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Archive for the ‘online’ Category

The web is changing, is your website keeping up?

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

Social media, e-commerce, apps, blogs, search engine optimisation, analytics, open source development platforms… The web is continually evolving, and in case you missed it, the ‘next generation’ of users has arrived en masse. They are brand-promiscuous, savvy, iThing-wielding surfers with the patience of a five year old and the ability to text with their eyes shut.

User experience has to be at the heart of any website. So, are you keeping up?

For organisations that need to engage with their audiences online, the pace of change can be daunting. Websites designed just two or three years ago can already look tired and worse still, can frustrate time-poor users into giving up and clicking elsewhere. Dated typography and colour palettes, poor or overly complex site navigation and a lack of social media integration or interactivity are just some of the signs that a website has had its day. If this sounds familiar, then it’s time for a re-think.

I CAN’s commitment to continued improvements

Remedy has been working with I CAN, the children’s communication charity, on their Adopt a Word campaign since it’s launch in 2008. The online fundraising site www.adoptaword.com allows users to adopt their favourite words for a year, and has generated over £100k for the charity. The success of the site can be partly attributed to the client’s commitment to continued improvements, resulting in several functionality updates and front-end facelifts over the past three years. Along with social media integration, this has ensured that site visitors keep coming back, spread the word amongst their networks and re-adopt their words.

Trafalgar Leasing gets a website upgrade

Recently, vehicle leasing specialists, Trafalgar Leasing, asked us to bring their website up to date. We designed their original website back in 2004 and were delighted to have the opportunity to work with them again.

The Trafalgar brand identity, also created by Remedy in 2004, had stood the test of time, so the new site was designed to complement the existing logo and colour palette. As part of the re-design, the entire site was moved onto the WordPress platform, providing the client with far more editorial control and a more user-friendly interface.

Trafalgar Leasing website design – before and after

Managing Director David Gould admitted some initial reluctance to updating the website, but after its re-launch was delighted with the results.

“… looking at my new website, it is light years away from the original one. I can now proudly direct others to my site as evidence of what can be achieved.”

So whether you feel your existing website has kept pace or not, there is one thing for certain – the web is going to continue to evolve, as will user expectations. Websites that keep up, will ultimately be more successful in attracting visitors and hanging onto them.

Tags: analytics, e-commerce, search engine optimisation, social media, user experience, web design, web technologies, website, website design
Posted by Jonathan in design, online, social media | Add a response

Working with designers #3

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

You’ve chosen a design agency, now what?

Here’s part 3 of Remedy’s presentation delivered at the Not For Profit Technology Show last November. To get up to speed, see part 1, preparing a website design brief and part 2, choosing the right design agency

So, you’ve gone through the pitch process and chosen the ideal agency to design your website, but how do you make sure your project stays on track? Stick to these steps and you shouldn’t go too far wrong:

1) Agree a realistic project schedule
“As soon as possible”. That’s the answer we invariably get when asking the question, “When do you want your new site to go live?”. That’s all well and good, but bearing in mind you will have to be part of the process, you need to take into account your own workloads and timescales. How quickly can you collate draft copy? How quickly will you and your team be able to agree and sign-off the various design stages? A website schedule has to be workable both ways, so try to avoid setting unreasonable deadlines that will put unnecessary pressure on you or your agency.

2) Get the site architecture right
Get the site map and functional spec right and don’t proceed with the design process until you are 100% sure everyone has agreed what your new site is going to do, it’s overall structure and how the user is expected to navigate their way around. Although not always totally practical, one simple rule that will make your site user-friendly is if you are never more than two clicks away from where you want to be. Once the architecture is agreed, then you’re into the design concept stage.

3) Insist on choice
Unless your design agency has to stick rigidly to an existing page template or hard-and-fast design guidelines, you should insist on a choice of design routes (budgets permitting of course). For the initial concept stage, a Home page and one other page should be enough to base your decision on.

