Archive for the ‘Digital’ Category

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The Heineken Social Christmas Tree

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

Is your Christmas tree social? We don’t mean the family getting together to decorate the tree with ball balls, we’re talking about the worlds most social tree ever created: The Heineken Social Christmas Tree. Singapore’s Clarke Quay will be the venue for the 11 meter tall digital art installation incorporating 48 LCD TV screens all connected to Facebook designed by Iris Worldwide. Consumers can add their own photos, friends, custom messages, animation and music via the Facebook App. The tree along with it’s social digital content will all be displayed 17th-26th of December.

Heineken is no stranger to social media, they have a long line of successful campaigns including the beer keg campaign. This is a company that knows how to connect digital, social media and real world art installations to promote their brand and to create enjoyable and memorable experiences.


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Posted in Digital, Marketing, Social Media |

5 Website Redesign Essentials

Monday, November 28th, 2011

Thinking of giving your website a revamp? Great stuff! It’s probably the best thing you can do in terms of your online presence. After all, almost everyone will look up your website when considering your services.

A fresh well thought out website can provide a much better experience for your users and there are several important factors to remember when doing a website re-design.

Content and Blog

Your actual content is obviously an important part of your website but amazingly this is still overlooked by so many businesses.

So ask yourself whether your existing copy needs a refresh as well? If so you’ll certainly want to optimise your copy for the search engines and make sure it is unique and demonstrates your expertise. You should also provide a strong call to action for users to get in touch, purchase your products or do whatever the goal of your website is.

Regular fresh content is essential in today’s online world and integrating a blog into your website is the best way to add regular news, articles, videos or podcasts that the search engines can index.

Search Engine Friendly

Your website should be built with the following in mind. Well coded websites mean faster loading websites, which is just one factor in how your website ranks in Google.

Meta data such as keywords and descriptions, although not as important as they once were should still be a part of your website.

  • Ensure keyword phrase is in the tags of a post if your site is blog based.
  • Keywords should appear in the first paragraph of content, be in bold, italicised or underlined.
  • Keyword phrase is used as the anchor text of a link within the page or post
  • Phrase is the alt text and title tag as well as the image

Browser Tested

Your website should work on modern browsers as well as older ones. There are fantastic new evolutions in CSS and HTML which can help your website load faster in modern browsers and bring functionalities to give your site that special touch. A future-proof site should be optimised for modern browsers with backwards compatibility with older browsers.

Mobile Friendly

How does your website look on smart phones and mobile devices? It may well be worth considering having an optimised mobile version alongside your main website that helps mobile users navigate around your website more easily. Almost half of UK internet users are going online via mobile phone data connections, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Social Media

If you want to tap into the viral power of social media then you may want to consider linking to or integrating your social media platforms on your website.

Think about whether social media will enhance your online marketing efforts as it may not be for everyone. What you want to achieve? Increase communication and get feedback from customers? Establish your expertise in a given area or just drive traffic?

Redesigning your site is an excellent move  – just don’t forget these basic ingredients

If you’re thinking of a website revamp don’t hesitate to contact us for a no obligation chat

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Posted in Design, Digital |

10 Useful Smart Apps for your Busy Business

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

smart apps for businessSmart phone apps for devices like the iPhone, Android and Blackberry have rapidly changed the way we are able to manage our business when on the move.

If you don’t already have a smart phone it is well worth considering even if only to keep up to date with meetings on your calendar, take notes and scan documents.

Here are just a few of our favourite apps for your smart devices to run your business and stay productive whilst on the move.

 

  • Dropbox- Syncs folders and files between your desktop computers and laptops. This app enables you to check folder content and view documents/PDFs and other files from your smart device.

    For iPhone
    For Android
    For Blackberry
  • QuickOffice- A full-blown suite for viewing and editing both Microsoft Word and Excel files. You can also now create and edit presentations.

    For iPhone
    For Android
  • BaseCamp / Insight- Formally encamp – Insight gives you access to all of Basecamp’s core features such as projects, messages, to-do lists, and milestones. you can also view PDFs, images and Office documents that are associated with your Basecamp projects.

    For iPhone
    For Android (Related search)
    For Blackberry (Unvired Projects for Basecamp)
  • LinkedIn- There are of course social media apps for all the social networking sites and LinkedIn is no exception. This is a powerful contacts and networking app for business opportunities whilst on the move. No more annoying business cards when networking, just add each other on LinkedIn.

    For iPhone
    For Android
    For Blackberry

  • WordPress- Write, edit, manage and publish your WordPress blog from your smart device. You can also moderate comments, add images and videos.

    For iPhone
    For Android
    For Blackberry
  • Bump. Bump two phones together to share photos, contacts, and apps! Bumpâ„¢ makes sharing with people as simple as bumping two phones together. Just pick what you want to send, then hold your phones and gently bump hands with another Bump user.

