We pride ourselves on producing high quality websites that fully conform to the highest web standards. Our sites are accessible and search engine friendly, making sure that all our sites have the best possible chance of succeeding where so many others fail.
Now that we’ve all got used to Facebook and Twitter and businesses are starting to realise the potential of social networking and talking to new customers directly there’s a new social revolution just about to hit the mainstream: Geo-location social networking.
This new form of networking has been made possible with the increase in GPS enabled smart phones and faster mobile connection speeds. We can now pin point our position on earth to within a few metres with our phones and we can use that technology to find interesting events, shops, restaurants and places of interest nearby. The geo-location social networks aim to take that a stage further by connecting people who are in the same area and allowing friends to connect to each other via maps.
So, imagine you’re on a night out in London, you’re meeting a few friends but don’t really know the best places to go – simply log into your phone and check the map. You’ll see where you are, recommended restaurants and pubs and even how far away your friends are. If one of the local bars has a special offer on you’ll get an update so you can get a few cheap drinks… while you’re at the bar a message pops up that a restaurant round the corner is offering free starters if you get there in the next 30 minutes. All of this can be worked through your phone and local businesses can connect directly to potential customers.
There are four main location based networks vying to get users and businesses signed up at the moment: Foursquare, Brightkite, Gowalla and Loopt. They have all had a lot of funding and offer similar features but each one has a slightly different focus. And don’t forget that with this much potential revenue and traffic the big guns are also going to be competing in this arena soon enough – Facebook, Google and Twitter all have location based services starting, in the pipeline or already working.
“Foursquare is a mobile application that is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide, and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things. Foursquare lets you “check in” to a place when you’re there, tell friends where you are, and track the history of where you’ve been–and who you’ve been there with. Foursquare challenges you to explore your city in new and fun ways by earning points, winning mayorships, and unlocking badges and specials for trying new places and revisiting old favorites.”
“Gowalla.com is a web site and, more importantly, an iPhone application that allows you to check in with your social network from where ever you are. When you use your phone, Gowalla locates you through GPS, then allows you to check in at the location, share a message about where you are and why you’re there and pick up virtual items.”
“Brightkite is the simple way to keep up with friends and places. It lets you see where all your friends are, so you can spend more time with them. You can also discover places in your neighborhood and meet other locals along the way.”
“Loopt is a mobile social-mapping service that lets you use the location of your phone to discover the world around you.”
If you’re interested in finding out more about how you can use social networking and geo-location social networks for your business please contact us.
Creating a fan page on Facebook sounds like a quick and easy way to generate traffic to your site and gain new customers for your business. With the explosion in social networking traffic over the last few years there’s a buzz around Facebook almost like the buzz surrounding the internet in 1999! But creating a successful fan page and making social media work for your business takes more than just throwing up a page and expecting new visitors to flood in.
I’m sure most people reading this will already have a profile page on Facebook – there are over 400 million users on Facebook now, it’s the largest social network in the world and one of the most used websites. Most users check their profiles at least once a week with a large number checking several times a day.
Most marketing people have a profile on Facebook and try to use that to promote their businesses and network with likeminded individuals around the world but to keep your private life a bit separate from work we’d usually suggest setting up a Fan Page for your company. It works just like a profile but allows you to provide a public page for your business without getting your personal profile mixed up.
From Facebook:
A Facebook Page is a public Profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users.
When your fans interact with your Facebook Page, stories linking to your Page can go to their friends via News Feed. As these friends interact with your Page, News Feed keeps driving word-of-mouth to a wider circle of friends.
View our Best Served Cold Fan Page
Recently we’ve been involved with setting up a couple of Facebook fan pages with bespoke applications for high profile campaigns – please contact us for more information.
To get the most out of your fan page you need to remember that Facebook works best as a two-way conversation. As with all social networks the idea is that you can talk directly to your customers but they can also talk directly to you – don’t ignore them. Make sure you respond, join in and give your visitors a reason to recommend you to their friends. By giving something back you can increase your fan page visitor numbers and in turn increase your customer base.
If you’d like to know more about how Facebook and other social network sites can help improve your business please contact us. We’re always happy to talk through ideas and discuss potential benefits of social media with all types of business.
Over the last 3 months we’ve been working with the East and North Herts NHS Trust to re-design and update their website. We kept to their brief for a clean, simple and easy to use website that would allow visitors from across Hertfordshire to easily find out more about the local NHS Trust.
View the new East and North Herts NHS Trust website
From start to finish we worked closely with the content team at the trust to ensure that the information needed by most visitors was easy to find and navigate to. Using a very accessible layout and strict xHTML and CSS standards of code we believe the new site to be one of the most up to date NHS Trust websites.
Over the next few months we will continue to work with the web team to make sure that the site continues to be updated and managed to the highest standard and ensure that we keep the site running smoothly.
