Effective, Experienced & Ethical

We’re happy to have another client website has gone live; Portcullis Public Affairs. The website has been developed using the Content Management System Drupal.

People Analytics; the Google Diet

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Via: MSI

How users expect to find content

Recently I’ve been looking at website navigation and how this can fail in being useful to by a new user to a website. Sometimes you can get so wrapped up in the rest of the website design that you forget the most important part – the navigation.

Creative Data Exchange

We’ve been working with a Southampton based Data Exchange Solutions company to launch a new website in time for their attendance at the ATC Global conference in Amsterdam.

Boxfresh and the NME Awards 2012

We’ve had a rather exciting month shooting a video for the NME Awards Tour. Boxfresh are sponsoring this years ‘Best New Band’ category at the NME awards and required a film to encourage music fans, who attending the awards tour, to enter the Boxfresh competition to win tickets to the main event.

We don’t read web pages. We scan them.

One very difficult part of creating a website is thinking about the content that is going to be making up the site, more specifically the copy. What words do I put into my new website to make users stop and spend some time here?

When discussing this stage with clients, it’s sometime difficult to convey just how important it really is. The owner of the new website is often very passionate and knowledgeable about the product and/or service they provide. Whilst this detail is great for their business, it’s not wonderful for the copy.

We don’t tend to read pages in full like we would do a book, we scan them looking for words or phrases that jump out based on what we’re looking for.

Once we’ve found the information we’re looking for, we might stop and dig a layer deeper to find out more. Even at this point, it is important to keep the content to short paragraphs because it’s difficult to read a lot of text on a screen.

If you’re selling a product or service, it is important to remember this. People are time poor these days so it is vital they can pick out the information they want and act on it. If they scan your page, mental tick-off the things they’re looking for and can easily get in touch you’re onto a winner.

I’m not a copywriter, but I understand how important it is to employ the services of a good one. ­ Here are a few tips I’ve learn’t over the years:

• Introductory texts are usually too long; what is on this page? Why should I want to read it?
• If you’re writing copy for the first time; write your draft, halve it, then halve it again
• Highlight keywords
• Use bulleted lists and sub-headings

If you’re looking for more information on writing for the web, check out Jakob Nielson’s 1997 Alertbox.

Heinz ‘Get Well’ Soup is Back

I saw this last year and thought it was a fantastic idea by Heinz and their agency; its creative and a perfect way to engage with soup fans.  Hot soup is a perfect compliment whilst you’re feeling under the weather and are cocooned inside your duvet on the sofa….

Battle of Hastings / Justin Timberlake

This is brilliant! Created by a couple of history teachers to inspire their students; it’s pretty catchy. A great example of thinking about your audience and how to engage them; I bet this makes history revision much more fun.

Zeebox: Have you tried it yet?

Zeebox integrates TV listings, social media and conversations around the programmes that you like to watch. Zeebox bills itself as the ‘new way to watch television’ and you can download it as an app to use whilst you have your feet-up in front of the TV.

Be The Boss

  Are you ready to escape the rat race? Leave behind busy, delayed trains, long office hours and use 2012 as your springboard to make a career change that makes you boss!