You will have the opportunity to work on bringing the best concepts from consumer-grade social tools such as Twitter and Google+ to a variety of software as a service, social, b2c and b2b web and mobile applications.

This is a high-profile position with primary responsibility for interaction and visual design across desktop, mobile and tablet interfaces. It's an amazing opportunity for the right candidate to play a pivotal role in designing cutting-edge social software applications that are transformational in various sectors

Core duties and responsibilities

• Collaborate with the product development team to develop new ideas and enhancements
• Create detailed, page-level wireframes, prototypes and specifications for new features and innovations, with protoshare or axure
• Generate visual concepts and work them through to finalised designs in photoshop
• Work with the front end development teams to produce high quality code and integrate your designs
• Work closely with the CTO, Digital Marketing Director and Business Analysts  to lead the company in user experience design
• Research new trends and innovative thinking in interaction and visual design

The candidate

The right candidate will be a passionate user experience designer that understands how to take complex tasks and functionality and transform them into attractive, usable web applications. You will have in-depth knowledge of interaction design and usability best practice as well as considerable experience in visual design.

We are looking for someone that can create the user experience concepts and with our production team work them through to implementation. Experience and knowledge in the capabilities of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and AJAX-based applications is crucial,  and while front end developer experience would be an advantage, you will not be expected to technically implement your designs.

Essential skills and experience

• At least 3 years experience in a user experience or interaction design role (or similar)
• Expert with the Adobe Creative Suite
• In-depth knowledge of interaction design and usability best practice and emerging trends
• Advanced visual design capability and experience
• Experience and knowledge in the capabilities of HTML, CSS and JavaScript
• An excellent understanding of and experience with social software
• Excellent Interpersonal Skills

Desirable skills

• HTML, CSS and JavaScript front end development skills
• Experience of Flash
• Designing and developing for mobile (iOS, Android and BlackBerry)
• Experience of ecommerce applications
• Experience with umbraco
• HTML 5 and CSS 3

25-30k dependant on skills and experience

To apply, please send your CV with a covering note to jobs@itsbettertogether.co.uk

1.       Exercise More: Most of the test was related to more practical knowledge of the Adwords Tools, their interfaces and indepth knowledge of optimization strategies. For Search Advanced Exam candidates it is highly recommended to emphasize more on Best Practices sections of all the relevant chapters. One thing that is pretty much evident from the exam is that you are not to rely on the Learning Center completely to pass, as the test is based on more realistic experience rather than theory.

2.       Important Chapters & Topics: Most of the questions were related to the following chapters and topics: -

a.       Adwords Guidelines & Policies: There were most questions related to ad text policies. A question that came up was somewhat like this:

1)   Which of the following ad text is acceptable

:a)      **cheap** flowers

b)      Buy flowers now!

c)      All Free, free, free

d)      Best Flowers in Town

b.     Ad Formats Guidelines and Best Practices: There were no questions related to video or image ad formatting (I believe they are all on the Display Advanced Exam). However there were some questions related to ad text for different ads like the question below for mobile ads:

1)  Which Keyword combinations are best for mobile ads:

a) Long, Descriptive

b) Short, General

c) Short, Descriptive

d) Long, General

c.       Managing Keywords: If you have cleared the fundamentals exam this is just for brushing up your concepts on managing and organizing keywords. Know the difference between the standalone keyword tool and the account keyword tool. In addition to that also know what happens when your negative keywords overlap with your regular keywords.

d.      Language & Location Targeting: This is an important part of the Search Advanced Exam. There were a couple of questions which were similar to the quizzes in the e-learning examples given in this section. Make sure you know what the Google Insight Search Tool does, how and when can you use it.

e.      Location Extensions: Use it and understand it's relation to Google Places. I recall a question asking when and where does google show the business address with the ad? Only users who have used this feature would be able to answer this question.

f.        Invalid Clicks: This is one of the most important chapters that I'd like to stress on for the Search Advanced Exam. The learning center gives you ample information on it. What are the legitimate causes of invalid click activity coming from one source? How does Google tackle with these? Are they billed in your billing credits? What should an advertiser do when he/she is finds some suspicious invalid click activity in their campaigns?  etc are some questions you should know the answers of. Know where you can access Invalid click credits too.

g.       Google Analytics: If you are an enthusiastic adwords learner, you should know the basics of Google Analytics by now and how it helps in determining what kind of traffic your website generates. Make sure you know the various reporting tools and features e.g. Top Landing Pages, Site Overlay etc.

h.     Adwords Tools: Sometimes the tools get a little confusing if you are a novice user. Make sure you have used the tools frequently for your campaigns. You might be blacked out with a question like which tool helps in estimating the cost per click of a particular keyword and which tool helps in showing competition of a keyword with other competitors. I would also particularly emphasize on the My Change History Tool (know what it displays and what it doesn't). Also make sure you know the differences between the Targeting, Optimization and Tracking Tools and which tools serve what purpose. Know what a Reach and Frequency Report is and what its purpose is.

i.        Adwords Editor: Don't just read about it, use it on a campaign and know what it does. I recall a question like: If many users were to access your account what feature should you use prior to viewing your account data.

