Tip 2: Start sketching out your website design

Yup, we are now ready to bring your website to life. This next bit is the easiest of it all. This is where we go with the standard stuff – logo, menu bars, footer, main area and the lot.

And, this is the time to add in those extra bits – a wee bit of news, a link to twitter perhaps and maybe a helpful little search box on top.

Once that is taken care of, it is time for our post-its to make their entry. A few dotted lines, a bit of scissor work…pretty much like ol’ Blue Peter…and we have a rough skeleton of the new concept shaping up.

Now then, don’t you expect to get all the things right in the very first go. You might need to move things around a bit, and maybe even start from scratch again! And then of course, there would be the stake holders all along, itching to add in their two pennies worth.

Anyway to cut a long story short, after a few sketches, and some rework you will find yourself in a position to tidy things up. Adobe’s fireworks is what we use for this. They have a nice set of tools and you can easily export to a PDF file. We usually ping these out to clients to show a tidied up version to confirm meeting notes and ensure that all issues were discussed.

This is where we introduce the concept of a grey box. The image below is the same stuff as the sketches, just tidied up a little.

The grey box process in fact relies on open thinking. We might easily get to the design at this point. You can almost see it, can’t you?  But then this is the stage where feedback is all important. Take the time out, make sure all angles are covered and you have gotten in all that you would want, and the effort will definitely pay off at the end. These are the critical initial stages. People are at their most creative, ideas are flowing and no one is bound by limits of nice looking designs that rail road you into one way of thinking. Above all, costs are low. If you don’t like how things are going, you simply bin them and just start all over again. No hassle there.

Now when you finally have the rough sketch, go home, show the wife, the kids, anyone you like. (And, when it comes to the comment part, remember the wife’s bit is not to be discarded lightly! They might not be the ultimate authority on web site design or eMarketing.  But that is one important source to be relied on for strong opinions of what a site should be like, and what designs are cool. Squeezing out a few minutes in between the baby’s nap and the day’s washing for a quick recipe from Jamie Oliver’s cookery blog, while whisking through eBay and netmums – count on them for some practical opinion on what a quick surfer would want from a site.)

Time for a quick PC disclaimer! The third party opinion does not have to be limited to ‘the wife’ alone. It could be your partner, your mum, your dad or a web savvy neighbour- just about anyone. Basically what we are saying is this – show people. A few extra pairs of eyeballs to spot flaws that you might have missed – a great internet thing called ‘crowdsourcing’. Well, this opinion bit is not based on any solid survey or poll, just anecdotal stuff that was discussed in the office and has been testified as quite an effective tool.

Are you still there with us on this?

• No? Good luck, we wish you well.
• Yes? We really are going to get on! Call us.

P.S. Did you spot the ol’ post-it note in the grey box? It managed to stick on this far. Bet you the designer will get rid of it in the next stage!

Tip 1a: Still banging on about Post-it Notes

Post tip1 and pre tip2

Right, you gave me all that twaddle about post-it notes. Point taken Mr Owner, Director, Marketing manager, IT dude who has just inherited this web thing. But incidentally my competitors are right now shelling out fortunes on their new websites.  Ahem…I hear Jones and Jones diggers are spending nothing short of 50K on their new one! All I know is I want a new website, and it simply has to be the best in the industry.

Well, all of the above have actually been said to me, apart from the word twaddle. Ha, I bet this is yet to figure even in the Enriched Teen’s Vocabulary Edition!

Coming to Scissors, paper, pens and post-its… I know they don’t exactly sound like the newest in technology, and doesn’t really come across as the best piece of professional advice in the age of Twitter and the iPad.

But, surprisingly the entire process is actually quite thorough and looks something like this:

•    Simple tools such as post-it notes to capture, check  requirements and priorities
•    Initial sketches / grey boxing to echo back
•    Click-able prototype to confirm that we are going to deliver something that was wanted in the first place
•    Design
•    Build
•    QA / Test / Training
•    Go Live

The technology and techno babble in fact comes in only later. We can’t possibly “give you” a website at the very outset. We don’t know your business, your clients or your products. Our job at this point is just to get you talking. We could put on a German accent, use a desk lamp and turn a bright shining light on to you.  “You vill talk”. Now, before you get the politically correct police on to us… we don’t do that and we love Germany, especially Heidelberg.

The point we are making is this. A process is needed to capture all the requirements. There will be a lot of sorting, rejecting and change of focus. When the client takes the post-its out of our hands, we know that we are onto a winner. The client is engaging, they are starting to own the process. They are starting to build the site. That is exactly what we want, a partnership approach that will lead to a win-win scenario.

