They are like buses…  you wait for ever for some decent “geek” events to come to your hometown, and then 2 arrive at once… 

So, if you’re into your web design, twitter, technology, etc.. and live in the Glasgow area, then I’d strongly suggest the following 2 events coming up in the very near future.

Glasgow Twestival

Held at the Living Room on St Vincent Street, the Glasgow leg of the popular Twitter Festival (or Twestival – sorry..  but I don’t make us these terms!) looks to be a good one!  Hosted by our good friend and Radio Clyde DJ Colin Kelly, the night will involve a mix of fun, networking, tweeting, live music, charity raffle and auction. 

It’s all for a good cause, with a nominated charity (voted for by the “tweegies” themselves) benefiting from the entry fee (just £10 – although some early bird tickets still available) as well as all funds made on the night.  Get along and say hi… and make sure you also add us to twitter – www.twitter.com/nsdesign in the meantime!

More at: http://glasgow.twestival.com/

Future of Web Design – Glasgow

Run by Ryan Carson (he’ll be the American in the hat) and the carsonified team, the popular FOWD event comes to Glasgow (a welcome first!) for a days worth of hard-core web design seminars, featuring the likes of Drew McLellan and (NSDesign client) Patrick Lauke.

Held on the 14th September at the Glasgow Film Theatre on Rose Street, it’s a must for anyone involved in the web design industry with tickets still available at £67.85.  A few of the NSDesign team will be there, so make sure you say hello… 

More at: http://events.carsonified.com/fowd/2009/tour

Lets hope this is a sign of things to come, and we see more big name events for this industry in Scotland soon. 

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Published in .net magazine, issue 187, April 2009

Deciding to work for free for one day only in December 2008 proved to be one of the most controversial decisions we had taken at NSDesign for a long time!

In one fell swoop we managed to upset the Design Business Association (DBA), were the subject of a two week forum thread in Design Week, and gained several column inches in the process.

We were accused by the DBA of de-valuing the work we do on a daily basis in the e-commerce, digital and design field. Was it genuine concern for our industry or complete over-reaction? I know which side of the fence I am standing on, and from the majority of online comments from others in this game, it appears I’m not alone.

I think that rather than taking away from the work we do, we actually opened up our service to a much wider audience who now realise a lot more the true value of our work and what it can add to businesses.

We did not intentionally set out to upset anyone or diminish the service that our industry provides. Nor did we intend it to be seen as a sinister or cynical stunt or ploy. It was simply a light-hearted idea, aimed at helping other SME’s and raising our own profile.

The idea (first suggested by our Head Developer Martin Sarsini) was to spread a little festive cheer helping out companies who were maybe struggling with the credit crunch or who were just looking for some advice on how to improve their web offerings.

The debate which raged in the weeks after the announcement initially took us by surprise, however I stand by the decision and am happy to announce that in just one day we helped out over 30 individuals and organisations (a few of which were existing clients) and had a seriously good time doing so.  

In this industry a lot of the work we get depends on pitching to potential new clients and showing them what can be achieved. If you look at what we did on the 19th December you could say it was simply a day of showcasing our work to prospective customers – no different to what we do an a regular basis, albeit highly focused into one day of this and nothing else!

The actual range of work carried out was pretty varied, with us doing everything from adding some festive sparkle (custom graphics and backgrounds of a Christmas nature) to a handful of websites, to general “spam advice” and consultancy on bulk-emailing and ensuring legal compliance with regard email communications.

In addition we conducted a number of site reviews, providing recommendations on improving design, usability and SEO, designed new logo concepts for a mobile-disco operator and online video production company, and setup a blog for a Cricket Club!
 
We also helped out several more companies with their various queries and not once did any of our team feel we were selling ourselves, the company, or the industry short. What we did feel was that we were opening up many new potential business opportunities for ourselves.