4) Allow room for creativity
You will most likely have seen websites that you admire. By all means, share these with your design agency, but try to avoid being so prescriptive that you stifle the designer’s own creativity. Try to remain open-minded at the concept stage and try not to force a design aesthetic on your agency that leaves no room for experimentation and means you end up with a website that looks like everyone else’s.

5) Judge creative work against the brief
You have gone to the trouble of agreeing a great creative brief (see part 1 for details), make sure it is at hand when judging the design concepts. It’s at this point that personal likes and dislikes can get in the way of rational thinking. If the design concept answers the brief, then it probably isn’t far wrong. Of course, you and other key stakeholders need to be happy with the design, but as soon as the decision process starts to get tricky (which it often does when there is more than one person involved), the brief will add clarity.

6) If you don’t like it, say so
You will have to live with your website for quite a while. All of your clients/supporters/service users/staff/volunteers/competitors will look at it and have an opinion. It will probably be one of the most important elements in your marketing mix, so you’ve got to be happy with it. If there’s something you don’t like, make sure you say so at the concept stage, but equally, you need to say why. Is it a personal dislike, is it inappropriate for your brand’s personality, is there a lack of visual focus…? Whatever your objections, talk them through with the design agency so that they can understand your issues and find a better solution.

7) Ask for other opinions
Even if you are very single-minded and are convinced the design concepts are spot-on, it doesn’t hurt to get other opinions. Whoever you wish to confer with, before they give you their ha’penny’s worth, make sure they understand the brief. The website design should be judged with a proper understanding of what you are trying to achieve and who you are talking to.

By this stage, you should have a website design that meets the basic criteria of the brief and that you are happy with. If you’re not completely there yet, it may be a case of tweaking one of the design concepts. But all of the preliminary work in getting the brief right and choosing the most suitable design agency should have made getting to this point as smooth as possible.

With a couple of pages designed to everyone’s satisfaction, your agency will now need to design other page templates that can be applied across the whole site. Oh, and by the way, have you supplied all of the copy and other content yet? If not, this is the point where the schedule can grind to a halt.

So, now we go from the design stage to the build. Definitely not the time to take your eye off the ball. There are some simple guidelines that you can follow, but that will have to wait for another blog post.

In the meantime, please let us know if you have found this series of posts useful and of course, if you have any tips to add that will help anyone through the website design and build process, we’d love to hear from you.

Tags: Institute of Fundraising, IoF, Not For Profit Technology Show, web design, website, website design, working with a design agency
Posted by Jonathan in design, online | Add a response

Image size, resolution and all that jazz

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

Ever had an image that looks amazing on your desktop, but looks like a dog’s dinner in print? If so, you should find this simple guide useful.

Resolution, dpi, CMYK, RGB, it’s easy to get lost in jargon and the science of it all, so we have attempted to keep this post as practical and straight forward as possible.

Topics covered include:

– Screen resolution
– Image size
– pixels and DPI
– CMYK and RGB

If you feel the urge to get more technical, please see the links at the bottom of the page.

What is screen resolution?
Screen resolution means the amount of pixels your monitor displays. A monitor with a screen resolution of 640 x 480 pixels will display 640 pixels (width) and 480 pixels (height). There are different screen resolutions you can use depending on the physical size of your monitor. Generally speaking, the larger the monitor the higher the screen resolution it can display.

Here’s how to check your screen’s resolution: On a PC choose Start – Control Panel – Display – Settings – screen resolution, on a Mac, choose Apple Menu – System Preferences – Displays.

Screen resolution v Print
Compared to print, your computer monitor is a low-resolution medium. Monitors display approximately 72 to 92 pixels per inch of resolution, whereas most four-colour printing uses anywhere between 150 and 300 dots per inch (the print equivalent of pixels – number of dots of ink printed per square inch).
Even though your monitor has a significantly lower resolution, the difference in quality between screen and print may not be immediately obvious.

Ink v Light
Four colour printed images use four printing inks; cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK) and depend on reflected light. In contrast, your monitor displays images using a combination of Red, Green and Blue (RGB) light to deliver millions of colours with a greater range of contrast and colour intensity.

