Archive for the ‘Website Design’ Category

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Are tablets the way forward?

Monday, January 16th, 2012

6 months ago I purchased a Motorola Xoom tablet as the old laptop was creaking and groaning and the wife kept pinching my work laptop. I am a big fan of the Android operating system, and having an HTC Desire HD phone, I soon got to grips with the Android 3.0 interface.

Having passed the tablet onto my wife – who loves it, we have discovered a few frustrations and it’s not with the device itself. It’s with websites you view. Now I am the first to appreciate that tablets are new to the market in comparison with the laptop / notebook however they have been purchased in significant numbers for the past 2 years. So why are some of the big players still not optimising for tablets.

Problem 1 – You are a Phone

When serving a page to a tablet, the server thinks it’s a mobile phone. This often means a text version or stripped down version of the website is made available. Now if this website has the same functionality as the “normal” version then all is good, however many websites lose key functionality.

Example – The Next website allows you to view products and purchase, however if you want to make a payment to your next account, this function does not exist.

Solution – offer a view full website link which will over-ride the server selection and ask it to serve the full website

Problem 2 – Download the App

Mobile and tablet applications are an excellent way of getting consumers interacting with your brand. They can offer key functionality to the mobile and tablet user, designed in a way which makes best use of their interface. There are 2 key issues that crop up time and again

- We’ve developed the iPhone app but have no Android App – missing a real chunk of the market given that the Android platform is now more popular worldwide than the iOS (source Gartner).

- We have an Android App but your version of Android is too old / new

Example – The Tesco application was launched on iPhone approximately 6 months ago and has only just come to Android. However if you are on 3.0, then you cannot find it in the Marketplace. Oh yeah the mobile version of the website is terrible for shopping.

Solution – sort out mobile version of website.

In short, tablets are another medium to which people are consuming content, be it text, images, video and it is important that your brand is accurately represented within this “mobile” marketplace. If you would like to chat to us further about how to make your online presence penetrate further into the mobile / tablet market, please give us a call on 0114 2679277.

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Vertebrate Graphics pushing brands global

Monday, November 21st, 2011

Vertebrate Graphics has had a trio of successes in pushing new and old brands alike to a global marketplace.

Vertebrate Graphics specialises in graphic design and web design for the outdoor leisure market, having worked on outdoor pursuits programmes for Adidas, the BBC, the National Trust as well as familiar brands such as Scarpa, Mountain Equipment, The BMC and Rab.

Recently their skills have been employed to great success in the global market.   New work and websites have been seeing significant overseas interest. First up start-up company Steepedge (steepedge.com), brain-child of Brian Hall and John Porter. The film download and streaming site, has rapidly become the world’s largest collection of climbing, skiing, biking, caving, canoeing and adventure films, significant overseas subscribers has meant the company, still in its first months of life, is planning foreign language stand alone sites. Brian Hall commented, ‘slick functionality and a robust website coupled with an unrivalled collection of new and historic films has made the site very appealing to the global market’.

Second up is the massive success of the the revamped Rab (rab.uk.com) website, already with dedicated UK and US sites, a roll out of key European sites is well under way for spring launch. Latest stats show an increasing use of the site from overseas, with some countries showing a 100% increase in views compared to the old Rab website.

Third up is Vertebrate Publishing’s quiet bit of empire building, already well respected as a leading producer of outdoor leisure guidebooks to climbing, walking and cycling in the UK, recent deals with Italian, German and US publishers has significantly extended the reach of its literature, while overseas agents are happily selling UK guidebooks on their behalf. This summarised by Vertebrate Publishing’s winning the best international guidebook award at the Banff Mountain Film and Book festival 2011 for their Peak District Bouldering Guidebook.

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Why pay for your software

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

No this is not a list of links to download dodgy licence keys or cracked versions of software…. but it is amazing how many people do not know about the free open source alternatives available. Yes products such as Outlook, Word and Excel are very polished and do work very well – but do you know about the alternatives? Here are a few to wet your appetite:

Thunderbird

Mozilla’s answer to Outlook. With a user-friendly interface, simple instructions and the opportunity to get into some real customisation with themes – why not try something different. It is well supported with many free add-ons to help you get the best from the software.

Find out more about Thunderbird (link opens in a new window)

Libre Office

This is an open source version of Microsoft Office. Very similar to Open Office, it has a version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Visio in one easy to use FREE package. It will even import all your existing Office documents as well as saving the documents back into their Office formats. Not a bad deal considering the same product from Microsoft will cost you over £400.

