Coming to a close on 2009

Posted on December 22, 2009 by Ross Allchorn

Most of you are probably on holiday already and it’s coming close to the time that I pack it in for the year. Unfortunately, there is no rest for the wicked busy, and there are still some active developments on the to-do list.

We’ve officially moved out to Waterfall and no longer occupy office space with the SA Web Design crew, but I’m sure we’ll continue to work together on a number of projects we’ve collaborated on over the course of 2008/9. Waterfall is a beautiful place and as you can see in the pic above, my new workspace is really inspiring (for me anyway).

This post is really something to explain whats on the cards for 2010 in a work sense, both for myself and for anyone interested in working with us.

Greater focus on security

This year has taught us some important lessons in web security not only in a local sense. The fact that Twitter got hacked twice in 2010 tells me that its becoming more and more necessary to employ more stringent security measures across the board.

Considering that we work quite heavily with third party content management systems, there will be a far greater emphasis on locking down any vulnerabilities and employing a more structured update regime.

Seeking relationships

The past 5yrs of business has seen a large number of projects pass through our production line (over 150 projects) and it has become clear that the vast majority of success stories are the clients that we have an on-going relationship with. In this vein, we’ll be looking into bundle service offerings which will run over a number of months. Some services to expect early in 2010:

Web consulting (analysis of your needs, technical requirements, project scoping etc.)
Website analysis & strategy
Design & Redesign of websites
Content creation and management
Online advertising and search engine optimisation
Social media strategy, implementation and monitoring
Email broadcasting
Customer data collection campaigns (see our latest viral campaign offering here)
Analytics and reporting
Online training

Each one of those topics has a number of sub-categories but listing them all here would be tedious and a waste of yours and my time. Needless to say, the best thing to do is just pick up the phone and call us or drop us an email and find out if we can help you with your online presence.

Allchorn Rebranding

One of the great things about working predominantly in the online medium, is that its not too much trouble to visually re-invent our brand every couple of years. 2010 will see a new look for Allchorn Design. One which we’re quite excited about and one that is still technically on the drawing board. Above is an early preview mockup of how it might look.

All in all, as usual, a new year approaching is exciting, and I’d like to wish everyone a fantastic Christmas and awesome new year!

How to resize an image online

Posted on October 22, 2009 by Ross Allchorn

This short video was created for one specific client, but I thought it might be useful to others too, so published it on Vimeo for whoever is interested to watch. It’s a tutorial on how to resize an image with an online photo editing service at Pixlr.

How to resize an image online from Ross Allchorn on Vimeo.

We don’t design for our clients

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Ross Allchorn

Yes, that title is correct. We don’t design for our clients, and by the same token we certainly don’t design for ourselves! Who we design for is the customer, our client’s clients.

So many designers these days are producing “questionnaires” that ask your favourite colour, do you want a symbol in your logo, what type of font do you like? All of these things -sorry to say- are not up to the company owner. They’re not up to the designer to impart their opinion on either. These factors are established by research.

Researching the the client’s company
Researching the industry
Researching the competition
Researching the end user/customer

This is where you draw your conclusions from. Not from the company owner’s nor the designer’s “opinion”.

Design is about communication

Nothing more, and nothing less. I sometimes get irritated when people say things as obvious as that to me, and while you might agree and get back to your normal way of doing things; take a minute and think about it.

You’re designing to communicate a message “buy this”, “subscribe here”, “register now”, “enquire”, and if your design efforts are not focussed around those objectives, you might as well be putting lipstick on a pig.

“Don’t try to be original. Just try to be good.”
Paul Rand – 1914-1996

There are a lot of Paul Rand video clips and tributes going around the design community at the moment, and for sure, he deserves all the credit he can get.

There is one very important message I get from him where I can sense his frustration in trying to get his message across. It’s summed up in that quote above, and what it really comes down to is that people need to first become capable of the basics of communication before they can start innovating. Walk before you can run in other words.

Why we will continue to support IE6

Posted on September 14, 2009 by Ross Allchorn

Possibly adding fuel to the fire, but to at least put my opinion on the matter out there… here is my view on the prospect of web developers discontinuing support for Microsoft’s eight year old browser Internet Explorer 6 (released on August 27, 2001).

According to Wikipedia:

“The end-of-life support for Internet Explorer 6 is July 13, 2010″

That alone tells me that it is an actively supported means of people accessing websites for at least another 10 months.

A lot of opinions seem to be around the lack of standards support by the browser and I don’t dispute this fact, but you also can’t look beyond the fact that there are still users out there that are stuck with it. Unfortunate, but true.