This is why, even though your monitor is lower in resolution, it will display colour images that look as good, if not better than those at an equivalent size in print.

How big can I print an image?
In reality you can print any image as large as you wish. However, the larger an image is printed, the more clearly you will start to see the pixels that make up the image. As a rule of thumb, the image quality will be determined by the resolution of the image and the resolution it is being printed at.

For example, if you have an image that is 300 x 100 pixels and it is being printed at 200 dpi (dots per inch), here is the calculation: 300 ÷ 200 = 1.5, 100 ÷ 200 = 0.5, therefore if the image is printed at 1.5 x 0.5”, you will get exactly 200 dots per inch.

File size and resolution
There is a direct correlation between the resolution of an image and its file size. The higher the resolution, the bigger the file. File size is generally referred to as ‘Kb’ or ‘K’ (kilobytes) or as ‘Mb’, ‘M’ or ‘Megs’ (megabytes). For the sake of argument, a megabyte is equivalent to 1000 kilobytes.

A practical image size guide
The following sizes are a rough guide only, but should help in judging whether a raw image file is large enough to reproduce well.

20Kb – 100Kb: viewed on screen as a ‘thumbnail’ image
100Kb – 250Kb: viewed on screen as a header (approx 700 x 400 pixels)
500Kb – 1Mb: print (approx 25mm x 25mm)
1Mb – 2.5Mb: print (approx A5)
2.5Mb – 4Mb: print (approx A4)
4Mb – 10Mb: print (approx A3)
25Mb – 100Mb: print (larger poster formats)

Please note, if you are supplying Jpegs, these are compressed files. Small Jpeg files (up to 250K) are generally used online and will be left compressed. When Jpegs are opened in Photoshop to be edited or retouched ready for print artwork, they are uncompressed and the resultant file size will be significantly larger.

There is no formula for judging how large a Jpeg will become when uncompressed as it is dependent on the complexity of the image. If in doubt, send files to your design team who will be able to help.

For a more technical take on this subject, visit:
www.bowhaus.com
www.photo.net

Tags: CMYK, dpi, repro, RGB, screen resolution, screen v print
Posted by Jonathan in online, photography, print | Add a response

How to write for the web

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

Your website is a powerful selling tool. Conversely, with poorly written copy, it could do more damage than good. Before we talk about how to write for the web, let’s look at some research conducted by www.useit.com into ‘How users read on the web’.

Like many usability studies, they have come to the conclusion that people read websites very differently to the way they read printed literature – they don’t read, they scan. In their research, they found that only 16% of users read every word when navigating a new web page.

To measure the effectiveness of different styles of copy, they asked users to perform the same tasks on five different versions of the same website. They produced a control version using what they call “marketese”, a concise version, a scannable version, an objective version and a version that combined all three ‘improvements’ in writing style.

Here’s the control version:

Nebraska is filled with internationally recognized attractions that draw large crowds of people every year, without fail. In 1996, some of the most popular places were Fort Robinson State Park (355,000 visitors), Scotts Bluff National Monument (132,166), Arbor Lodge State Historical Park & Museum (100,000), Carhenge (86,598), Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer (60,002), and Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park (28,446).

Probably no wonder that this didn’t score particularly well.

Here’s the most successful version:

In 1996, six of the most-visited places in Nebraska were:

•   Fort Robinson State Park
•   Scotts Bluff National Monument
•   Arbor Lodge State Historical Park & Museum
•   Carhenge
•   Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer
•   Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park

In this particular test, the latter copy version measured a 124% improvement in usability. So…

What are the rules for writing good web copy?

Here are some of the hard and soft rules to get the most out of your web copy, in no particular order:

1) First things first
What is the most important thing you need to get across? Don’t be afraid to sum it up right at the top of the page.

