Your web site maybe creating the ‘first impression’ of your business.

Think about it, would you answer the phone ‘no, go away!’? Exactly!

Would you put up a neon sign next to the M1 saying ‘its easier to get a quote from our competitors who are just off the next junction’. I think you get the point.

So its imperative that your site at least says what you do, shows what you’ve done and offers a super simple way to get in touch – and that’s all got to happen within seconds.

Of course web sites can do lots more things than that but, frankly if you’re not going to get the basics right you’re better off not wasting your money in the first place.

What do you do?

A picture says a thousand words – oh, did I really just say that. Trouble is, its true!

Images convey a ton of info in microseconds. But remember, quality is everything. Get it shot professionally or use good stock, never run with amateur stuff. You will look cheap.

Then there’s the words. Can you sum up what you do in one line that is easy for a layperson to understand?

If not why not?

Trying to distill things down to a single line is a useful exercise which, can often highlight wider problems with your marketing and operations in general. Maybe you need two web sites? maybe you now need a new name!

But when it comes to the all important strap line and copy in general, people often seem to go for one of two options;

Option 1 – flaff

We strive to serve global stake holders with sector specific integrated spherical solutions.

Option 2 – the simple truth

We make ball bearings.

Just say what you do for crying out loud! What’s wrong with that!

Users want small parcels of genuinely useful information not reams of marcobabble. Choose every word with care. Keep stripping it back.

Hey! Lets make the site really difficult to use.

Its almost as if some people actually convened a meeting and agreed to do just that. Yeh cool, lets organise the navigation so you can’t find what you want. Wow of course, lets piss the user off with some animated fish.

Just get the basics right and leave the tropical fish for your reception area.

Does the User Interface meet accessibility standards, is it suitable for the visually impaired?

Does the site work across all of the popular browsers out there not just Explorer on a Pc? A lot of people use Firefox and Mac’s and all sorts!

How does the site behave on the iPad or an Android Phone?

Try getting your kids to use it and watch how they navigate around. Kids are great testers, if its not instant and obvious they go.

We think its time to get back to the original purpose of the internet; to deliver information quickly in a universal format. Its a bonus if it looks cool.

Who are your customers?

Here’s an interesting exercise. Take your head out of the sand and build your LinkedIn network; it isn’t a fad and isn’t a waste of time!

Its only when all your contacts are lined up next to one another do you see the pattern.

Gender, title, age, location, sector and interestingly the period in your career when you met most of them!

All the pointers are there. Who do you make the most money out of and why? Build a site with the profitable people in your professional network in mind. How do you attract more of them?

You gotta water the garden man!

A blog and regular tweets work. Yes, they do and we’ve got proof.

Keeping your site alive, dynamic and ever-evolving is as important as all your other business development activities. Sure it takes time, and it can be hard work but it will be what sets you apart from the alpha males who don’t get it. Look fresh, exciting and switched on!

See your web site as a digital channel not a business card.

Too many sites flatline.

But I’m not technical!

Thank god for that.

The technical side of web development is wholly and utterly irrelevant to most people in most cases. When you went on holiday did you fly on an Airbus or a Boeing?

Don’t waste your time learning buzz words or trying to understand ‘how’ just concentrate on ‘why’.

Remember, creating a web site is about you and what you do.

It takes 1 second to click away. Users are ruthless.

Some of these things are mad in a brilliant, innovative and daring way, some are just bonkers. Oh how I’d of loved to have a been a fly on the wall when the C5 was sketched out – why is it aerodynamic?

Where would we be without that small group of people prepared to try, prepared to mix things up to see what happens! Long live those who aren’t scared of failure.

The Synthaxe.

The Sinclair C5.

The Jenson Interceptor.

The Stylophone.

The Instamatic Camera.

The original TV Tennis video Game.

….and of course more recently the brilliant Amstrad Telephone Email machine.

Anyone can imitate or regurgitate, very few innovate. As Sir Freddie Laker is reported to have said ‘The only man who doesn’t make mistakes is the man who doesn’t do anything’.

Oh and I also went to see Supergrass perform their last ever UK gig at the Brixton Academy (this vid wasn’t take from it but it’s one of my favourite songs of theirs).

Good to see very few people with cameras up all the time. A very enjoyable gig.

Just ways to spread the word

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Email, SMS, web sites, forums and blogs are simply methods of distribution.

Sure there are a few operational ‘do’s and dont’s’ for optimising their effectiveness, but the reality is that pretty much anyone with access to the internet now has the capacity to distribute content on a global scale for little or no cost.

So there’s really no need to feel ‘bamboozled’ with all this stuff, the mediums I have mentioned above are just contemporary methods for distributing content or put another way, spreading the word.

Content is king

The creation of great content however is a another matter entirely. It’s very easy to get this bit wrong and very hard to put it right if you do;

Who wants to enter a competition to win a crap prize?