Just so you’re clear on my position on the matter; we will support IE6 until there is what I deem to be a sufficiently low enough percentage of visitors using it. There will be exceptions in cases where I know for a fact that the audience of the site/intranet is closed enough and mandated to use a newer or different browser, but by rule of thumb, we will support it.

My clients’ reputations are important to me!

According to w3schools, last month 13.6% of users were still on Internet Explorer 6.

For technology to cause their image to possibly be tarnished to approximately 13% odd of their visitors is simply unacceptable. Especially when those possible problems are avoidable through producing “gracefully degradable” sites where necessary and providing code hacks (a sad reality my geek friends) to have them rendered properly.

Really people… if you’re not in the web design and development industry, and you can’t update your browser, then you probably wouldn’t give a toss about anything besides the fact that you’re inconvenienced by a breaking website! In my eyes, thats not good business.

A good coder should make a site work in all required browsers

The discussion often pops up in forums I frequent, and it’s usually someone having a hard time getting something to render consistently. While I do empathise with them (I have been there too), you need to suck it up, figure it out and make it work… it is your job, do it properly!

Usually someone with a bit more experience will chime in that it’s not that hard when you know how. Those people -in my opinion- are the true professionals. Not the guys whining about it and trying to get everyone to stop supporting it.

Upgrading your browser is necessary

All the above being said, don’t get the impression that I think the www should stagnate and indefinitely be stuck with archaic systems like IE6. There is a world beyond simple browsing, and the likes of the Mozilla Foundation, Google, Opera, Apple and even Microsoft themselves have forged on and created some far more modern, more secure, more user friendly and just better browsers.

Here is a list of browsers I recommend:

Mozilla Firefox (my choice)
Opera
Apple’s Safari (available for Windows machines too)
Google Chrome
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8

Website pre-launch checklist

Posted on July 8, 2009 by Ross Allchorn

If you’re getting a website designed or redesigned (or doing it yourself) it’s important to have all your bases covered to make sure the site is optimally set up to perform. We have a checklist of things to test for and I thought it a good idea to share this with all.

Here is our checklist.

All links checked
Are your internal and external links all correct? Think about hardcoded links and dynamic links. If your site is database driven, you can check all internal links with a script.
Page title tags consistent & optimal
Your page title tags are those that appear in the title bar above File, Edit, View etc. It’s important for search engine indexing that the title is clear, concise and depicts what is on the page.
Search engine friendly URLs
If you’re using a CMS you should ideally have some form of URL rewriting feature in place that converts dynamic URLs to search engine friendly ones (example.com?pageid=15 to example.com/product-name)
Search functionality
If you have search functionality on your site, does it work correctly? Is it intuitive and are the search results accurately portraying the information the searcher is seeking?
Screen resolution
Does your website display nicely on screen resolutions your visitors are likely to be using?
Content rendering
Sometimes content can become a bit mangled when copying characters from MS Word or other web pages, and as such a good thorough toothcomb inspection of your content should allow you to rectify any issues.
301 redirects
If you’re redesigning your site, you want people who have possibly bookmarked your old URLs to automatically come through to the new pages. 301 redirects are the universally recognised “change of address” for web pages and to retain existing traffic and rankings this is gravely important!
Custom 404 error pages
When someone hits a URL on your site that does not exist it will display a 404 error page. These can be customised, and are an effective catchment system for preventing the loss of visitors that hit a generic 404 error page. The page should ideally display with the same/similar aesthetic as your site and offer a clear explanation, navigation and search.
Analytics implementation
If you have a website online, you want to measure it’s efficacy. You can track visitors, bounce rates, conversion rates and a multitude of other interesting and useful information by simply installing analytics software.
Favicon implementation
A small visual feature which can give your site a more “complete” look. Not only will it be an icon used in tabs, but also in bookmarks making it easier for people to find your pages if you make them stand out.
Meta tag implementation
Not as important as they used to be, but still worth doing once you’ve researched your keywords. Don’t stuff your keywords in, but rather keep them relative and to the point.
XML Sitemap
A sitemap is an important feature which tells the search engines what your pages are and how frequently they can expect to be updated. This allows them to index your site at intervals which are in line with your updates.
Form to email/database
If you have forms submitting to email addresses or to a database, make sure they all send correctly, and to the right people/places. Make sure those responsible for responding are aware of their duties as well as any autoresponders are setup correctly and working.
User administration settings
If you have more than one user, you’ll need to make sure they have sufficient (and not too much) authority on the system managing your website.
Speed tests
Is your server performing as it should? Are there scripts/flash/large images causing slow loading times?
www and no-www
If visitors access your website at www.example.com, they should be able to also access it sans-www (http://example.com). It’s a setting your host should enable, and if not perhaps consider another host.
Browser compatability
What browsers are your visitors using? Global statistics can tell you initially, and soon enough you’ll know what your visitors are using from your analytics. At the time of writing, we feel it important for your site to work in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera.