We may not benefit from any immediate “paid work” as a result of the efforts we went to, but those companies we helped out will certainly have us at the forefront of their minds when they do need the services we provide.

In this current economic climate small companies like ourselves need to be more flexible and creative and stand out from the crowd more than ever before, and I for one will do everything within my power to ensure that NSDesign continues to be the success it has been in the last few years.

2009 sees a decade in business for us and we are aiming to build on the strong foundations we have developed over the last ten years which culminated in us winning the “Outstanding Performing Business with less than 25 Full time Employees” – ROCCO Business Award.

There are many challenges for us (and indeed all design companies) in the year to come but no matter how tough a year it is, when Christmas is approaching next year, I would not hesitate to offer another “work for free” day – and unlike the DBA, do not expect our industry will crumble as a result!!
 

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Last week I had the pleasure of giving a guest lecture to some students from the School of Computing and Creative Technologies (CCT) at the University of Abertay in Dundee.

The focus of the talk was on the highs and lows of setting up and running your own business, drawing on experiences and “lessons learned” since founding NSDesign over 10 years ago.

All in all – a really good afternoon, for me, and also (from the great feedback) for the students also..  always inspiring to see them asking some good questions, many of them tied to the current economic issues we’re all facing today.  And of course – always nice when a few of them ask for jobs!

So thanks to everyone who attended, and for the many that have since follwed me on twitter.

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2009 is upon us, and while most of us are making personal resolutions that we’ll never keep (there’s simply too much chocolate kicking about from the kid’s selection boxes), owners of business websites should really be making a few of their own that WILL make a difference to the success of their site this year.

We therefore present to you, our Top Ten New Year’s Resolutions for your Business Website, a few of which you may already have signed up to personally!

Lose Weight

Like maybe yourself after some over indulgence on the turkey and Christmas pudding, your website has probably become a bit “bloated” over the past year or more…  Often put together in a piece-meal fashion, it’s not unusual to find bolt-on javascript examples, unnecessary inline css, html hacks, cool (but now very dated!) dynamic effects (you can lose the animated snow now).  Make a start by clearing out your code and get it back to a lean mean selling machine!  And if you really feel up for a challenge, get rid of the html tables and deprecated code, and ensure your site code validates to xhtml/css standards.  You’ll end up with a site that’s faster for your end-user, easier for you to update, and produces better results in Google.  There’s no such thing as a tummy tuck here, but you can still be ruthless with the scalpel!

Kick those Bad Habits

While your site probably doesn’t smoke or drink, it most likely will have a few bad habits that you’ll want to address this year.  Like the spelling mistakes you know are in there, or those 2MB images you uploaded straight from the digital camera that you always meant to go back and reduce, or the “honest, it’s not spamming” approach you still take to mass-mailing potential new contacts instead of ensuring only a 100% clean “opt-in” list.  Running a website on a day to day basis is bound to result in a few cut corners and quick-fixes, but left alone, such bad-habits can seriously impact your site, or worse – your company’s reputation.  Cut them out now!

Get out of Debt

OK – so you may not actually be in debt, but in these unstable economic times it’s vital that your website focuses on making your business PROFIT, not just generating turnover or page-views.  With that in mind, take a look at all the products and services you offer on the site.  Identify which aren’t actually generating profit, and get rid of them.  Focus your efforts on selling the services that generate the most profit and even start to look at existing services currently given away for free, and turn them into revenue generating assets.  Even if you don’t actually sell anything – does your website generate enough page views that you could make profit from external advertising?  The internet is full of sites offering “free stuff” – your business website does not need to be one of them!

Talk More

If you haven’t already got a company Blog up and running, then start one.  If you already have a blog, then blog more.  Blogs are a great way for you to (informally) communicate to your audience on a regular basis, and the more you post, the more successful the blog will be.  Think of it as your “unofficial company news”, with posts on anything and everything related to your company and industry.  What’s more, a regularly updated blog will help you get a better listing in Google and other Search Engines.

