You may have noticed that we’ve been hiring for a few new positions recently! These have all now closed and in the last few weeks our new recruits have been joining us. Here at Fubra we publish a lot of content, so our Digital Marketing Team has had to expand, and we’re very excited about it.
So the 1st of July 2015 has finally arrived and we are ready to greet the new regulations concerning the way calls from both mobiles and landlines to numbers such as 0800, 0808, 084, 087 and 09 are charged for.
What is all the fuss about? Total cost
Ofcom, the communications industry regulator, are introducing the new rules under which the cost of calls will be made clearer than before. From today onwards, the charges will comprise two parts:
So
1 + 2 = Your Total
for the call to either a premium or service number. The cost is pence per minute or PPM.
How much will it cost?
It will cost you £0.05 to contact our range of 0844 service numbers plus your phone network access charge.
Let’s take a look at what some mobile networks are going to charge if you are on a monthly plan:
| Vodafone | EE | Three | O2 |
| 23p/45p* | 44p | 25p | 25/45p** |
* as of 10 August 2015 ** as of 15 August 2015
The BT landline users should be able to find some landline access charges information here.
As the prices may change, we strongly advise you contact your network provider to find out what your current network access charges are.
Freephone numbers finally free!
As of today calls to phone numbers starting with 0800 or 0808 will literally be free. This is finally made available to mobile users, exactly the same way it has been to landline users.
All the changes are being communicated through a campaign called UK Calling so feel free to visit their website for more information.
How we did it
As we hold a range of 0844 numbers (and a couple of 09 ones) across the network of our websites, we needed to address that accordingly.
Fubra is a company who really cares so we have decided to make that effort, make things easier for our users, and get it all done in a timely manner.
The whole process could be broken down into a few stages:
Below are some screenshots taken from just a couple of our websites, Airport-Parking-Shop.co.uk and Car-Hire-Centre.co.uk, while we were trying to decide where the wording should go so it is ‘in close proximity to the number itself’.
Summary
A task, which initially seemed pretty easy, turned out to be quite a challenge at times, especially when trying to find information on network access charges the phone companies would apply, or to decide where the wording should go, hence the idea to put it all together in this post. We hope you have enjoyed reading it.
It has been a team effort so let me put my hands together for those involved in the process – thank you all again!
How about you?
And how did your business deal with the changes? We’d love for you to share your experiences with us either in the comments below or via Twitter @Fubra
If you have a large family, do you wish that your children all outgrow their clothes at the same rate? No! That’s how we sometimes feel with a large portfolio of websites and a relatively small team of developers, copywriters and marketers.
It seems we’ve just relaunched World Airport Codes a short while ago, and then the Airport Parking Shop, but somehow missed the moment when one of the children in the travel website family ended up with trousers that look like shorts!
Car Hire Centre, our car hire comparison engine, has been helping travellers find and compare car rental deals across the globe since 2003 when it was first launched. However, the last time it was treated to a nice new smart outfit was 2006! Yes, the same year Nelly Furtado was hogging the top spot in music charts with her “Maneater” – admittedly, a year we’d rather move on from!
Fast forward to 2015, and we proudly present a newly designed mobile-friendly Car Hire Centre:
Quite a few cobwebs had to be removed from the website, including updating the content (work is still in progress with this so bear with us!), speeding up the search, improving search results and ensuring the site was responsive and mobile-friendly. But above all, we gave our brand a smile!
You don’t need a large company or to outsource a lot of work when it comes to content creation – we are a small team creating diverse content for a range of our own websites. Although I am the in-house content writer and editor, the process involves the whole team, so there’s a little bit of elbow grease required to produce successful content! Here’s how we make it work:
The travel market is heavily oversaturated with content, and we are potentially coming at it from a dry angle – airports and airport parking, amongst others! So we are all about creating content that is going to be engaging and helpful to our users.
Just over a year ago here at Fubra we were busy preparing to interview over ten young individuals – all from within local area – for the two apprenticeship placements we’d advertised for. We were also a little apprehensive, as in most cases the CVs submitted were of someone very young, without previous work experience, without any know-how or exposure to an office work environment. However, we needn’t have worried, as what our candidates lacked in experience they made up for in enthusiasm and an eagerness to learn.
Paul Maunders, Fubra Ltd. co-founder and director, remembers: “We were looking to expand our marketing team, and so I began researching apprenticeships. I discovered the Social Media and Digital Marketing courses and felt that it would be a great fit for our business.”
In May 2014 Fubra Ltd. recruited two Digital Marketing apprentices, Will and Chris, who joined our marketing team and were trained both in-house and by the training provider Baltic Training in a range of link building techniques, SEO, content creation and inbound marketing, social media and affiliate partnership development. They have been key in testing some of our relaunched sites and mobile apps (such as Airport Parking Shop and Car Hire Centre); building online relationships and have taken part in our creative brainstorming sessions.
“I’m really happy with the contributions that they have made to our business since they joined,” said Paul Maunders. “So much so, we’re now looking for 2 more!”
We’re hiring! If you know someone who is considering becoming an apprentice and keen to earn as they learn, gain a qualification and get some work experience, send them our way. We will be announcing the two new apprenticeship in the next few weeks.