UFindUs – a sure fire winner

Last week UFindUs.com received another internet accolade form Hitwise. Hitwise are recognised within the industry for the accuracy of their data and are part of the Experian group. 

Having been acknowledged in 2006 as well, we have now taken 7th place in the top ten sites receiving the most web traffic for the category of Business and Finance directories.  It is a tremendous achievement and proves that UFuindUs may not be a site which will win brand awareness awards but when it comes to doing the business we keep on performing.

The interent is a an odd place and very often if a business should even be bothered to ask where the customer heard about them the answer will be I found you on the internet. More accurately it should be “I found your listing on UFindUs” or “I got your number from your website (which has achieved high rankings courtesy of UFindUs).

That aside we are concentrating on maintaining our top 10 position,and, with the rapid surge in traffic that the other Customer Street sites like Smile Local and More UK are seeing its a real win win situation for CustomerStreet customers.  

Contacting UFindUs.com

Remember that if you have anything that you want to discuss with UFindUs then there are various ways of getting in touch with us. We have our support telephone number which is 0845 013 5104 where our service reception staff will be able to direct your call in the most appropriate direction.

We also have the UFindUs feedback mailbox if you want to email your comments or queries to us. This can be done by sending your email to feedback@ufindus.com. Alternatively you can write to us at UFindUs head office marking your envelope for the relevant department. The address is  UFindus Ltd, Lancaster Business Park, Caton Road, Lancaster LA1 3RQ.

No matter how you contact us you can be assured that we will work towards dealing with your request as efficiently as possible.

Rapidsite evolution comes a step closer

The long awaited launch of the new rapidsite software has come a step closer.

This truly is a big deal to not only us here at UFindUs and Customer Street but more importantly to our customers.

Over the last few years we have continued to develop our range of products and services, keeping pace with the ever changing demands placed on us by our customers as well as staying one step ahead of our competition. I think that in general we have been able to achieve both things.

An area that we have however tended to overlook, and which has brought us more brickbats than bouquets, has been our templated websites which we provide free of charge for the majority of our customers. Stuart Laverick, our developer assigned to this  mammoth task has now been left alone long enough to be able to finish an alpha version of the new software.

This prototype has been passed to Stuart Forrest, our technical director with the brief to “do his best to break it”. Stuart will now undertake to pick as many holes in it as possible, checking it thoroughly to see if it has any coding errors before it goes onto the next stage which will involve the creation of the new template skins.

If you haven’t come across the development blog why not check it out, as even from a layman’s point of view it makes interesting reading to learn about the many processes which deliver something we feel will only improve further our ability to continue to deliver a first class service.

UFindUs and Customer Street just keep growing

Having just had a passing chat with Adrian Berry, the Customer Street search engineer, who was telling me that at the last count our directories which include, Smile Local, More UK and of course UFindUs as well as over 140 trades portals, have a staggering 700,000 plus page impressions on the internet.

Is it any wonder that when you look for a tradesman or business on the internet there’s a pretty good chance that sooner rather than later you will be coming across a link to any of our hugely successful business directories or to any of the tens of thousands of websites that we have built for our customers ranging from the humble, but exceptionally search engine friendly rapidsite to our bespoke Premium Design websites.

Check out what I mean, just type in “general builder stevenage” or “electrician london”. The results speak for themselves.

UFindUs continue to go from strength to strength

I can help feeling more than just a little bit pleased with how the hard work of not only people like Mark Nichols, Stuart Forrest and James Wright, and myself, but also all our support staff has  played its part in really making a hugely tangible difference to how the UFindUs brand is perceived.

12 months ago, despite having phenomenal success from the point of view of customer volumes, page views and rankings we were missing something. As a business we simply lacked customer service skills. In the short space of time since then we have achieved so much in respect of giving UFindUs a “customer friendly voice”.

It is of course no good being all talk and no action, our services have altered as well to the point where we are reaching great levels of customer compliments rather than complaints. To me what is even more important is that the recognition isn’t for the work that UFindUs, Customer Street etc have done, it is actually coming in for the individuals who deal with our customers.

An example of which has been taken from an email sent by the team leader of our Customer Support department.“This customer wrote a letter of complaint to Stuart Forrest threatening possible legal action. I called the customer to discuss the issues that had been raised in the letter. The customer told me to completely disregard his letter and that Barry (our support agent) couldn’t have been any more helpful. He said anything they previously thought of the company they don’t think any longer and apologised for sending the letter!”.

Well done to Barry and all his colleagues who I know are really going to extra mille in pursuit of excellence in customer service.

A full house – UFindUs sites take up the whole first page on Google

From time to time I will blow our trumpet about the great rankings that our own sites and those of our customers enjoy. The Rapidsites that we provide for our customers achieve fantastic results because of their search engine friendly layout and content that we have worked hard at over the years to achieve.

They may sometimes be treated like the “Cinderella” of websites, berated at every opportunity because of first impressions, but it doesn’t matter how many flash banners (they may look nice but search engines don’t like them) you cover an ugly sister in the real issue is that the beauty is always there but not always appreciated.

Why not type into Google, “general builder Stevenage”. Let the result speak for themselves. Today (and I can only speak of the moment) each of the 10 results on the front page are either sites or directories that we have put there. In fact the two top listings on the next page are ours as well.

These results are by no means unique, they help reinforce that the full range of services we offer are not only great value for money but are probably more likely to get you results that the majority of other sites claiming to provide a similar service.

Graham Armstrong – UFindUs