j.        Conversion Tracking & Conversion Optimizer: Understand the two types of conversions (conversion 1-per-click and conversion many-per-click) and their real life examples to get a better picture.  If you cannot enable the conversion optimizer what could be the possible reasons for it? After enabling the Conversion Optimizer, you notice a decrease in traffic, why? The trouble shooting section of the conversion optimizer shows the answers to these.

k.       Optimization: It is highly recommended to thoroughly read this section of the learning center. There are questions related to how you can create an effective campaign structure, promote multiple companies and websites etc and what are the recommended strategies. If you have these on your tips then you won't have to worry about trick questions that have more than one answer that seem right.

l.         MCC: There were questions relating to the access levels of the users. A question came up looking like this: -

1) John wants to grant standard access to his client. What should he be cautious of?

a)      User can delete/disable the account?

b)      User can view Reports

c)       User can grant access to other users

In addition to that, it is also important to know the benefits of using MDS on your MCC Account.

m.    API: Most of the adwords users don't use the adwords API, but it is important to know how we can use it. Understand the benefits of using the Adwords API tool, Developer's benefit of using it and what Developer Tokens are and what is their purpose. In addition to that, also know what the sandbox environment is and what its core benefit is.

n.      Fundamentals Basics: Don't forget the basics, there was a question related to the definition of CTR, Quality Score etc (some bonus questions to make you pass)…

3.       Relax before taking the test: Make sure that you have had a good night's sleep before giving the test and do it only if you are confident. The test duration is 3 hours and you have 109 questions to attempt. Mark for review the questions that you are doubtful of. It would be handy if you have taken notes of important material. The passing score is 80%, so don't take this easy.

Lastly, Good Luck!

So here's to an exciting new phase for Together and our customers!

For example, if one of our Facebook fans likes an article that we posted or likes our Facebook page in general, we could pay Facebook to promote that, and that story from that fan would appear in the column to people who would have already seen it in the first place.

Add Sponsored Stories to Facebook's already powerful ad platform, targeting users based on their profile information, and Facebook is becoming a more and more attractive place to spend your companies budget. We are unsure if this will turn into AdSense-like network that will send targeted Facebook ads out across the web, and they've still given no indication that they're going that direction.

"Starting today, if your search results include a specific link that has also been 'liked' by someone in your Facebook network the link will be highlighted as 'Liked' within Bing," Microsoft's Bing team explains. "This gets especially interesting for a query like 'Xbox' where my friend 'Liked' the 'Kinect' site and while our algorithms didn't feel it was relevant enough to make it the 'answer' we reference above, we are still able to indicate that my friend liked that link that happened to show up within the results."

This will be one clear advantage that Bing has over Google in terms of regular web search. Google has done a lot involving delivering social results, but Facebook data are THE social results that matter most - at least as long as Facebook is the dominant social site that it is today. With people constantly "liking" content all over the web, this can be a great indicator of relevance on a personalised level. It's going to catch your attention when you notice your friend appear in the search results

You may have seen the TV adverts that show how Bing has also made changes to how it presents and organises image search results. "The first thing you will notice is our new Instant Answer that organises a rich collage of images directly into the main results page," Bing explains. "Once you click through to the 'images' page you will notice that we've populated the tabs with the most common search queries associated with a given image

Our systems are proprietary and the complicated process that is copyright and royalty management has effectively been transformed into an automatic music rights management system. We differ from our competition as we offer an easy in easy out deal for artists, we let the writers retain their rights, we don't have a quality bar as we believe that every song has a value, and we operate in this segment alone.

It wont be too long before we see these changes affecting Yahoo in the UK and Ireland so its best to know how Bing Ranks your site before the change happens.

If you compare the search results on Google and Bing you'll see that the two engines rank sites differently. The difference in results suggests that there's also a difference in ranking factors and the value attached to them.

Among other things Bing tends to put more weight on domain age, topical relevancy and outbound linking.

• On-page SEO

There's no magic bullet for Bing as far as the content optimisation goes. Cover the basics and you're good to go: put out unique content, optimise your page titles, H tags and meta-descriptions, strategically employ your keywords in the body, optimise images and so on. Try to focus on one topic per page as theme relevancy is really important on Bing.

• Relevant Inbound Links

Link relevancy is another key to high rankings on the decision engine. Bing tends to favour links coming from pages with the same or similar topic. Try to acquire links from pages with your targeted keywords in the title, URL, H tags and in the body. Links with your target keywords in the anchor texts are even more effective on Bing than on Google, so be sure to take care of that as well.

• Linking Out

It's not just who links to you that's important. Outgoing links are also a factor on Bing. By linking out to authority sites in your niche (where appropriate of course) you increase the authority of your own site and as a result get a ranking boost.

• Blogs vs News Sites

There are a lot of results from blogs in Google News as well as in the news block in the general SERPs. Bing on the other hand tends to give preference to major news sites. Blogs don't often make their way into the news sections on Bing, but so if you're a news blog it may take more effort to get a high ranking on Bing.

• Domain Age

Bing tends to favor old domains even more than Google. The older the site, the more chances it has to rank well on Bing.