2) SEO
Yes, it’s massively important, but don’t let Search Engine Optimisation get in the way of a good read. You know the sort of thing;
Remedy Creative is a creative agency that understands creativity. Our creative remedies bring creativity to clients that need remedies that are both creative and…

3) Scannability
Make the page easy to digest for anyone who wants to scan the copy. Highlight keywords. Pull out useful facts in sub-headings. Keep it as short as possible.

4) Jargon
Unless you are talking tech to techies, keep the jargon to a minimum.

5) Audience
What does your audience want to read? What language do they want to read it in? Knowing who you are talking to is one of the first steps to copy that works.

6) Tone of voice
You have a brand with values. Professional, energetic, cutting-edge, fun, established, reliable… Whatever your values are, the tone of voice of your web copy needs to be in line.

7) Proof
Make sure you read your copy through (printing it out is a massive help) before it gets published. If you have access to a professional proof reader or trusted colleague with a good command of English, get them to read it too. One typo in the middle of a beautifully written paragraph will lose credibility and undo all of your hard work.

8) Call to action
What do you want people to do once they have read your copy? Whatever it is, make their life easy. Provide links, a clearly signposted contact page or a highlighted contact number.

9) Descriptive links
Wherever possible, make your links descriptive. Don’t write ‘to find out more about writing for the web click here’, when you could write ‘click here to find out more about writing for the web’.

10) To write or not to write?
An A-Level in English doesn’t make you a great copywriter. It’s no big deal, we just need to play to our strengths. If there is no one in your organisation who has a way with words, then get a professional on the case.

Tags: copywriting, effective copywriting, writing for the web
Posted by Jonathan in copywriting, online | Add a response

Talking Point – a redesign from top to toe

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

We’ve been providing design and usability consultancy for I CAN’s Talking Point website since 2005.

This year, The Communication Trust launched ‘Hello’, a national campaign to support childrens’ communication needs. Talking Point was chosen as the key information resource at the centre of the Hello campaign.

So in expectation of lots more traffic, it was time for a major overhaul – site structure, content, design, the whole shebang. Remedy were involved from day one in user focus groups with parents and teaching professionals.

Card sorting in user-testing sessions & wire-frames

First stage designs were also tested and when the site had been developed, we helped facilitate pre-launch testing before the official launch on January 1st.

The newly launched site: www.talkingpoint.org.uk features a database-driven progress checker, interactive help and advice tool and editable jQuery-based navigation.

Our input:

Information architecture consultation
User experience & graphic design – wire-framing, navigation, design & ongoing design support
Copywriting
User testing – card sorting and focus groups, both pre and post-launch

Visit: www.talkingpoint.org.uk

Tags: focus groups, i can, talking point, user testing, website design
Posted by Jason in design, online | Add a response

Hurrah for Richard Gribbon!

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

If it were possible for me to celebrate an individual’s achievements by officially naming a day after them, the 14th September would be forever more ‘Richard Gribbon Day’.

It started out as a normal day in the office, that’s until I decided to tackle British Telecom again about a mix-up with our phone lines. We had moved out of our old office back in June and had just found out from the new tenants that one of our phone lines and our broadband (which were supposed to have been canceled by BT) were still live. So my mission was this… speak to BT, make sure that they were not going to charge us for the past three months, and get the relevant information from them so the new tenants could take over those services. Simple? You would think…

So I started by calling the main BT business number. An hour and a half later I had spoken to BT Business, BT Retail, BT Billings, the BT Movers team and was eventually put on hold for Customer Options for about 20 minutes listening to a lady repeatedly telling me how important my call was to her; before I finally lost the will to live and hung up.

Then on BT’s business support web page, I spotted a little graphic that said ‘Chat online to one of our support agents’. Desperation sometimes makes you do strange things, so I clicked on it and typed in my question. I had to admit, my expectations were a little ‘on the low side’ at this point.