Who wants to buy a product which is too expensive?

Why tell me about a product which is not available in my country?

Why would I want to hear about a boy band concert when I hate boy bands?

If you distribute content digitally there’s a chance its found its way to all sorts of places in an instant. People can comment on your offering and there’s nothing you can do about it! In other words, you can’t put the genie back into bottle.

So what makes great content?

I think its about relevancy, clarity, and timing.

Imagine this. Your local cake shop has just baked some of your favorite cakes. You got their tweet on your smartphone so you made a detour to pick some up on the way home.

Because of Twitter, I now read my local newspaper for the first time in twenty years. Small, local stories feed onto my desktop along side the big global issues of the day. Surprisingly I’m becoming more interested in the local stuff. So the great content was always there, its just that its started to be distributed more effectively.

Digital isn’t just for the big guys. In fact it often works just as well and with lower risk for small organisations.

So a few things I feel people ought to consider when trying to make digital marketing work for their business.

Is this content good for us?

Is this content good for our customers?

Can we deliver on our promise?

How and when should we distribute this content?

So don’t worry about how all the technical stuff works and keeping up with latest buzzwords, just concentrate on what you’re going to say.

They would bash things, bend things and often make new parts to get you back on the road.

Not anymore. Now they plug a laptop in, wait for the diagnostic software to spot the problem and specify the replacement part.

Mechanics became fitters.

A decade or so ago you’d have paid thousands for a developer to build you a Content Management System (CMS). Oh how the eyes would light up as they saw another cash cow heading their way.

The old model went something like this – build a bespoke system they can’t take anywhere else and then charge ‘em a fortune to keep it on the road. The best bit was that the system was almost never truly bespoke, large chunks of it very closely resembling something they had built for someone else.

You thought you were buying new and actually it was often a clocked ‘cut and shut’ with a paint job.

Its different now.

Wonna CMS? just fit Wordpress. Need an e-commerce platform? just fit Magento. Need to expand further or add another whistle and bell? Just choose from the hundreds of add-ons.

Everything is there already, you just need someone to fit it together for you.

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Please send us a link to your portfolio site/examples of your work to info@rosslyndigital.co.uk.

Thanks

I’ve always been a big Scritti fan, I guess the unusual vocal and intense syncopation just struck a chord, I just loved the ’shine’ it all had and wondered how I could make machines do stuff like that.

I suspect a significant amount of the production credit during their most successful early albums ought to go to David Gamson. But Green’s instantly recognisable vocal and the great lyrical themes were the ingredients that really set the material apart in my view.

Then there were the great players such as Alan Murphy and Marcus Miller adding clever licks and fills which somehow always seemed to sit perfectly with the programmed parts.

I had a little personal connection as well. A friend of mine was working on ‘Provision’ their third album, so I got to hear first hand the stories of an extreme attention to detail and an ability to push the technology of the day to its limits. All good stuff for a young songwriter looking to rise above the local pub circuit.

So it was quite ironic that many years later I would stroll into a grimy pub in Kilburn to watch Green perform Wood Beez! I was totally blown away with his vocal, I wasn’t sure what to expect but he’s actually a fantastic live performer which was a bit of a surprise given the ’studio band’ image Scritti had cultivated.

A different application of technology has changed the music business beyond all recognition. Nowadays I suspect that there are few record company executives who would be prepared to fund all the top studios, producers and musicians Scritti went through!

But how many British pop bands can claim to have been covered by Miles Davis or can cite Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney as fans.

You get what you pay for kids!

Spotify users can here my favourite tracks here -

Scritti Politti Favs

When you listen to the tracks its hard to believe this year is the 25th anniversary of the release of Cupid & Psyche; a great example of how to make machines do great things.

More gigs pls Green.

We ruled out using one of the numerous automated screenshot tools out there such as IE NetRenderer as it was a priority that we could replicate any bugs/issues specific to a browser be it layout or functionality. Another route we took was looking at utilising Microsoft’s VHD Images. Awesome we thought, we can now download and run multiple Windows images inside Virtualbox, each one with a different version of Internet Explorer. Well that’s what we thought. Unfortunately Microsoft changed their policies recently, so anyone trying to run any of these images on a Mac/Linux platform will never be able to get them fully working (tell us if we’re wrong).

Our chosen solution:

crossbrowsertesting.com

As it says on their website:

Test your website live via your browser and remote VNC sessions. Now you can interactively test your ajax, javascript, and flash on all operating systems and browsers from anywhere!

The service provides interactive live browser testing and automated browser screenshots. The operating systems available for usage include Mac OS, Ubuntu and Windows and each has a different group of browsers to test upon (take a look at the full config list). The pricing structure is based upon the total time you use up during your VNC sessions each month. Starting at $19.95 (as of 16/06/10) for 150 minutes, the pricing seems competitive.

