The FWA website featured the new website for Doritos. Rather than just being an ordianry snack company Doritos are looking to position themselves as an entertainment brand. Check out the new website at:

http://snackstrongproductions.com/

New ecommerce cake box website launched. My company has launched a new cake box ecommerce website that we designed and built. The ecommerce platform we chose for this web project was PrestaShop. This is the first time that we used this platform so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

PrestaShop is a modern opensource ecommerce platform that allows quite a few options that come built in.

View the site now.

http://www.cakeboxes2u.co.uk/

The fwa site has been redesigned with a load of new features and also a fresh new look. To me it looks great and continues to be a great source of whats hot in website design.

http://www.thefwa.com/

Check it out and share your thoughts on the sites that are submitted.

I have added just added a blog to a clients website Tej’s Beauty Salon. Blogs provide a great way to add content to your website that makes it offer more than just a site about you and your services. Answering question and adding new useful information all make your website more useful to potential clients and can position you as an expert in your field.

We added a wordpress blog to the website which allows it to be easily updated and edited without being an expert in web design. If you would like a blog for your website then just get intouch.

I have just updated a clients website with the latest jobs that they have done. I used the lightbox ajax technique to show the images larger when clicked.

http://www.electricalcontractoruk.com/latest-jobs/the-barn-lights.htm

I found this tip about a tip to align the form text field and submit button it seems to work.

http://nclud.com/sketchbook/css-fix-for-graphical-input-submit-button-off-set/

When it comes to designing coming soon webpages you want to make sure that you have something up on the domian that looks professional but also do not want to spend too much time and money on something that will be replaced.

Smashing magazine have an article looking at various coming soon pages with some good examples. One thing that you may want to consider is having a signup for more information form, also a brief description about what is coming soon.

The points are:

1) Tell us what to expect.

2) Provide updates (email signup)

3) Create some intrguige

4) Rembmer SEO

Read the article:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/11/10/designing-coming-soon-pages/

Our company is updating stock box and packaging products website boxesdirect2u.co.uk we built the ecommerce website last year and after the shop has taken many successful orders we are planning to build the search rankings and improve the conversion rate of the website.

The site uses sagepay as the payment gateway which fits seamlessly into the website so that the customer does not have to go leave the website to pay and is reminded of the security on the website.

The websites aim is to attract both b2b and b2c customers and to build up a steady stream of repeat customers using online marketing at the heart of the strategy.

I have had another client that I have been explaining why to take off the intro page to their website. So this is my reasoning for not having an intro page for your website.

What is it
An intro page is a page before you get to the main content on a website. It sometimes says welcome to the website or has a fancy animation on. Then you have to press enter to go into the main bulk of the website.

Why not
Sometimes people think of a website as a brochure or book and these have covers, so people can think that it is a good idea. It is not. People who come to your website have already wanted to see what it is all about, maybe they clicked on a google listing or advertisement. These are the covers really. The visitor is looking for information, and the more barriers you put in the way, the less people will bother with the website.

Another reason not to have one is that search engines like google give a lot of ‘weight’ to the homepage, and if you do not make the most of it and only put your company name on and a skip or enter button on, then you are not making the most an important part of a website.

So if you have an intro page on your website then break free today and get rid of it, it will boost your results.

A client was asking questions today about ranking for various keywords and should they try and get their website on the search engines for specific words. I get asked this somethimes and so thought I would do a quick blog post about it, to explain my point of view.

First what are keywords and keyphrases?
Well a keyword when talked about in SEO terms means a word that you would like google or a search engine to pick up and show your website in the results for that word. For example a keyword might be website or design or web.

A keyphrase is the combination of a couple of keywords. So it may be website design or web developer. It can also be a few words long such as web designer worcester.

The main thing that any website owner should be primarily concerned with when it comes to search engines is what is your target audience going to type into the search box. It does not matter if you are number 1 in google for a never searched for phrase. Also I would say that it does not really matter to get loads of traffic to a page that visitors instantly leave or that you are not interested in.

Thinking about the search user

If for example I wanted to be found in google for any keyphrase or keyword it would not be very useful to rank highly for design, really. Someone who types that into a search engine is proberly not looking for my services, and it also puts me up against a load of other websites.

For me my ideal client would be a business searching for a web design company or web designer, and also maybe restricted by area as well. So my idea customer would be searching for web design +Worcester maybe.