A slight pause and then a message appeared in the chat box…

James: Hi, my name is James. I am reviewing your question, please wait a moment
James: The complaint team cannot raise any orders to cancel any services for a customer. That has to be done by the sales team
James: I will transfer you to the online sales team regarding this matter.
James has disconnected. (Oh great, here we go again – wasn’t even aware I had contacted the complaint team!)
Richard Gribbon has joined the chat.
Richard Gribbon: Hi, my name is Richard Gribbon. I am reviewing your question, please wait a moment
Lisa Casson: OK – but the service should have been canceled by your movers team back in June. Have only just found out from a new tenant that has moved into our old building that the line is still in operation and so is the broadband service. The new company have requested that the line be transferred to them (they are going to use a different provider) but i need to make sure that 1. we will not be billed for any line rental or broadband charges since we moved out in June and 2. that I can get a MAC Code and pass this onto the new tenants. I have been passed through at least 5 people at BT this morning and I am still nowhere. Please HELP! Lisa
Lisa Casson: Hellooo? Anybody there…..
Lisa Casson: Richard? Have you lost the will to live? Join the club.
Communication with the RightNow Chat service has been lost. Please wait while attempts are made to restore the
connection. Disconnection in 240 seconds.
Connection resumed.
Lisa Casson: Richard – are you OK? If you can’t help with my query, just let me know that you are OK.
Lisa Casson: Please help…………………………………
Communication with the RightNow Chat service has been lost. Please wait while attempts are made to restore the
connection. Disconnection in 240 seconds.
Connection resumed.
Richard Gribbon: what is the line number you are talking about?
Lisa Casson: Richard you are alive! The number is 01892 614789. The BT reference given on the confirmation of
transfer letter is WLRSBv3.0p.
Richard Gribbon: 1 draper street tunbridge wells TN4 0PG
Lisa Casson: Yes that is our old business address. We moved from there in June and that line and the broadband were supposed to be canceled then. A company called Trophy Telecom have now moved in and want to take over the line and transfer it to another provider.
Communication with the RightNow Chat service has been lost. Please wait while attempts are made to restore the
connection. Disconnection in 240 seconds.
Connection resumed.
Lisa Casson: Richard? Richard? Oh god, I’ve lost you again.
Richard Gribbon: the mac code can be obtained from our customer options team, that deals with the broadband. if you place a stop order on the line that means that the new crowd can take it over and restart it, but this means that you are still liable for the calls and charges as the line is in your name, i will see how else i can help
Lisa Casson:I was on hold for 20 minutes to the customer options team this morning and gave up. I definitely want to make sure that Remedy Creative is not liable for any future charges on that line and also not for any since we moved out in June. I have an email to your Movers team that confirmed what we wanted to do with that line and it was clearly ignored. Want me to send it to you? The reference given to me by the Movers team was B41548ND. Please hang in there for me….
Richard Gribbon: on taking advice, the best thing to do is, leave everything as is, the new owner gets her company to apply to take over the line with their company from BT, that will take 10 days to go from BT to their supplier. alas you will have to go through to customer options team and get the migration code, they are the only department that can give you it. As for the billing issue i can raise a complaint issue for you, explaining that a move has been done and they did not cease of the original services and therefore you are not liable for the bills and charges since the move.
Lisa Casson: Ok so when they transfer the line to their new provider, our contract with BT for that line stops anyway?
Richard Gribbon: yes, because the line is no longer with BT
Richard Gribbon: what is your contact number?
Lisa Casson: OK got it. What about the broadband. Does this work in the same way? If i give them the MAC Code
presumably when they transfer the broadband, our contract will end anyway?
Richard Gribbon: yes they take over the broadband connection in 5 working days
Lisa Casson: Our contact number is 01892 614761. We like this number. Please do not cut this one off.
Richard Gribbon: now that will cost you….. joke
Richard Gribbon: calling you now
Lisa Casson: Oooh good. Look forward to it

And call he did. Not only did he call, but he was the only person I had spoken to at BT that day who was willing to try and get to the bottom of things. I appreciate that certain departments deal with certain things but when you are at the customer end, you often get the impression that as soon as the operator realises the complexity of the issue, they simply pass you on to someone else.