HTML and CSS are the basic building blocks of any website, the HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the code and content of a site and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is used for setting the layout and making it look nice. Over the years these languages have evolved and changed with new versions of web browsers and new demands by web developers and designers.
The next version of HTML is currently being finalised and gradually implemented into new web browsers and it’s causing a bit of a fuss among web developers. So, what is HTML5 and will it affect average web users?
Most web users don’t know how a website is put together – and that’s probably a good thing, it shows that the internet has moved on from it’s hand-made, amateur days to a point where sites are becoming integral parts of everyday life and run seamlessly on multiple platforms and browsers. One of the resons for this is the separation of content and design – the HTML and CSS – that allows developers to use the same content but show it in different ways on different platforms eg. mobile phones, televisions, laptops.
From W3 Schools:
HTML 5 improves interoperability and reduces development costs by making precise rules on how to handle all HTML elements, and how to recover from errors.
Some of the new features in HTML 5 are functions for embedding audio, video, graphics, client-side data storage, and interactive documents. HTML 5 also contains new elements like <nav>, <header>, <footer>, and <figure>.
The HTML 5 working group includes AOL, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, Opera, and many hundreds of other vendors.
Once HTML5 becomes more widespread and can be used as a foundation for all websites we will start to see web development move into an even more professional realm. Currently it’s still possible to design and code a fairly good looking website from home using basic tools. Obviously an amateur wouldn’t be able to produce a Faceboook or Twitter but a simple 4 or 5 page site is still possible. With HTML5 that is still the case but there’s more to learn and understand and much more is possible.
As more sites begin to use HTML5 in their code we’ll hopefully begin to see a reduction in the number of users browsing on old, outdated web browsers. Using an old web browser such as Internet Explorer 6 can really affect how you view the internet, most websites don’t support this 10 yr old browser any more and you’ll find that you’re often seeing reduced versions of websites – cutting down your usability and options. The other problem with older browsers is safety and security. It’s much easier for a hacker to break into your computer via the internet if you’re browsing with IE6 rather IE8, Firefox or Opera.
HTML5 can already be used and their are lots of websites starting to make use of the new standard. Often it’s combined with a new CSS standard CSS3 – which allows web designers much more freedom and expression in internet design. We’ve recently set up a website that showcases HTML5 sites: 101 Best HTML5 Sites – we’ve written the site in HTML5 and used some CSS3 to help us learn and understand the new language and start to show what’s possible.
Some other resources:
HTML5 -A vocabulary and associated APIs for HTML and XHTML
HTML5 from Wikipedia
HTML5 reference from W3 Schools
Everyone has now heard the term “Twitter” and “Tweeting” but really, what is it? What’s it for and why would anyone want to use it?
Over the last 12 months Twitter has popper up everywhere – from the US election to the UK election, on topical TV shows and even Jeremy Paxman having to say “Send us your Tweets” on Newsnight! But there’s still a lot of confusion about why should any normal person should actually use it… As a bit of a geek, I have a Twitter account – but that’s to be expected, t’s my job to know about such things and you can follow me here. There might not be much happening on my Twitter feed, mostly I talk about work stuff, music and what I’m up to. I use it to talk to friends and generally let people know what I’m up to and what we’re doing at Best Served Cold. But back to my original question: What is Twitter?
From Wikipedia:
Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.
Twitter was created way back in 2006 and it took a few years to reach the mainstream. The original idea was to let users create friends groups and talk to them simply about what was in their mind, if they had questions or just to arrange their social life…. Some time in 2007/2008 certain public figures and celebrities started to take notice and realised they could set up Twitter accounts and use it to talk directly to their fans about whatever was on their mind.
Very quickly the power of celebrities took Twitter from it’s geek roots to the mainstream. In the UK people like Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross popularised the service and in the US Ashton Kutcher became the first user to reach a million followers.
But why should a “normal” person use Twitter? At it’s heart Twitter allows you to publish your thoughts about anything at any time. If you have something to say, why not say it on Twitter – someone might hear you and want to find out more. A group of friends can use Twitter to talk to each other and discuss what they’re up to. Likeminded individuals can use Twitter to debate ideas and share links to websites and thoughts from around the world.
Businesses have started to get involved with Twitter to talk to consumers and actually have converations about products and services, if this is done correctly it can drive a lot of interest and traffic to the business at a low cost.
But still, Twitter is best for just mindless chat and finding interesting links and just discovering what other people are up to! There’s a certain vicarious thrill from checking out what your favourite celeb is doing or even what your friends are up to at work… There’s also a serious side to Twitter, the spreading of information quickly and easily around the world. In 2009 riots in Iran were tweeted to the outside world when traditional news media couldn’t get into the country.
To find out more about Twitter and some of the many applications and widgets available to get you started Tweeting from your computer or your phone, take a look at 101 Best Twitter Apps
Two sites that we talk a lot about on here are Pressitt.com and Anchor House. They have joined forces to create a social media news room for all new Anchor House online press releases.