Talk Less

With the exception of your new Blog, consider reducing the text and content on your website to only say what it actually needs to.  The quicker you can make your point to a website visitor, the more likely they’ll go on to make a sale, or complete the contact form etc.  Remember that the majority of your visitors do NOT read every single word on the page – they scan it to get a quick overview, before deciding whether to take further action.  Make it easy for them, and say only what you need to.

Don’t Break the Law

You’re probably not even aware of it, but chances are – your website is breaking the law.  Data protection laws, intellectual property laws, disability discrimination laws, distance selling laws and more – they ALL impact on your website, and you as the owner of the site need to ensure that you comply as best you can with them.  From simple things like ensuring your limited company name, number and address is clearly shown on the site and on emails, to a privacy policy, fit for use terms and conditions, and website accessibility compliance.  Don’t be a law breaker and take advice from the professionals where you need to – it’s not worth the consequences.

Make New Friends

The more people who know about your site the better, so make a point of making new friends on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter or any other social networking platform of your choice.  The chances are many of your existing business contacts, colleagues and co-workers are already signed up, so you’ll be able to build up a “friends list” in no time at all.

Get out More

Not directly related to your company website itself, rather general good business advice.  Network!!  Don’t rely on twitter to grow your social and business circles, get out there and actually meet people.  Face to face really helps your business (especially any online business) promote a “real” presence beyond the website.  People like to do business with other People, and so getting in front of these potential customers is vital to grow sales as well as company image.  Don’t be frightened of “Networking” and view it as a crucial part of your marketing strategy for 2009 (you often get free wine and cakes too – just don’t break the first resolution!!).

Face-Lift?

Could your site do with a slight make-over or a complete face-lift?  The overall design of your site is probably the key factor in forming a new visitor’s first impression, and it’s got just 50 milliseconds to do it.  No pressure then.  Now’s the time to appraise your site (or better yet – get some 3rd party “testers” to do it for you) from not only a design point of view, but also usability, as the two go hand in hand.  You may have launched your site a decade ago, but does it still look 10 years old?  What about clear, consistent navigation – is it easy to move around and quickly arrive at your “profit” pages?  Web design has come a long way in a short space of time, and web users are quick to understand what’s hot, and what’s not.  If you’re in need of some facial reconstruction to improve your visitor’s perceptions of you then get it done sooner rather than later.

Be Excellent to one another!

As a wise man called Bill S Preston once declared to the masses – “be excellent to one another”.  Not just for the purposes of making the world a better place, but because it actually makes solid business sense.  Excellence in customer service and support is what will stand a company out from it’s competitors over the next few years – as economical troubles mean that customers look for good, reliable and trustworthy companies to do business with – ie: ensuring that their money is well spent.  Nowhere is this more true than the internet – with customer support emails and phone calls all expected to be dealt with instantly.  Provide an excellent customer service and offer true value – and your business should endure the rocky road ahead.

We hope that you enjoy our Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions for your business website, but more importantly, we hope that you’ll actually employ even just one of the resolutions and improve your site in 2009.  For your benefit (and amusement) we’ve created a nicely formatted PDF that you can download and pin to your wall summarising all 10, and of course if you’d like any further help or advice on improving your website, we welcome your communication.  We promise to be excellent in our response.

NSDesign Business Internet Solutions
Web Design | Web Hosting | Web Consultancy
www.nsdesign.co.uk
info@nsdesign.net

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One of the important concerns to web designers is striking a balance between the creative aspect of a website in terms of style and media and being able to implement the design into an accessible and standards compliant site which can be read by search engines. Web technologies have come a long way in a short time in helping to achieve this with xhtml, css and javascript providing a more flexible way of realising ideas while maintaining clean, structured code and accessibility standards. More recently newer developments are becoming available which are pushing the possibilities of the web and raising the bar in the flexibility designers and developers have. As long as the ideas keep flowing on what we would like to achieve on the web, the technology will continue to advance inorder to match this.

