Blog

About our hosting services

Posted 15th April 2013 | Category: Web Design |

As part of our dedicated web services we provide hosting directly to our clients, so you know you've got a 'one stop shop' for all your website needs. We can offer hosting by using the reseller service of Clook, who have been providing our hosting for nine years.

Fast hosting support

Most importantly for our clients, Clook are very quick at getting back to us with support issues. We always get a response within a few minutes, usually helping us to solve the problem straight away. Clook's staff are always clear and helpful, often going beyond their remit.

We still get most of our work from existing clients, and work hard to be transparent and clear with our clients. This is helped by working with Clook since 2004 and their clear communication. Read more...

Improve your website conversion in three easy steps

Posted 24th January 2013 | Category: Web Marketing |

If you're going to improve your website, start by deciding exactly what you want to improve, so you'll know when things are getting better. Be specific about what you want visitors to do on your website. For example, do you want them to spend longer on the whole website, or just on certain pages? Do you want more contact form submissions, or only those from certain prospects?

Whatever you decide, track it for a few months before you make any changes so you've got something to compare.

Get the basics right

You may get the greatest change by looking at the basics of your website. Before you worry about USPs and calls to action, try a user video service like www.whatusersdo.com to see how people encounter your website for the first time. You can set a simple task and watch a video of a user's screen with their commentary as they try to complete it. If you know your website well, you may be surprised by what confuses an average user. Read more...

HTML5, did you really mean that?

Posted 8th November 2012 | Category: Web Design |

Having recently undertaken a major overhaul to our own website, a large part of which was aligning the code to HTML5 standards, we stumbled into a minefield of semantics.

Now don't get me wrong, we have no issue <ironic>"understanding"</ironic> headers and footers. We don't fall to pieces whenever we have to consider if a set of links represents a "major" navigational block.

But, where we are consistently having to stop and think is in the definition of articles and sections. What represents a valid article, where should a section stop and start etc etc. This blog isn't intended to help define these things (there are plenty of excellent resources out there already - see HTML5 Doctor or the Mozilla Development Network for instance), but rather as a discussion as to whether the specific semantic elements of HTML5 are worth the effort. Read more...

Playing around with HTML iFrames

Posted 5th November 2012 | Category: Web Development |

There has been mentions recently in the press about websites using the browser full screen mode for spoofing websites. This can help those Phishing attacks trap even more users.

With this in mind we thought it might be interesting to see how far we could go spoofing a website by simply using HTML iFrames with separate websites content.

In this example we thought it would be amusing to include a negative news story about Microsoft regarding Apple within the Microsoft website. Read more...

6 essential web tools for search engine optimisation

Posted 30th October 2012 | Category: Web Marketing |

We've used a lot of different tools to improve search engine ranking for our clients, but there are some that we rely on time and time again. In this quick list, we'll explain which services you should be using, what they do, and how to get the most out of them.

1. Know your search terms - Google Adwords

You probably have an idea of which search terms you'd like your website to appear higher for, but how do you know if people are really using them? It's better to have a decent first page listing for a popular search term than be number 1 for a search term no-one actually uses.

Although Google Adwords is a paid advertising tool, it has the added bonus of telling you how many times the search terms of your choice have actually been used. This comes from the number of "impressions" that each keyword shows in your Adwords account. Start with a broad list of possibilities, be very specific in the keywords you choose, and run a small budget on Google Adwords to find your best search terms. Read more...