Archive for the ‘websites’ Category

The benefits of creating a mobile version of your website

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

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quickLinks: "(Quick Links)",
wordLookup: "Enter a word to look up:",
dictionaryLookup: "Dictionary lookup",
lookup: "lookup",
closeAllOpenTags: "Close all open tags",
closeTags: "close

tags”,
enterURL: “Enter the URL”,
enterImageURL: “Enter the URL of the image”,
enterImageDescription: “Enter a description of the image”,
fullscreen: “fullscreen”,
toggleFullscreen: “Toggle fullscreen mode”
};
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/* ]]> */

edToolbar()

  • Wider reach- As of August 2011 mobile browsing accounted for 7.84% of UK internet usage. Can you afford to miss out on making the experience an enjoyable one for these visitors?
  • Quicker load times – The majority of mobile visitors will be browsing your site over the 3G data network. While this method suffices for small tasks like checking email etc, loading a full website can take a long time. Therefore, serving an optimised and more efficient version of the website will help to reduce load times and potential frustration (waiting for websites on your phone can be a pain), especially if they are on a PAYG data plan.

    Speed test examples for www.christmasattheoldhall.co.uk…
    mobile site = 2.3secs
    desktop site = 5.7secs

  • Design/presentation – After spending hours designing and perfecting your website, it can be disappointing when you look at it for the first time in a mobile browser. The trouble is, the built-in browsers on iOS, Android, and modern Blackberry devices can display full desktop sites, but this doesn’t always have the desired effect and your desktop site which looks great on a laptop can look out of place and are often hard to comprehend and navigate. Offering a mobile version of the site optimised for mobile browsers will allow you to incorporate an improved design which is more user-friendly for visitors with a smaller screen size and appropriate navigation.

How we created a mobile version of the Old Hall Hotel’s “Christmas 2011″ website..

 

edCanvas = document.getElementById(‘content’);

Is your website in need of a springclean?

Thursday, March 24th, 2011
 

Does your website no longer refect the company you are? Or maybe it’s out of date, with a twitter feed or blog that hasn’t been updated for months?

Then you need help!

At the very least a website should be a window for your business. If your dream customer lhappened to look at your website, are you confident that they will be impressed with what they see?

If the answer is no then your website needs a refresh. Get in touch and get it sorted now, because you could be losing business. Ask for a content management system so that you can keep your website updated yourself with new products and new going forward, to keep it fresh. If you will use it, get a blog or twitter account. It’s easy to do.

At First Impression we try to make it easy for you. Give us a call, have a chat about what you would like your website to do for your business on 01457 857111.

More ideas of how to wise up to the web here> http://www.firstimpression.co.uk/resources/wise-up-to-the-web.php?campaignkw=wise-up-to-the-web

5 pre-launch tasks for your new website

Friday, March 18th, 2011

1) Have a colleague check the website – Before you launch any new website it is vital that you send a test link to a colleague for them to check the copy on each page on the website. This can help to identify spelling/grammatical mistakes that you may have missed because you were too involved with the website to notice such things.

2) Ensure all web forms are working – If you have a form on any of your pages be sure to send a test submission to make sure that you receive a copy and that all the correct information is processed and arrives as expected in your inbox.

3) Check all links are working on the site – Broken links can frustrate website visitors and can also look unprofessional so be sure to use a tool like the W3C link checker to check for any broken links.

4) Install Google Analytics – Adding analytics to your website is a great way to monitor who is visiting and it also provides an insight into how visitors are finding your site, which pages are most popular and import facts such as top landing/exit pages – Signup for Google Analytics.

5) Create an xml sitemap - Submit it to Google Webmaster Tools. This will help Google be aware of the pages that make up your website – Generate an xml sitemap >>

5 jquery plugins to add some class to your web design

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

So… your web design has been signed off, a developer has built the website and now you are ready to go live. Before you do, why not consider these great JQuery plugins which will help to add a touch of class to your design.

1) TipTip – TipTip is a very lightweight and intelligent custom tooltip jQuery plugin. It uses ZERO images and is completely customizable via CSS.
Visit Plugin Site | View demo (hover over the links top right)

2) liScroll – liScroll is a jQuery plugin that transforms any given unordered list into a scrolling News Ticker.
Visit Plugin Site | View demo

3) Cycle – This is a slideshow plugin that supports many different types of transition effects. It supports pause-on-hover, auto-stop, auto-fit, before/after callbacks, click triggers and much more.
Visit Plugin Site | View demo

4) infoBar – A simple plugin that displays an information bar that looks similar to what most browsers are doing to show messages to a user.
Visit Plugin Site | View plugin demo

5) prettyPhoto – prettyPhoto is a jQuery lightbox clone. Not only does it support images, it also support for videos, flash, YouTube, iframes. It’s a full blown media lightbox.
Visit Plugin Site | View plugin demo (click on prices)

5 quick SEO tips for your website

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

If you have a website that has never had much attention paid towards its Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) efforts and would like to have a go at improving how it ranks yourself, take a look at the following tips to get your started.

1) Create an xml sitemap – Submit it to Google Webmaster Tools, this will help to give Google an idea of the pages that make up your website and can help your site get indexed quicker.

2) Ensure that your website validates – Search engines like clean, valid code so be sure to validate it before you submit your site.

3) Generate high quality backlinks to your site – Search engines often use the number of backlinks that a website has as one of the most important factors for determining that website’s search engine ranking, popularity and importance.

There are several ways to gain backlinks to your website, these are usually time consuming but the rewards can be high if done right. However, the adage “Less is more” certainly rings true here as it is well documented that fewer high quality backlinks can have more weight than a larger amount of lesser quality links from smaller sites.

4) Check you alt tags – Before you launch your new website be sure to check your alt tags. Providing a human friendly/keyword rich description of an image in your alt tags can prove benefical towards your Search Engine Optimisation efforts.

5) Tweak your title tags for target keywords – If you want to improve your chances of ranking well for certain keywords, be sure to check the title tag of each key page on your website. Google gives a significant importance to the title tag of a website. Consider which terms you would like a page to be found for and include those terms in your title tag in a short, descriptive fashion. However, be careful not to stuff your title tag with too many keywords as this is the first line visitors will see in the search engine results so be wise and make your title tag human friendly. Read more on this topic >>