These items are in no particular order and bare in mind that depending on the project, there could be more or less items to consider (eg: spell checking, proof reading, legal requirements etc.)

Screw it, let’s do it!

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Ross Allchorn

Some famous words, from a famous man. It’s his mark to success (Richard Branson if you didn’t already know), and for a lot of people that don’t heed this advice, it spells their doom, or at the least, it secures the chains of mediocracy.

How many times have you been sitting/standing/lying somewhere and all of a sudden, you have this brilliant idea. Maybe it was something that would enhance your business, or your life… maybe it was something completely new. If you haven’t experienced this before… no need for you to carry on reading. If you have, please continue.

When this moment strikes, I think I’m correct in assuming that it struck at the most inopportune moment and you either promised to remember it or decided straight away to shelve the idea. Perhaps the idea required more than you were willing to invest (either in time, money or effort).

Well, what I’ve learnt in the last 10 years on the web is that if you don’t at least try it, you’ll never know if it could have succeeded and you’ll always have that niggling question in the back of your mind “could it have worked?”. I’ve decided to retain focus on what we do, but to some degree, act on impulse and take the plunge on things I’ve otherwise been hesitant to try.

What I admittedly often do is over-analyse things and sometimes those plans never become more than diagrams on paper, mindmaps on my computer and design mockups in my projects folder. My wife has criticised me over this, and she is right… I need to dive in and say “screw it, let’s do it” and thats what I’m now committing to doing.

To my clients, I’d say you can also benefit from this, and the advice in general. Not every angle needs to be covered before making a start on something and I’ve learnt that the web is an evolutionary medium where if you don’t act soon, the moment will pass and when you’re actually ready, there is something newer, better and all (or some of) your plans will be rendered null and void.

My primary school motto rings true:

From small beginnings, better fortune follows

Email broadcasting done properly

Posted on May 13, 2009 by Ross Allchorn

Sending email broadcasts -on the surface- should be one of the simplest and most straight forward processes. The digital equivalent of stuffing a couple hundred or thousand (or even tens/hundreds of thousands) of letters into envelopes and posting them off.

Without the arduous task of printing, folding, inserting and licking, and the time/cost associated with it, it makes perfect sense to make good, regular use of email marketing.

We are often tasked with the setup, design and distribution of email newsletters, promos and notifications to our client’s clients/prospects, and it’s important that the task is approached properly. What I mean by properly is that it needs to be sent through the correct means, and most importantly… measured!

5 steps to effective email marketing

Below is a diagram illustrating a workflow for effectively creating your client database through to reporting. Followed with an explanation of each step.

1. Database setup

There are a number of ways to collect subscribers for your marketing database. Depending on your business, you can normally start by looking at existing client communication conduits (accounting systems, CRM systems, comment slips etc.).

Compile a list in a spreadsheet with the information needed to communicate personally and effectively. Usually the following would suffice:

Name
Surname
Email Address
Mobile Number
Any self defined group (region, demographic etc.)

A subscription facility should be placed on your website as this is an entirely self sufficient method of collecting subscribers. You can also acquire subscribers offline. An example could be a restaurant where comment slips are created with an “opt in to our email marketing” on it. These would need to be manually captured, but certainly worth the effort.

All of these methods should feed into a central database. This database is normally located on the system of choice for distribution (explained below), but backups are always a necessity.

2. Design & Coding

This is an area where most design people trip up on themselves and either incorrectly create their actual marketing materials as a print item (the web is a fluid, dynamic medium), or have the code generated by something like Dreamweaver/Frontpage and the end result is often an illegible mess on some of the recipient’s side.

Coding email newsletters (or any broadcast for that matter) is a tricky task, with many target mail clients (Outlook, Thunderbird, Gmail, Yahoo Mail etc.). Most of which render your mail differently and results can be horrific if not coded to accommodate their quirks. For professional results, we currently follow this method of creating the emails and then test thoroughly.

There are also spam concerns, so awareness of what practices could be flagged as spam could effect the end result of the campaign.