If you think you don’t have to be put through all this hassle for a new website, let’s be honest, we know you could spend 50 quid and get your site done in Mumbai or Jakarta. Heck, you can even go to WordPress.com and get a site for free! (and sometimes that is the right thing to do.)

I hope you are still there with us after all this? Good, in that case we are going to get on quite well and I see a winning website shaping up in the horizon.

Hmmm, this stuff works for Social Media also?

What will 2010 bring?

First things first, goodbye 2009, we are not going to miss you. What a year it has been. 2009 was difficult, challenging, testing and requiring one to run faster and faster just to stand still. Good, decent, upstanding and respectable clients went bust and some of the methods used by receivers are truly shocking, even the Times commented on this. All good for experience I suppose.

Last year as I looked forward to 2009 my Google searches did not reveal much to tickle my fancy. This year however there is plenty to digest. As a first observation more people seem to be looking forward, which I fully understand, more are taking guesses and are making interesting predictions.

The Scotsman even compares the previous year’s predictions. Nice. http://bit.ly/8GQ9zo

These are my favourites:

• Fox news: http://bit.ly/797XKz
• Regular geek: http://bit.ly/78W9Op
• Little box of ideas: http://bit.ly/6oYfNO

At Imre we probably need to pay more attention to these predictions.
Marketing Vox:  http://bit.ly/4N7TEo

Then there are all of these:

• http://bit.ly/76pz7R – Good to know where gold and energy prices are headed.
• http://bit.ly/84IPiR – I am always interested in leadership. Those that have vision and can lead their troops into battle are worth their weight in gold. But this Murdoch thing seems foolhardy or is it just big balls?
• http://bit.ly/4ZLZBJ – Looks like HR managers will be busy, a good thing.
• http://bit.ly/7NwljJ - Gobbledygook.
• http://bit.ly/5vya4M -Fraud will be up, up, up and up. Now that is a one way bet.
• http://bit.ly/8hUeNy – Written in 1997 and predicting the 2010 political landscape.
• http://bit.ly/53w4yN Trendwatching.com. I remember them from last year. These people are very insightful and really do a good job. Urbany? Fluxury? All good to test your spell checker.
• http://bit.ly/5jv1M9 – Value is the new black.
• http://bit.ly/4J7WvZ – The future of social change on the web.
• http://bit.ly/6puGXl – 8 news media trends for 2010
• http://bit.ly/79LwzU – An actual blip in the Netcraft hosts curve. Then totally amazed to read about the growth of “nginx” :  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nginx All new to me! (Did I work in hosting?)

So where does that leave us with the thinking for 2010?

Value, radical thinking, relentless change, social media maturity where we can expect the likes of toobla.com to tie up the lose ends to make things more workable. Local seems to come up again and again.

And for our clients?

Most are using smart phones, those that are not, really need to make the jump. Devices such as iPhones will bring home how local services can work, and also where there are a few spare minutes, dipping into social media is entirely possible. Most clients say that they do not have time for social media activities. I think 2010 will be the year that those  who are not taking part in the conversations will find themselves exposed.

Cmon 2010, help us forget 2009! And it is time for an African team to show that 2010 belongs to Africa.

Happy new year from the IMRE Team!!

Late update:
From the Beeb for UK Manufacturing. Good for 2010.

The power of the web to spread the word…

Now I am sure that everyone has heard at some point something similar to: “You must start blogging! It’s an incredible tool to spread the word!” and equally we are all constantly hearing things like “Twitter can project your voice instantly to huge audiences.”

Well I want to share a couple of examples that I’ve come across. Yesterday, we probably all heard about the amazing job done by a brave American Airlines pilot, dumping his plane into the Hudson river without any loss of life. What is different though, is a large number of you probably heard about it first through twitter. It turns out that one of the first ferry’s on the scene happened to have a man by the name of Janis Krums. Mr. Krums by luck had an iPhone on him and was in his twitter application so as the Ferry approached the plane to help the survivors he took a picture which went straight onto twitpic (the photo part of twitter) and the word was out…beating any professional reporter even though this is NEW YORK!

Now at least I can say that Mr. Krums didn’t take his micro-blogging quite as seriously as a certain Mike Wilson did in December. Mr. Wilson was actually in a plane crash and twittered updates throughout the entire ordeal leaving some to question the state of mind of a man that is trying to save his own life. The initial message of “Holy bleep bleep – I was just in a plane crash!” was followed with peaches like “Ugh … My glasses fell off in the mass exodus getting off the plane .. Can’t see very well” and “Continental keeping us locked up at the presidents club until they can sort everything out. Won’t even serve us drinks. ” (Another link but be warned of no censoring!) Now this is obviously the other extreme side of the scale, but it is facinating as news agencies will give their right arms for eyewitness and survivor accounts. Well I would be scared if I were them, because now these eyewitnesses and survivors have their own voice without the need to use a news agency. Powerful stuff!