But not Mr Richard Gribbon. Oh no, he raised an investigation for me to explore why the services hadn’t been cancelled as requested. He put a note on the account to ensure that we will not be charged for the services and then he advised me to get myself “a cup of tea and a blanket” before putting me through to the Customer Options people to get the MAC code – apparently the queue can be quite long. Actually at that point in proceedings a bit of gentle humour and some honest management of my expectations was appreciated, as when they answered after a ‘mere’ ten minutes I felt that a small victory had been won.

Online chat as a support mechanism? I’ve never had all that much success with it before and to be honest BT’s system disconnecting a few times was a little irritating – but not as much as being on hold and repeatedly being told how much you are valued.

It’s the individuals behind the technology that make the difference to the consumer in the end and if you ever find yourself needing to contact BT about a problem, click on that little chat icon and pray that it’s Mr Richard Gribbon who responds.

Tags: remedy creative
Posted by Lisa in business, online | Add a response

Online shop launch for Pet Works

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

We designed the brand new website for our client Pet Works in May, and now we’ve developed and launched their online shop, selling an expanding range of quality pet food and accessories from the likes of Rogz, Arden Grange and Buster.

The client has been working away in the background for several weeks uploading product details and images via the integrated CMS and eCommerce management system, and we think it’s looking fantastic.

Take a look at: http://www.pet-works.net/shop/

Next step, their secure pet owner’s club area. Watch this space…

pet_works_shop

Tags: CMS, eCommerce, Pet Works
Posted by Jonathan in online, remedy | Add a response

NetworkFlow website – do you know your IPSec from your MPLS?

Monday, December 14th, 2009

If there was ever a website that HAD to work, it’s one for a specialist business Internet provider. And NetworkFlow is right up there, providing network solutions for high-profile clients like Microsoft and Suzuki.

For those that need to know the ins and outs of MPLS IPVN Ethernet services or IPSec/VPN networks, we created a website that lets them easily navigate through tons of techy stuff and most importantly, click through for an instant online quote.

networkflowhomepage

Since creating the site, we’ve been asked to design online quote, estimate and presentation templates, and a product brochure.

The site works a treat, but the proof of the pudding as always is how happy the client is:

“The new website looks fantastic and it’s performing really well for us. The integration of the CMS with our quote engine and the switch over from our old site were absolutely seamless. Please pass on my thanks to everyone at Remedy.”

If you want a quick quote or just to blind yourself with science, have a look at www.networkflow.com

Tags: CMS, network flow, remedy creative, website
Posted by Jonathan in online, remedy | Add a response

Adopt a Word gets 1st birthday makeover

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Adopt a Word, the fundraising website we designed for children’s communication charity, I CAN, reached its first birthday in October. To celebrate, we’ve given the site a makeover by adding some exciting new functionality. Visitors can now explore a dynamic ‘wordiverse’ containing thousands of words by hovering over an interactive panel. Words that are available for adoption appear in green text, those already adopted are orange, celebrity adoptions are purple and corporate adoptions are shown in blue. There have been over 1900 adoptions in the first year – but there are still plenty to choose from!

wordiverse

We have also introduced an interactive word wheel to explore the different corporate and celebrity adoptions – Terry Jones has recently plumped for ‘python’ and Sir Paul McCartney has adopted the word ‘gift’.

You can now also send a gift email directly from the site when you adopt a word for someone else. Words make great presents for those ‘difficult to buy for people’ on your Christmas shopping list or to help solve those last minute panics. Best of all, by adopting a word you’ll be helping children with communication difficulties.

To check out the new wordiverse and to adopt a word visit www.adoptaword.com

Tags: adopt a word, i can, remedy creative
Posted by Jonathan in online, remedy | Add a response

Archive for the ‘online’ Category

Working with designers #3

Image size, resolution and all that jazz

How to write for the web

Talking Point – a redesign from top to toe

Hurrah for Richard Gribbon!

Online shop launch for Pet Works

NetworkFlow website – do you know your IPSec from your MPLS?

Adopt a Word gets 1st birthday makeover

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Archive for the ‘online’ Category

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