We built the Anchor House website at the end of 2009 to replace the previous homeless charity website and last week we helped them set up and use their own Pressitt newsroom to centralise their social network marketing campaign and online press releases.
Do you have a requirement for an app? Do you want your services to be available on an iPhone or Android phone? Or perhaps want something developed for the new iPad?
Apps Jobs is a brand new site where you can advertise your development needs for any type of mobile or web based application.
Here’s another site that we completed for a client recently: Dioni – Self catering accommodation in Snowdonia. We built the site using a theme for WordPress that we bought specifically for the site. Originally an estate agent theme we modified it and added several new plugins to make it work seamlessly for the Dioni cottage site.
Although not one of our bespoke designs we are very happy with how this site has worked out. It’s been part of our special offer that we created for this exact type of project – a small business that needed a professional website but without the high costs associated with a full website design and development.
Here’s something about Dioni:
We’ve set up a small business to help friends and neighbours advertise and book their self catering properties here in Snowdonia. We’ve been quite choosey about the properties that we’ve taken on, so hopefully you’ll agree that they are all very nice and with a bit of luck you’ll find some great accommodation in what we think is a fantastic little corner of North Wales.
Our original plans for the special offer was to help out local businesses in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, which is why we came up with the idea in the first place. We realised that there are lots of small businesses that need a web presence but haven’t got the knowledge to get online themselves or the money to pay for a large scale website. Using WordPress and a pre-built theme that we edit and set up for small companies in the area we are hoping to get businesses in the Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire area online with a professional site, coded to high standards for SEO and Accessibility with a full Content Management System (CMS) for just a fraction of the price.
Although we started out with the aim of keeping the special offer targetted to local businesses we are happy to work remotely with clients from all over the UK or abroad to get a WordPress site up and running. Please let us know if you have an idea for a site and would like to get online, especially if you’re in Hertfordshire or Bedfordshire – we can meet you and talk you through your requirements and how we can set you up with a CMS based website for less than you think!
That’s right, we’ve been busy over the last week or so building another 101 site! This time we decided to follow the hype and set up 101 Best iPad Apps. There’s been so much discussion and media interest surrounding the release of the iPad that sometimes it’s hard to follow what it means and what it’s for… Is it really a defining moment in modern computing? Or is it just another gadget that makes a big splash but sinks fairly rapidly?
I was fairly cynical about the iPad when I first read about it last year and agreed with the dismissive comments:
“It’s just a big iPhone”
“Why do I need a computer without a keyboard?”
“The resolution isn’t good enough for media but it’s too much like a netbook for reading books”
But now it’s been launched and the reviews have started to come in from people who are actually using it and maybe I was wrong in my initial assesment. Yes, it is a big iPhone (sort of) and at the moment the resolution isn’t the greatest but remember the first iPod? A black and white screen and 4 hours battery life (if you were lucky). This first iteration of the iPad might just open the door to a new way of using the internet for everyone – a pick up and browse gadget that doesn’t need any computer knowledge or skill to find what you want.
According to a recent survey found that 59% of Americans use the internet while watching TV which is an increase of 35% in the last year. Products like the iPad make that even easier, there’s no logging on, finding somewhere to rest a laptop and using a fiddly keyboard on a netbook. It’s like using the internet on your smartphone, straight onto your wifi network, click through to your favourites and off you go – except you actually have a decent sized screen to read from.
Now, I don’t want to sound like an Apple fanboy but there’s a lot to be said for the concept – but there are potential problems. Will enough people actually want to read books on the iPad? Anything with a backlit screen makes it difficult to read for long periods of time – and you certainly won’t be able to see it properly in bright sunlight while sunbathing on holiday! Is it something that most people need regularly? Using a laptop isn’t reallt THAT tricky… and for any serious business user there will always be a need for something with a bit more flexibility and power.
Overall, it’s an interesting concept and I’d love to have a go but I think we’ll need to wait for version 2 to really see the potential and what we can do with it.
Check out 101 Best iPad Apps to see what’s available already!
That’s right, another new site designed and developed by Best Served Cold! The site is for a London video and stills production company: Nylon Films.
Nylon films helps clients tell their unique stories through film, video, stills photography and other multimedia formats. Whether it’s corporate films or documentary films, training videos or music videos, viral ads or internet ads – we think the end product should always make for compelling viewing. Therefore, at the heart of all of our productions, you’ll find good storytelling and high production values; and, using state of the art technologies, we are able to provide these multimedia solutions cost effectively.
You can find out more about Nylon on their Facebook and Twitter pages.
We created the new site using WordPress for the CMS and also spent time talking to Nylon Films about setting up Social Media profiles on the best sites to show off their work: Vimeo and Flickr. By getting started early with Social Media they are already generating interest from users on Flickr and Vimeo.