Lastly I want to share with you a little story that demonstrates the power of blogging. If I told you that I could create life with a blog you probably wouldn’t believe me. What if I told you, not only could I create life, but I could do it in the form of a prodigal 16-year old Moldovan football star that will be the next big signing for a team like Arsenal or Real Madrid. I kid you not…it’s happened. Now fortunately the scandal has been uncovered as a clever ruse – they still don’t know who was behind the scam or even the motivation – but through a series of blog postings, an update to Wikipedia and some other clever uses of imagination, certain news agencies were fooled into thinking Masal Bugduv was the next big thing, even going so far that the Times listed him number 30 in their list of fledgling superstars. Of course this has left a lot of red faces, and even yesterday (24 hours after it was discovered to be a scam), the cleanup operation had begun and poor old Masal is being wiped out – although an amusing apology can be found at the bottom of this page from goal.com. Well it just shows the power that each and everyone of us have to communicate to the world…so why not start using it?

“Where will your marketing take you?” – asks Isocube.co.uk

It has been a real pleasure working with Marcus Potts, but boy was it damn hard. We got there in the end, with lots of ideas, real partnership in terms of working through the issues and the good old Expression Engine.

As Marcus says, “where will your marketing take you?” What an interesting question. Do we ever think about this?  Often we state what we would like or need:

• I want a website
• I need a website
• I need a logo
• I want a logo

Really? So why? How will any of this help my business?

To make progress we might tighten up our requirements:

• I need brand consistency (so a logo on my website, brochures and business cards)
• I need to grow my sales (ah, use the web as a means of communicating your offer and to reach more people perhaps?)

Ok cool, now we are getting somewhere and this leads us to the big question. I as the potential client want a website, but this must be formulated into brand consistency and wanting to grow sales.  By now we should be beginning to see a huge gap. Mr business man is running around putting out fires, delivering to clients, fighting cash flow, paying Gordon, and at some point he or she must take time out to think and to make that mental leap from want or need to having a vision for the framework that is needed to solve the real problem.

Cool, we got there in the end eh? But, now image that you are Isocube. How do you attract people and take them on a journey from apparent basic needs to an understanding of what should actually be done?

Well, for a start, you need to communicate at all levels:

• I can give you a logo
• I can give you a website
• I can look at your branding
• I can help you with telesales / customer support / CRM etc etc
• Infact, I can help you with almost anything!

When we sat with Isocube and worked thorugh everything that they could deliver to clients we actually ended up with an enormous list of possibilities. (We could have easily defined 70 or 80 services and products that could be sold and delivered either individually or in groups of related items.)

How do you build a website for that? Now factor in the cross relationships and you end up with a massive matrix. Here are some examples:

• Growing sales could mean: 
  • marketing messages
  • testimonials
  • logo design
  • website
  • data
  • telemarketing
  • preventing loss of clients through better service
• A website could involve:
  • logo design
  • marketing massages
  • SEO
  • hosting
  • testimonials

Rome was not built in a day and you certainly can’t change all of your marketing collateral and customer support procedures overnight. BUT Isocube does need to be able to explain to a potential client that there are dependencies and that the client will need to plot a course. In fact a map is needed. EUREKA!

The map concept allows us to come up with a solution.

• Remember that we asked the question “Where is your marketing taking you?”
• We have lots of services
• We have lots of dependencies
• We need a map
• We need to plot a course
• We need to know where we are starting
• We need to know where we are going

The image below perfectly frames all of the possibilities and is infinitely adaptable.

The map can be used to group relevant products into an instantly understandable work shedule. We know where we are and we know what is going to come next. Infact we can hop from on line to another as certain stations allow it. For more details visit the Isocube website.

Now that we have revealed the simple conceptual solution to explaining the Isocube offering, how did we actually implement this as a website? In a word, with the Expression Engine and lots of elbow grease!

Essentially each product is like a datasheet which collects standard “bits” of information, for example:

• Product name
• Short description
• Categories
• Relationships with other products
• Casestudies

These are then put into a database for later display within web pages. The magic is in the details and this is where the Expression Engine comes to the fore via the provision of an easily manipulated framework. Obviously there is a lot more going on behind the scenes, but the essentials are that thought must given to the data design, grey boxing and page flow.