The Working Process

Our starting point is navigating to the URL of the website we’ll like to test. We then utilise the Bookmarklet provided by Cross Browser Testing.

On clicking the Bookmarklet we’re presented with a JavaScript driven overlay that allows you to launch the currently viewed site in a specific browser inside a VNC session. You can also generate screenshots of the currently viewed site in selected browsers and view your account profile.

Well we’ve hit a crossroads, what should we show you first? The Automated Screenshots? An Interactive Live Test with IE7? Or perhaps what your account shows you?

Automated Screenshots

Good choice. The automated screenshots page loads up in a new browser window and looks a little like this:

From here you can enter the URL you wish to generate screenshots for (automatically filled via the Bookmarklet) and add/remove the required browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions (in other words different Configs). Click the Take Screenshots button and you’ll be presented with the results (after a short loading time).

The results page displays thumbnails of each requested Config. You can then share these with the usual social media tools, view a full size version of the screenshot, retake the screenshot or launch into a fully fledged Live Test. If you scroll down to the end of the results you can also download all the screenshots in a ZIP file (very useful), create a slideshow, look at the options of accessing the screenshots and the surrounding functionality via the API, download a crossbrowsertesting.com badge or copy a public url.

Interactive Live Test

Ok you want to see the VPN stuff I take it. In this example we clicked on the WinXP / IE7 Bookmarklet overlay which launches the VPN queue timer in a new window. Pretty much this gives you an idea of how long you’ll have to wait for a Config to be made available to you. From our experience the longest we’ve ever had to wait is around 30 seconds (which is excellent).

Once the Config is ready the connection options are made available to you. Chicken of the VNC is our preferred VNC client but we have tried using OSX Screen Sharing and it works just as well. You copy the VNC Host IP & port into your VNC client and enter your Cross Browser Testing account password. The options across the top are to end the testing session, refresh the page, take a snapshot/screenshot of the config, record a video of your session and to send text to your session window. Any snapshots/screenshots/videos you produce during a session are added into your account for future access.

Lo and behold a VNC connection showing the requested website in the requested Config. *Awesome*

Once you’ve finished all the testing you need to do, close the VNC client and click the end session button in the Config options browser window. You’ll then be presented with a mini feedback form, asking you to review your session. We’ve had the odd minor speed issue but we’ve never had a session that’s been below a 4/5. The guys are also very good at responding to feedback, both positive and negative so always leave them a note if you come across anything out of the ordinary.

Your account

From your account (accessed via the website or the Bookmarklet) you can view the usual account information, your time usage, all previous session information (time used, date, Config etc) and all previous screenshots.

Sum it up

Cross Browser Testing has become a key part to our workflow. It allows us to react to time critical situations where a bug has been found in a specific browser. A good example is when a client phoned up about a Magento 1.3.1 installation doubling up the quantities in IE8. We were able to quickly launch the site in IE8 via the Cross Browser Testing Bookmarklet and replicate the bug. Five minutes later the issue was fixed after replacing a piece of code (event bubbling was occurring).

We would recommend Cross Browser Testing to all developers that are in a professional environment.

Terry

We had our illustration expert Brian from Hartoworld create Terry for http://www.toolbarheroes.com. His superpowers are currently unknown (other than a lycra fetish), but they’ll see the light of day when you least expect it.

The First Hero

Our first hero is the Percentage Calculator. It works with JS enabled or disabled and does the most simple of tasks, that of calculating percentages in numerous ways. We’ve also looked to optimise the tool as much as possible by using sprites, compressing & optimising code and using CDNs. We were originally planning to write our own JavaScript library specifically for this project. With time constraints this changed and hence our beloved jQuery 1.4 was given a run out.

The Coming Soon Heroes…

Two other heroes are currently in development: the file size convertor and typical measurements. We’ve got a lot of plans for www.toolbarheroes.com and will be looking to launch at least one new hero per month from June onwards. Other superheroes like Terry will also be making an appearance later in the year. In the future we’ll post up sneak peaks on dribbble.com, once I’ve earned my creative badges in the community.

As you can probably tell I’m not really a big fan of ‘Flash’ animation on web sites – Flash being the software package most commonly used to create the graphics that move around on your screen.

Ah but its about leveraging dynamic and engaging content to align our core values with the user’s inner brand karma! Hmmm…

You know the feeling. You just need a telephone number or an address, you just want to find out about a product in the few seconds you have before the next call. You don’t want some irrelevant swirling psychedelic half-arsed clap trap bamboozling you!

Just give me the information mate and go and express yourself through contemporary dance or something…

Sure you see the odd site that uses Flash well, but frankly they are still few and far between in my book.

As always its a question of ‘horses for courses’; its about understanding who will be using your web site, when and where they’re likely to be using it and most importantly why!