Tech1 (NI) Blog

Ecommerce in the UK

Administrator — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:21:05 +0000

E-commerce is currently much more buoyant in the UK than in US and this trend is likely to continue, throughout 2009. UK online retailers, according to statistics, have been quicker off the mark to max out their opportunities in the current adverse financial climate than their e-commerce counterparts across the pond. So says http://www.gbguide.com/blog/

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future

Administrator — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:37:28 +0000

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.

Denis Waitley

Eating Disorders Association NI : Feedback

Administrator — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:46:43 +0000

Hi Allan,

Just wanted to send you some feedback on the work that you have completed for our organisation.

We are delighted with the web-site and I am sure that it will be extremely helpful to people who are suffering from Eating Disorders. Thank you for such a competent and efficient service. I would recommend your company to others and would certainly use this service again.

Regards,

Jacqui

Noel Faller just wanted to say thanks

Administrator — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:55:28 +0000

Allan just wanted to say thanks for all the hard work you put into developing our website (www.faller.com). We are extremely happy with the results and it was a pleasure to deal with someone who seemed to know exactly what we wanted.

Now the site is up and running it is still nice to know that you are only a phone call away if we need to change or update anything.

Noel

Google Analytics : Why we use it

Administrator — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:44:14 +0000

Google Analytics is a feature which allows “webmasters”, designers/developers to monitor site traffic. Google Analytics breaks down your traffic into 3 categories:

* Direct Traffic: these are the people who typed in your URL into the address bar, bookmarked your site earlier, or followed a link from an email.
* Referral Traffic: this traffic arrives when someone is at another Web site and clicks on a link to your site.
* Search Engine Traffic: these people found you via a search at Google, Yahoo or another search engine.

In addition, you can also see which search terms people used to find your site under the Keywords tab.

Very very useful, and easy to install and use! More information available from here.

SEO Audit of AlanGilchrist.com

Administrator — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:56:57 +0000

Having just taken over and redesigned Alan’s site, we will be conducting a full SEO audit on the site over the coming week.

What on earth is an SEO audit though!

Well, in its simplest terms it covers three areas:

The Technical Audit of the code, navigation, structure, titletag/headlines.
The Content Audit – relevent content, targeted keywords, readability.
The Trust Audit – increasing inbound links, anchor text used, what pages are incoming – increasing outward links.

We’ll do a benchmark test to check levels and then after the audit, and then weekly for the next month or so; after that continual development of the content of the site to ensure that the copy is current, effective and well targeted.

SEO audits are an essential part of ongoing support for our clients.

Does your site need an audit? Then contact us and we will discuss how we can help you.

Reverse image search engine

Administrator — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 11:51:43 +0000

All web designers at some stage or other in their careers will have used, or are using, Google and other search engines to fond images for clients web sites. Sometimes they will even resort to taking images from competitors sites and passing them off as their own.

In all too many cases the likes of Corbis and Getty will chase down images used and not purchased/licensed by them.

I stumbled across TinEye which allows you to upload and image and actually see where that same image is being used, even modifed versions, you can even use it to find out if hi-res versions of your image exist!

Check out their own blog and some cool search results for examples.

Site redesign and development : alangilchrist.com

Administrator — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:01:25 +0000

We have just about finished redesigning and reworking alangilchrist.com, a site for Alan who, as Northern Ireland’s Top Hypnotherapist, has now been in practice at the Belfast Hypnotherapy Centre for over 24 years and is the longest practising and most experienced Hypnotherapist in Northern Ireland, and is now practising in Spain.

The site originally developed by Alan himself was full of some excellent content, just need some restructuring. In conjunction with Alan Gilchrist we designed a suitable look and implemented that across the entire site.

You are encouraged to have a look at the site, and contact Alan if you are seriously trying to give up smoking, control your weight or fight any one of many phobias.

Thinking outside the box when dealing with clients – the no BS approach

Administrator — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:10:00 +0000

Despite some companies having a tried and tested approach with clients, we as web designers/developers should constantly be thinking of, and applying, new concepts in the client facing process. Personally I can appear very nervous when dealing with clients who – in many cases – simply don’t know what they want. Often, when its a redevelopment of an existing site I often feel like telling them “like it is” but always fail and almost capitulate and agree that minor changes are all that’s needed.

The other night I was flicking through Sky and stumbled over an old episode of Kitchen Nightmares, where Gordon Ramsay goes in and basically crushes a business and shows them how to rebuild it, properly and successfully, with his no-nonsense approach. This promted me to think, well if he can do that to his clients why can’t the same principal be applied to our clients when they are looking for advice on how to get their site working.

So, I watched a more episodes over the next few days to see if I could see a pattern that could be converted to some kind of model to follow, and this is what I found true in most cases:

Keep it simple – simplifying menus (sites) makes it easier for the kitchen (client) to manage and less choices make it easier for the customer to make a decision.
Feedback and communication – improve and document communication between the staff (designers/developers) and the customer (client) and end-users. Get regular feedback from visitors and customers to the restaurant (site). Act on that feedback.
Fresh produce of the highest available quality – restaurants need the freshes produce, and a website needs to be current and fresh as well, adding new content regularly (blogs for example).
Taste testing – testing whether its a new menu or a new website is essential. Beta testing high user interactive sites will pay dividends. Get real users who have little knowledge of the site, make sure that they can use it comfortably. Then test again.
Influencing customers – often Ramsay gets the restaurants to specialise in some way, so make sure that the web page is clear in what you want them to do next whether thats purchase, request more information or contact you etc.

One thing that really stands out is Gordon Ramsay’s passion, he really loves what he does, and if the restaurant owners can see that he is genuinely helping them then they ultimately succeed, when they see the critisicm as a dirrect slur on them and don’t accept it in the way its intended then the business, usually fails or returns to its previous level.

Tech1 are passionate about web sites and making your business succeed in the dautning world of the internet, your clients should be passionate about their website and their business, if not try to inject some passion into it, otherwise it will ultimately not reach its potential.

Good luck, and remember that sometimes a “no BS” approach works.

Tech1 on Twitter.com

Administrator — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 01:19:09 +0000

We’ve added a presence on twitter.com and will keep that uptodate along with our usual blogs.