but when we told them that we were a marketing company, but not the one they wanted, they still asked for our help.

So, are you house proud?

Here is what we received from ITV, so if you are interested, feel free to pass this on, or apply…this is not a hoax!! I’ve never seen this programme, and I’m not sure I’d like what Mr ‘Throw-your hair back’ Llewelyn-Bowen would bring to my house!!

HOUSE GIFT IS BACK!

STYLISH HOMEOWNERS NEEDED!

ITV’s hugely successful daytime show, ‘House Gift’ is returning for a brand new series.

We’re looking for stylish homes to take part in this unique interior design challenge…

Our three interior design gurus will find you three fabulous house gifts, and all you have to do is choose which one is perfect for your home.  It really is that simple.  Their challenge is to find something that fits your home; your challenge is to judge how well they’ve succeeded.

If you’re up for some fun, and you think you’d be great on TV, get in touch. Whether you live in a townhouse or a semi, a loft apartment or a basement flat – we’d love to hear from you. Or why not nominate a friend?

Please call: 09011 986 986

Calls cost 10p from a BT landline; calls from other networks may be higher and from mobiles will be considerably more

Or visit the website: www.itv.com/beontv

Or e-mail us your name and daytime contact number to: housegift@itv.com

We may not respond to all applications. Deadline for applications is 12 noon on 29^th November 2009. Applicants must be 18 or over and a permanent UK resident. Submissions made after the closing time will not be considered but may still be charged. We will only be considering applications from those who live inside the M25, Liverpool, Brighton and Oxford.

Terms and conditions can be found at itv.com/terms

Costing a Ferrari or so less than a million pounds, and hardly registering on the expenses spreadsheet, this is an expensive website. Now I don’t know where this ranks in terms of the most expensive website, I could not find that, only reports on the most expensive domain – if anyone has a difinitive list, do respond.

I do however think that this is a pretty cool site – and in my opinion, the best site of the Premier League teams. Throughout the site, the images are really crisp and it’s easy to navigate. You have all of the usual information on there, for example squad details, league tables, upcoming fixtures, but they have incorporated more exciting features such as video highlights of the pre season games, twitter links, links to numerous fan sites, a Flickr gallery, and you are able to drag and drop certain applications so that you can customise your own Man City home page – that is if you are a fan.

The site is only in phase 1 at the moment, there will be up to 5 different language sites in total, currently it is only in English & Arabic. There will also be a one stop check out, where you can buy souvenirs, club merchandise & match tickets, all in one basket. It will be interesting to see when phase 2 is rolled out.

Free video highlights come courtesy of Man City’s partnership with Endemol, and with every other Premier League club charging a subscription to view highlights or even certain interviews, this is a pleasant change. One other refreshing change for a football club website – there are no adverts! Again, the first website of the Premier League teams to do this – well, its not as if they need to make money from this is it??

I’m sure with all of this free material, it will become easier for Manchester City to conquer their target markets both east & west. Premier League ‘big boys’ watch out, there’s a new kid on the block!

The only negative aspects to this site from an SEO point of view are the page titles could probably be improved, and meta data is missing from some pages, especially the home page. There are also some images with no alt tags, and some images could benefit from more descriptive alt tags. I’m sure that these will be corrected in the near future, especially with the launch of ‘phase 2′ of the site.

Well done to Man City, and also to Poke of London – job done!

Next blog: The 5 worst Premier League Club websites.

Mayfly were approached to review Cloisters’ current web presence. This included reviewing their current Search Engine rankings, the ease of navigation of the website, and the Content Management System. Although traffic was healthy, the number of enquiries wasn’t. The old site was poorly built, and didn’t meet web standards.

As well as the Private Home Tutors site, Mayfly also completed the website for the CRB checking side of the business, CRBCloisters

The site went live last week, and have received 5 jobs through the site already!

Working together with a very successful UK franchise, the directory currently lists BFA (Bristish Franchise Association) members only, and aims to encourage everyone to use a franchise.

The site also offers a ‘Seasonal Savers Club’, whereby anybody can sign up, for FREE, and be notified on a quarterly basis all of the offers that the directory members have to offer. There will soon be over 300 Franchises listed on the site, so sign up now to receive over 300 offers every quarter!

USEafranchise.com is already receiving a lot of media interest, with articles out this month in Making Money, & Franchise World. With over 18,000 franchisees in the UK, USEafranchise.com is aiming to promote the use of franchises like no other UK website.

‘Cyber Monday’ is the busiest day of the year on the Internet for online sales. Many of Mayfly’s customers had almost a months worth of sales yesterday, lets hope the sales continue for the rest of the month.

If you would like to discuss how to generate more sales on your website, or even if you don’t have a website, we have solutions to market your products through other shopping channels, please get in touch.