Our thoughts, rants and inside knowlege of web design & development!
Posts tagged Social Media
Builders Website Design Example
Dec 1st
We are proud to launch this website design project for the North London Builders DCL – Direct Construction Ltd. The initial brief was to design the company logo / branding.
Once branding was complete we moved our focus onto the website design. We took the time to understand the clients services and planned the website content around this information, we provided 5 bespoke home page designs and this was the outcome. The website design is built inside the WordPress platform which means the blog was seemlessly integrated and future social media interaction will be simple and cost effective to implement.
LinkedIn Share Button
Dec 1st
Business oriented social network giant LinkedIn has recently launched a share button which gives users a way to spread thier content throughout their professional network.
There are 3 options of the share button available which can be easily added to your website or blog – as follows:
1. vertical:
2. horizontal with counter:
3. horizontal without counter.
LinkedIns latest updates combined with the additional sharing options released back in April, link attaching, status updates, ability to re-share links as well as edit and delete posts brings it inline with social media giant Facebook.
The share button competition is strong with Facebook, Digg, Twitter, StumbleUpon and countless others, do you think LinkedIn has a place in this market and which is your preference?
Flock – The Social Web Browser
Dec 1st
Flock was first released in 2005 and is known for its social networking elements, for years the browser was based on the GECKO rendering engine, same as Firefox. In June it has swopped over to use Googles Chromium Engine in an attempt re-invent itself.
With the financial backing of Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape they have created the future of browsing and have been quick to react to the launch of RockMelt a start up looking for a piece of the social browsing market. Albiet a little cumbersome and not nearly as polished as Flock, it has ruffled a few feathers, competition is good.
See the into for Flock – better still download it – its free and take it for a spin.
Let us know what you think.
Twitter Analytics
Nov 24th
Twitter is set to launch an analytic tool to help users to track the popularity of their Tweets, number of retweets and the number of replies each post recieved. This tool is a fantastic tool which will make marketers jump for joy especially when reports say it will be FREE?
Surely Twitter could have cashed in on this one?
Let us know if you would have paid for this kind of service?
2011 Small Business Marketing Budgets
Nov 24th
Small businesses are expected to continue to invest larger shares of their advertising budgets in the favour of websites over other forms of advertising according to a recent survey undertaken by Zoomerang and Growbiz Media. This shows that smal businesses will continue to push their websites aswell as direct mail, e-mail marketing, social media and print advertising.
Website Design and Ecommerce Web Design have contributed to the rise above all other advertising forms as more companies understand that the future of their business is linked to the quality of their website. It is estimated that 39% of all small businesses with fewer than 1000 staff are spending around 20% of their budgets in favour of their website and 17% of all small business plan to increase their web spenditure throughout 2011. In comparison 15% reported they will increase their email marketing budgets and 13% their social media investment.
Amazingly only 54% said they had a website design and only 13% had a website blog. Looking into the website features the majority (80%) of websites contained general business information, 45% customer service, 35% lead generration and 30% had an Ecommerce Web Design element.
This shows there is huge room for improvement amongst small business owners to More >
Myspace to get Facebook integration
Nov 18th
As part of the recently unveiled redesign of the Myspace social networking and ‘entertainment discovery’ website, a deep integration with Facebook has been revealed. The integration will allow new and existing users to pull in their profile information and ‘social graph’, linking their Myspace profiles to artists and bands they have listed on their Facebook profile.
The ‘beta’ version of the new site is now available at www.myspace.com, but from my own testing it seems that the Facebook integration is not functioning as announced at this time. Nevertheless, the new features sound very promising. See a video about the new features after the break. Also, try hovering over their logo on the new website – it’s a nice design touch!
Oh snap, Google…
Nov 17th
Search engine and online service provider Google has fallen into disputes with social network Facebook over ‘data portability’. Google has blocked access to its Contacts service from Facebook, citing poor standards in data sharing on Facebook’s part as the cause. Facebook allowed users to access their contacts list from Google’s Gmail service to find friends who are also using the social networking site. Google has criticised Facebook for making the export of its own contact data extremely difficult whilst taking advantage of the superior export facilities offered by other services. (more…)
10% of traffic to Mail Online comes from Facebook
Nov 15th
Martin Clarke, the Daily Mail executive allocated the role of running the newspaper’s website, Mail Online, has revealed at the Society of Editors conference in Glasgow that 10% of traffic to the website originates from the social network Facebook, and referred to it as a ‘gigantic free marketing engine’. The 10% figure is beaten only by Google, as one would expect.
The journalism industry is currently split on the best model for online news – News International has recently erected a paywall around their Times Online and News of the World websites, and is intending to do the same for The Sun. The issue with forcing users to pay to view content is, of course, that the ‘shareability’ factor decreases dramatically – your friends are unlikely to sign up to a newspaper subscription just to read an article you posted on their Wall.
Regardless of the tough decisions that the newspaper industry faces, it is becoming increasingly apparent that social media has a massive role in online promotion. A well organised social media strategy could increase traffic to your site dramatically. Analytics data also takes an important role in discerning the sources of traffic to More >
Rumours abound about Facebook email service
Nov 12th
The internet is abuzz with rumours that Facebook is about to launch a new email service that will be heavily tied in with Facebook’s current social networking features. Tentatively named ‘Project Titan’, it is speculated that the service will provide Facebook users with their own personal ‘@facebook.com’ email addresses. Facebook do seem to be unveiling a lot of new features after their ‘Summer Lockdown’ in which engineers at the company were directed to work feverishly on new and existing products offered by Facebook.
What do you think about this ‘Facebook Mail’ concept? Would it be a fantastically convenient option, or do you feel like the social media giant is intruding too far? Which email service do you use at the moment? Would you leave for a Facebook version? Tell all in the comments section!
Music based social network iTunes Ping gains only 2000 artists in two months
Nov 5th
Apple’s new ‘Ping’ social and music discovery network has only added two thousand artists in the two months since it went live, Mashable reports, despite garnering a massive user base numbering in the millions. The usefulness of the social network is questionable when there is a distinct lack of bands and artists for users to interact with.
According to Jeff Price, the founder of music distributor TuneCore, Apple has a rigorous sign up process for artists, so that artist profiles that are created belong to the real artist only. This quality control process is designed to avoid the pitfalls of websites like the soon-to-be relaunched Myspace, where users make unofficial artist pages making discovery and interaction with the actual artist very difficult.
However, the application process itself involves music distributors like TuneCore and CDBaby, and can take some time. Many artists were in fact completely confused as to how to apply for a profile in the first place, prompting Apple to release a submission guide.
Have you tried out Apple’s new service? How did you find it? Send a few comments our way!