Years ago I used to own a Morris Minor van and travel all over the country in it. It was a brilliantly simple machine designed around the driver .There was the handy quarter light window you could pop open for a cigarette ( I used to smoke back then) and an engine so simple you could work on it yourself. Everything about the minor made my travelling life a pleasure –occasionally I’d even give it a pat at the end of a journey.

Fast forward to 2008 and most of the machinery around us seems to have become incredibly complicated. I’m not sure I’d want to contemplate working on my Volvo’s tyres, let alone the engine and if you look at many online web applications - ease of use seems to have gone out of the window too with clunky interfaces and customer unfriendly sites.

Take the bar and restaurant sector, most operators have websites with little or no interactive capacity for communicating with customers whereas groups like Novus Leisure are seeing a growth in online enquiries of over 20% simply by making it easy for customers to contact, book and interact with them online.

 In these tough times, a website which makes customers lives easier – like my old Morris - will inspire loyalty and as everyone in marketing knows, you’ll be more profitable if you keep your best customers coming back for more.