3. Email distribution

Sending your emails is a task best handled by a dedicated service like Campaign Monitor, Aweber or Graphic Mail. To send your mailers professionally as well as having the ability to receive detailed reports on your campaigns after they have run is very important in your marketing efforts. The costs are nominal (either per send or per recipient in your database per month).

There are some other reasons to make use of one of these services rather than your mail client (Outlook etc.). One of the most important of which is that you could send too many from a private mail account, and actually get your mail server blocked for spam. Your normal day to day emails not going through to people (spam blocked)… now thats a productivity killer if I’ve ever heard of one.

4. Reporting

Now your campaign has been sent. It was created properly to a database you collected, using the correct tools which automatically track any links, how many people opened them, how many bounced, how many were not opened, how many people unsubscribed, how many email addresses were no longer active etc.

All of this information is compiled in a report, from which the efficacy of the campaign can be measured.

5. Rinse & repeat

The process is complete. You likely have a re-usable template to use for your next broadcast. Your database is getting bigger. Import some more subscribers captured outside of your online efforts, change your message, and send another campaign when the time is right. Too often is likely to annoy prospects, but the frequency all depends on what you’re sending, and to whom.

I hope this gives you a clearer picture as to how an effective and professional email broadcasting campaign should be carried out. This was a very simple example, and you can implement a number of other factors into the mix. Facilities for your recipients to suggest the mailer to a friend/friends, viral mailers and so much more. All of which would make this post far too long, but if you’re interested, feel free to drop us a line.

Protect your digital assets

Posted on April 23, 2009 by Ross Allchorn

Do you own a company? Does your company have a logo, a website, a brochure, business cards, letterheads etc.? Where are those original files now? Do you know who to ask should you decide you want to embark on a marketing campaign?

We’re currently reconstructing a customer’s corporate brochure because the designer of which “can’t find” the originals. Now we have to scan in the document (11 pages including a gold foil print on the cover page), re-type it, extract all the images where we can, clean them up and make them ready for their website.

This is not the cheapest exercise, and if I were the client, I’d probably bill the original designer what we charge him.

The quality of the images will never be as good as the originals for print, but luckily for him this is a web exercise and the printers seem to have retained the original litho plates. If he wants to make changes however… well, there he has another problem… and expense!

Are your digital assets in safe hands? If not, I recommend getting ahold of them as soon as possible and making some good solid backups and put them in your safe.

Don’t allow your assets to be held ransom

Another concern in this industry is the type of designer/firm that chooses to retain the original files in the vain belief that they can hold them ransom for a fee, or keep the client this way for future design/print work.

I personally believe this to be underhanded, and we never retain these materials due to the fact that we prefer to retain clients based on the value we provide, both in the form of service, skill and the return they get on their investing their money in proper solutions.

Check the fine print. If your service provider wants to claim full copyright and only hand over the finished product and none of the raw Photoshop files, then either find out what he/she wants in exchange for that ownership, or find another service provider. Simple as that.

Perhaps this will spark some debate amongst designers that disagree with me, but please keep it friendly, and lets discuss things nicely, even if you want to banish me to the depths of hell for this post. Remember, the comments are moderated.

Provide value, or step aside

Posted on March 17, 2009 by Ross Allchorn

Where have all the agents gone? got me thinking about occasions in the past where I have dealt with “transparent middle men”. People who -aside from introducing the other two parties- have absolutely no input in, nor provide any value to a project.

If someone refers work on to us, and it’s a project we embark on, we will certainly be grateful, and in most instances discuss a referral commission or finder’s fee of sorts. But when that translates into a situation where this middleman is white labelling our services (also a workable solution in the right situation), but not providing any value to the tasks at hand, and possibly even stifling communication, then you have to stand back and wonder if their intervention is of any value to our business or the end client’s.

It’s not only about who you know

I fully understand and agree that in business; who you know plays a big part, but if you keep those connections too closely guarded and stop the natural flow of conversation, you’re doing a disservice to yourself in the long run; and to your client and service provider, in the long and short term… a damaging experience all round.

How we provide value

What we provide in our role as website design consultants is far more than tying a client to a designer and developer and cashing in on the profit. We administer each project from a top level standpoint and provide a single point of contact from whom every aspect of your project is managed. There are clearly planned and strategised phases to every project, and each task is discussed, documented, scheduled, carried out, tested and followed up on.

After reading Seth’s post, I feel confident that our role in providing solid, value based services to our clients both past, present and future is a good investment of our time in improving Allchorn Design, and the offerings we provide to our clients.

Allchorn Blog

Views on web design, ecommerce and online business

Tag Archives: linkedin