CSS3

Css3 has been in development for a few years but is now beginning have some of its features supported better. There a number of interesting features which have been developed to meet design trends, so as to make the implementation of these stylings easier, though many of them are still currently unsupported by browsers, especially Internet Explorer. Some of the features include:

- Multi column allows the developer to position blocks of text in several columns similar to print.

- Rounded corners can be achieved on elements by setting a radius on the corner.

- Border images allow the developer to create custom shaped elements by setting graphics for each corner and sides of an element.These 3 features are only currently supported in Firefox and Safari 3.

- Border color allows gradient borders to be used though are currently only supported by Firefox.

- HSL colors have been introduced, which aswell as setting the colour also allows you to set the hue, saturation and lightness of colours, providing a lot more flexibility in colour schemes. So far this is supported by Opera 9.5, Safari 3, Konqueror and Mozilla.

- One of the most popular features of css3 is opacity. This can be set on different elements allowing a gradient effect to be achieved. This is supported by most browsers except Internet Explorer.

- Box sizing is an interesting one as previously padding and borders were always added to the width of an element but now can be added inside a div. Firefox and Safari support this with the prefix -moz- and -webkit- respectively though Opera simply works with box-sizing.

- Font-face was included in css2 but was only supported by Internet Explorer if an .eot font format was used but Safari 3.1 now allows Truetype or Opentype font to be implemented in designs.

Flash accessibility.

Flash has always been a blessing and curse to both developers and users. It can achieve unique interactive experiences for users and bring a site to life but with search engines unable to extract text or links from the file, it has made flash sites often inaccessible and difficult to index. In the last 6 months it was announced by Google and Adobe that the algorithm Google uses is dramatically changing which will allow text and links from flash files to be read and allow sites to be indexed better in search results. Adobe is developing a flash reader for search engines which will allows the files to be read. Another technology which employs Flash and provides developers with more flexibility in terms of typefaces on the web in Sifr. This is a type replacement technology which allows any typeface to be employed in a website. Its fully accessible with all major browsers and can be read by screen readers.

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There’s been so much talk lately about the “credit crunch” that I almost feel obliged to write something on this subject to brighten the mood.

While it’s clear that there IS definately a slow-down in the web industry as a whole, it’s certainly not as dramatic as the effects on other sectors (god help the housebuilders and estate agents).  In general, we’re seeing the same voume of potential new clients and opportunities, but what’s clear is that they have less money to spend.

I would even argue that the current financial situation means there are MORE potential clients, as more businesses ditch the office and move entirely online to reduce costs, or start up new web shops to bolster low retail sales..

That said, businesses in the web design and development industry needs to remain cautious and ensure a long term strategy that will see them get through, and even strive in these tough times.  A strong focus on customer service, and value added services will ensure that clients identify with you rather than a competitor, together with solid processes and methods that do allow you to remain competative (though never cheap!) allowing you to agree any reduced budget.

Have a look at a good article –  Surving the Credit Crunch aimed specifically at the design industry, as well as some good tips to reduce business costs.  Remember that it’s not all doom and gloom!!

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Following on from my earlier blog post about universities not teaching relevant web design skills, Opera and Yahoo apparently feel the same, and have come together to launch the Web Standards Curriculum.

It’s an entire standards-based web design course – free online to anyone, and covers HTML, CSS, Javascript and more. 

Well done to those concerned for taking the time to develop what is a great starting point for not only students (who can supplement their “formal” education, and teach themselves the right skills), but also teachers and businesses as well – able to use the resource to improve their current methods etc.  Let’s hope the universities and schools catch up quickly.

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Anybody watching Wimbledon last night can’t help but admire Andy Murray, and his epic performance against the French number 1 – it really was one of the superb comebacks of the sporting world.