If you can dream it, well then the Expression Engine can be used to accomplish it!

For more details contact us or get in touch with Marcus Potts at Isocube.

Please note that IMRE does not take credit for the Map idea. All credit for this belongs to Isocube, we at Imre provided the “glue” and mechanics to turn the vision into a website.

Education, Education, Education ( MCL2 )

Who said education, education and education?
Well he has moved on, having not sorted out the Uk Education system he decided to meddle in the Israeli-Arab situation and buy a few houses along the way….. thanks Tony

So, forget the Gov and the people with the letters “PM”or “MP” after their names as they are barking up the wrong tree.

If you are into Web, SEO, Social Media, blogs, gaming and all that that other stuff in the soup or if you want to learn more or if you want to network, well  then there is only one thing you need to do.

Get down to the latest Social Media Mafia event on December 13th – it is FREE. ( MCL2)
http://mediacamplondon.pbwiki.com/register

We will be there. If you are not convinced trawl through facebook, flickr and search on Chris Hambly and read our previous posts.

Now this will be Education, Education and Education. (and Fun! Make sure you meet Jo!)

The Internet as a Platform

What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word ‘internet’? Websites and email are the most common replies, but there is much, much more out there to help us. Over the past few years online applications, also known as webapps, have been steadily progressing from being simple webmail readers to full blown applications you’d expect to see on your desktop.

Here at Imre, our lives our made much easier by using these webapps. Gone are the days where we would write to-do lists in an email or jot meetings down on paper. Using online applications such as Basecamp and Backpack by 37 Signals, we can now assign to-do lists to specific projects, and to specific people. These lists are shared between all of us, even including our clients if need be. We each have our own calendar which is aggregated into a central company calendar so we can quickly see who is doing what, and when.

This philosophy of online applications extends in many different directions, and education and research institutes have always been at the leading edge. My girlfriend has just started University and is using an online application called Blackboard. After each of her lectures she can pull down the associated notes, powerpoints etc. straight into her Blackboard and access them wherever she may be.

As well as online applications, there are other interesting ways in which the internet can help speed up research by spreading processing power across a global network of computers. An interesting research project called Folding@Home is being conducted by Stanford University. Focusing on the area of protein folding, users can download software to their computer (or access it on their Playstation 3 console, where it is already installed), link up to the network and the software will then use their computer to help process the simulations. The more people that use the software, the more powerful this global supercomputer becomes. This kind of power that would run into the millions, even billions, of pounds to acquire is now free thanks to the global network and is already accelerating research by literally years.

A similar approach has been taken by CERN to collect particle collision data from the Large Hadron Collider experiment which will allow them to collect more than 15 million Gigabytes of research data per year.

The future of computing and the internet is very exciting. Imagine not only being able to access all your files online and share them with anyone you wish, but being part of a global supercomputer where everyone is helping eachother to work faster and more efficiently. This future is already being born. Even Microsoft, who have a long history of keeping things locked down, are developing a cloud computing operating system which installs a core operating system onto your machine and then links you up to online applications. Of course there’s also Google, who with their already impressive line up of online applications have really helped to push things forward.

If you have any thoughts on the internet as a platform, software as a service, or any other clever phrase to describe using the full potential of the internet, please drop us a comment using the form below. We’d love to hear what you think!

WordPress on the iPhone and iPod Touch!

I’m (somewhat slowly) writing this post from my iPod Touch!

The latest 2.0 release from Apple has opened both models up to third party applications, and when I saw an official WordPress app I had to try it out!

After entering your login details it instantly pulls down all your posts, allows you to add and edit them, and it even has a multiple selection field with all of your categories in it! Even cooler than that though, you can upload photos! I don’t have many on here but I tested it and it works great… Right now it can only add them to the end of your post, hopefully that will change in a future version.

I’m very impressed and I think that it’s just the beggining of what the iPhone and other mobile devices can do.

Now if only I could type a bit faster on this thing!

The Expression Engine is keeping us busy!

We only started using the expression engine a few weeks ago. We have found the tool to be very flexible and adaptable. Projects are already in the foundry and the team is busy hammering, bashing tin, and churning stuff out.

Coming soon: Ladycab and Heatsource.

Mediacamp london, copyright presentation

I missed this session …….

Chris Garrett has posted this very interesting slide show on copyright. Copyright is a big issue in our industry when it comes to logos, icons, images and copy. One of our clients had his entire site copied by someone from Ireland! The cheek of it. I would be interested to follow this debate as it impacts everyone.

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