    For Android
    For iPhone
  • Skype. Place free calls to Skype users worldwide. Video-chatting is free, too. Call non-Skype numbers worldwide at cheaper rates than most international calling plans offer.

    For iPhone
    For Android
  • Evernote. This is like a smart filing cabinet for your pocket. Capture notes from things you see and hear using snapshot and audio, store blog ideas and conference notes. Evernote syncs between your computer, the web and your smart phone. Everything you capture is automatically processed, indexed, and made searchable.

    For iPhone
    For Android
    For Blackberry

Although not included in our list – it goes without saying that social apps such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are immensly useful for engaging and updating while you are out of the office.

What your favourite biz apps?

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Posted in Digital, Technology |

12 of the Year’s Best Ideas in Interface Design

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011
12 of the Year's Best Ideas in Interface Design If you’re into interface design (like us), here are 12 of the year’s best ideas in interface design brought to you by fastcodesign.com If there’s something that you think they missed, do let us know in the comments. See the Slideshow

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Posted in Design, Digital |

Making Your Business iPad Friendly

Friday, October 8th, 2010
The Apple ipad is on track to become the world’s most popular mobile device with sales of 3.3 million generating $2.17 billion in the first quarter. According to reports from Morgan Stanley sales are set to reach 16 million units in its’ first year. Demand for the ipad is greater than the original iphone in 2007.

ipad-biz iPad courtesy of Apple The iPad, which allows users to browse the web, send emails, play multi-media in HD, games, music and more is redefining mobile media as well as computers in general. Because of its ease of use the device appeals to travellers, students and middle-aged people and senior citizens who enjoy using email to stay in touch with  friends and family, sharing photos and surfing the web, but hate all the hassles associated with a computer. Funky Interactive Magazines The ipad is increasing the reading times of magazines online with titles like GQ and VanityFair getting an average of 60 minutes compared to a few minutes on a desktop screen. Wired, the US tech magazine has enjoyed app downloads of 66,000 since launch at $4.99 an issue. It’s easy to see why. Reinventing the magazine format with video, graphics, animation, data and photos certainly makes for a more interesting read. The Ebook Whirlwind The iPad launch has coincided with a popular ebook explosion. Two years ago Amazon dominated the ebook publishing show with the Kindle which is still going strong and the iPad has already captured more eReader market share than the Sony Reader. The ibook store on the iPad offers millions of virtual titles and Google Editions are set to unleash a vortex of 12 million books online this Winter. Combined, this will certainly change the publishing industry as we know it So what other opportunities are there for businesses on the iPad? According to Shopatron, a global eCommerce provider, sales conversions on the iPad are much higher than other mobile devices with an average conversion rate up to 2.04%. For some stores the iPad conversion rate was as much as double the conversion rate from personal computers. Just like a magazine or book, digital catalogues can be published enabling users to buy direct from the ipad making it a potent marketing tool. How else can your business become iPad friendly? Make sure you have a blog that is regularly updated so your target audience will find useful and entertaining content is a great start. Video and Podcasts as part of your content syndication is a good idea as the thirst for this kind of Interactive Social Media features on your site must become standard if you are to pursue and build a relationship with your prospects and readers. More and more businesses are also waking up to the potential of productising their knowledge and expertise with ebooks, reports and whitepapers to compliment their existing products or services. And as with the magazine apps, Ebooks can contain audio and video content that iPad users are hungry for. Now’s the time to ask how you will make your business more iPad-friendly?

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Posted in Digital, Technology |

Your Digital Products Unleashed

Monday, January 11th, 2010
dnldThe growth of digital product sales online has been growing steadily. This Christmas Amazon sold more eBook downloads than physical books for the first time ever. The Amazon Kindle was largely responsible as owners rushed to get content for their new e-readers. Apple have also been heavily rumoured to be unveiling an e-reader, possibly called i-slate which could put digital products on the forefront of another online content revolution. Digital products can be PDF formatted eBooks, audio podcast content, video content (training/how to etc) and the fact is you can sell as many as you like, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. No wonder there is a huge increase in work at home entrepreneurs, small businesses and indeed big businesses jumping on board the digital products revolution. It doesn’t always have to be a complex software or mobile application. Many experts simply productize their knowledge to create an income outside of the services/time based model. If you are a growing business you might want to consider adding digital products to your product lines or services. An example might be an accountancy who wants to give away a free eBook to their clients on ‘Preparing Your Tax Return’ or a Social Media Consultant selling clients video training about using Facebook. Digital products don’t go bad and are mostly automated income once they are set-up and can compliment other products and services very nicely. We have been helping many clients with their digital products, Graphic User interfaces (GUI) and video (both for training and actual product content) for many years. If you have a great idea for your digital products, whether for video, audio, eBook, mobile or software applications Code 9 can help you realise your concept. Click here for more information on GUI and Video

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Posted in Digital |

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