With no “Home Nations” in the football this year (and even Martin’s Italy didn’t have the best campaign), it’s great to see Andy doing the Scot’s proud – lets face it – on the sporting front, we don’t often have much to cheer about (with the exception of me winning the EURO2008 office sweepstake)…  Plus, it gives us a great excuse to mention the website we did for Andy’s Main Sponsor – Highland Spring.

Go Wiild with Andy Murray is a competition “microsite” developed for Highland Spring giving users a chance to win a Nintendo Wii, as well as play tennis with Andy Murray himself…  Although based on last nights performance, best of luck to you!!

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Having recently interviewed a number of Graduates for a Web Development assistant position, my concerns over the formal teaching of web design in our Colleges and Universities have not exactly been alleviated.

While I’d fully expect to see some sort of “skills gap” between those candidates straight from university, and those with a little real-world experience, it is the size of that gap that continues to worry me.

I’d like to stress that all our recently graduated candidates were bright, intelligent and talented individuals, all with (or about to get) good degrees – they are not at fault – but I fear the institutions teaching them, and preparing them for a career in web design are letting them down.  

One or two actually hinted at being fully aware that what, and how they were taught was not “recent”, and that they knew they’d need to learn new skills immediately.  We had 1 guy interview who was entirely self taught, and said the only reason he did his university course was to get the bit of paper that  confirmed he could do it.  He then went on to say that he was actually worried that during the 3 years formal education he might actually “un-learn” all his good habits with the bad habits he was being shown.  By bad habits he was referring to things like table-based layouts, ignorance of semantic markup, and lack of standards or css.  All quite worrying stuff…

I recently did a lecture to the School of Computing and Creative Technologies within the University of Abertay, Dundee, to an audience of Computer Arts and Web Design Students.  At the time I was really encouraged by the enthusiasm and feedback from the lecture hall, which later spilled out into the café – the majority were genuinely interested, asked some great questions, and left me with a positive outlook on web design (and technology) education.  So clearly the passion is there, I just hope it’s backed up by the teaching of relevant skills. 

Personally – if I were a student considering my options for web design and development at University or College, I’d be damn keen to interview them – not the other way around.  Challenge their bold statements on their websites about “web standards” and “advanced web authoring” and get down to the detail about what you’re actually going to teach me.  Show me a <TABLE> and I’m gone.

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It never continues to amaze me just how many (so called) web design companies I see offering a “5 page business website for just £295″ (or some other nice price plucked from thin air).

Are they serious?  Unfortunately – most of them probably are.

Long gone are the days when websites were sold by the page – promoting this now simply advertises the fact that as a web designer, you are building sites using old out of date methods with little concern for the client.

Most websites are designed around 1 fixed structure and layout – of course this may vary at times, and the design of the homepage may appear visually different, but essentially – every website follows (at least it should) a consistent design and layout.  So – design and code the “framework”, give the client access to a Content Management System (CMS), and allow them to create as many pages as they like.  Limiting them to 5 “static pages” (where the designer has actually spent 95% of their time designing ONE PAGE and 5% copying the code over the remaining 4) means when they need even just 1 or 2 exra pages, it’s back to the designer and more “per page” fees.  Even just to make a few simple edits (a change of text or some images) it’s often a case of more fees and waiting for the designer to get round to it.

We see so many clients here in the Glasgow office, who come in asking questions such as “how many pages do I get?”, and once we explain that webdesign no longer works like that – for most of them, it’s almost a lightbulb moment.   So while you may think that “5 pages are more than enough”, and “why should I pay more”, consider the future and the expansion possibilities for your site.  High Quality, Accessible, Business websites are still available for budget prices – our NSBuilder package proves that – just don’t get into a situation where you’re forking out ridiculous extra fees for an extra page or a 2 minute job to fix a spelling mistake.  If your current site doesn’t allow YOU to make these changes (at no cost other than the time it takes you) then perhaps time to think again.

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