Find out more about Libre Office (link opens in a new window)

Bring out the GIMP

Whenever anyone mentions this software, it will raise an eyebrow or two. GIMP is a free graphics package which provides much of the functionality contained within Photoshop. Whilst I will concede it does not have the same polish as PS, it does provide a good starting point. Chances are that if you require something more advanced, you will be getting paid for your work, so should be able to splash out on PS.

Find out more about GIMP (link opens in a new window)

So before you shell out for the next software purchase, have a look at the alternatives which may save you a bit of money.

You can find more information about software alternatives at www.osalt.com.

Much of the open source software is supported by donations, so if you do use the software, please remember to at least think about donating to the developer who sank many many hours of hard work into delivering a great product for you.

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Traffic Traffic everywhere….

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

But not a sale in sight !!!

Many clients are often impressed by the level of traffic that their website is receiving. It’s a very similar principal to walking down the high street and seeing  a busy shop. “Wow they must be raking it in”. Well the shop may be busy but how long is the queue at the cash tills? In a nutshell, people may be attracted to go in the front door, but are they buying goods?

The website is no different in this respect; high numbers of visitors do not equate to a high number of sales. So what are some the key barriers which stop your visitors making a purchase?

Navigation – can I find the product I want?

Price – not just the product price, think about the addition of VAT as well as any delivery charges which may be added during the checkout process. How much has that added to the customer’s inital outlay?

Poor Images – would you buy a product if you can’t see it?

Poor Descriptions – I want to know all this product can do for me and if you don’t tell me, Ill go somewhere else. However if you give me too much information which is badly organised, it will be too much to take in and I will go somewhere else. A fine balance – yet a very necessary one.

Stop Asking me Questions – if I have to fill out form after form just to buy a single item, chances are that I will be put off. Imagine just wanting to buy a pint of milk from the supermarket on Christmas Eve with queues stretching as far as the eye can see – just not fun

Attracting the wrong type of customer – if you don’t deliver abroad, the thousands of daily visitors from the USA are just leaving disappointed.

Non existent offers or promotions – make sure all you offer information is up to date. If you have a promotional code offering 20% off, don’t make the customer jump through hoops to get it – or worse find out that it no longer exists

All this information is easily managed via a website statistics package such as Google Analytics. This is free and can be easily installed within in your website by your web developer.

Using tools like these can help you identify areas of the website which require improvement as well as the sections which are working. Do your research before making knee jerk changes to the pages on your website. It’s your website, it’s your business – make sure it’s doing everything for you.

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Is it time for a spring clean?

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

Running any business can prove testing at any time but surely your website is doing everything it can to promote your business. Well is it?

It’s often the case that many small businesses spend so much time with their clients, the begin to neglect their own marketing material. It can often be very difficult to step back from your own brand and evaluate it objectively. Focusing on the business website, here are a few tips to help you identify some areas for improvement and perhaps a spring clean of the website might not be a bad idea.

First impressions count

Is your website up to date or is your latest news a few months old and the range of products and services out of date. Finding a website that has up to date content provides confidence to the visitor that you are on the ball and provides an instant impression of professionalism.

I want to make a change – Can I make the change?

Your website should inform visitors about your business in a clear and engaging manner. Keeping your services and products up to date is essential and having to contact your web developer or agency just to make the smallest of changes can be time consuming and costly.

Putting you in control of the content means you can easily manage the information on the site and with so many Content Management Systems (CMS) out there, you may want to ask the question “Why can’t I do this?”

I have no idea how many people visit my site.

You may receive a couple of enquiries a week from your website and be happy with this level of business, but how many people are looking at your website? Make sure you have a Google Analytics account and you use it. Getting information on the key trends, strengths and areas for improvements on your site will make your website work harder for you. Some of the results may surprise you.

Loads of homepage text – that’s good for SEO right?

People want to use your homepage as a signpost to the desired information. Are the most important / requested / profitable areas on the website easy for the visitor to find. if not, you need to look at the information hierarchy for the website and make sure that the visual language and typography reflects the required hierarchy. It’s no use burying Contact Us away in the corner if it is your main source of customer conversion on the website.

“What do I do now?”

“Well I’ve found the relevant information but I don’t have any visual stimulus to make the next step. I can’t find your email address, phone number, contact form – so what do you want me to do now”

It is surprising how many times this occurs and it will do nothing for the user experience. Don’t rely on the user finding the call to action, make sure they cannot miss it. If you have other relevant information, make sure they can easily find links to this.

If your site is exhibiting these symptoms, I recommend that you have a chat with your existing developer / agency and if you are not 100% happy with their response, why not have a chat with us on 0114 267 9277

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