Archive for August, 2009

Support for IE6

My fellow developers out there will well understand the IE6 support issues.

IE6 is now an old browser. It was released in August 2001 so it is a whooping 8 years old. Over the past 8 years lots of things have changed, the way websites are written and developed has moved on yet for most designers IE6 continues to be a pain in the bum to support.

The reason that IE6 is such a pain is because

It’s old and does not support lots of the lovely new features that newer browsers do. For example transparent PNG graphics are often used to create shadows and round corners. These do not work as well for IE6.
IE6 has lots of bugs
When we do our testing the more browsers we have to support the harder it is to test and the more time consuming.

Up until now we have always tried very hard to ensure that all our website look equally good on all browsers. We have made the decision today to downgrade our support for IE6. This means that we will still ensure that all our websites work on IE6 but we will not worry too much about making it look as good as in newer browsers.

By supporting IE6 fully webside designers often end up crippling the design so that “one size fits all” – we want to move forwards.

This will save us some time, you some money and of course will enable us to concentrate on adding new features that are supported by newer browsers. The end result will be that your website will look better in newer browsers.

What do you think? What level of support do you require for IE6?

Everything else, Website Design | 19.08.2009 11:34 | No Comments

Website revamp for Open Door

We have been working on a lovely new website for Open Door, telesales experts run by Sarah Harris. Sarah has recently taken the plunge and completly rebranded her company including changing the company name from “Producing More Sales” to Open Door.

Armed with Sarah’s newly designed logo we set to work about redesigning her website.

Sarah’s existing website looked like this

We wanted to make some fairly radical changes

Incorporate the new logo and logo colors
Sarah is a keen tweeter so we wanted to include this on the website
We will be setting Sarah up with a blog to compliment her tweets and daily marketing efforts
The left hand menu was long, so we have chopped it down and place all the services in a submenu at the top of the page
Fresh, bubbly and professional in appearance
Fresh stock images to enhance the copy
Ensure that the contact details were on each page

And this is what our designer Liz came up with…TA DAAHHHH !!!

Much better – what do you think?

(BTW – if you want to talk to Sarah about her services you can call her on 0870 011 9686 or pop in and meet the lady in person at the next Woking Means Business Exhibition, October 8th)

Website Examples | 6.08.2009 13:17 | No Comments

Niggle – horrible feedback

As some of you might have noticed we have installed niggle (it’s the pink feedback tab on the right). It is intended to allow people to provide us with feedback on our website and services.

Today we received really horrible feedback

“I’m bitterly disappointed with the number of companies who brand themselves as web designers and developers, when clearly they wouldn’t know good decision if it slapped them in the face. Terrible site praying on unsuspecting customers.”

I wanted to reply to the individual but since we are trialing niggle only at the moment we do not have this facility. I thought about ignoring it too – but it is at the back of my mind today so instead wanted to get it off my chest. So I have chosen a public reply as follows

Dear Bitterly Disappointed

I am sorry that you are so disappointed in services supplied by some development companies. However I do not think you should tar all with the same brush. Whilst I am sure that there are a few companies out there who do try and rip people off – please be rest assured that we are not one of them. (further to that knowing what I do about how long these creative tasks can take – I genuinely believe that many underestimate the true cost of a website design and build – see previous post!)

As you are probably aware this industry is not regulated which does make it hard to assure people that you do have their best interests at heart. In the absence of regulation a company is only as good as their portfolio which is why we aim to publish as many of our websites as possible on our website so that people may judge for themselves.

However the final website is a result of the following factors

The clients budget
The clients own design ideas, we can only advise what does and doesn’t look good. However at the end of the day very often clients do like to try their own ideas first
The idea’s that we are able to bring to the table – this is a creative process
How involved the client is, prompt feedback etc

In general the best websites we have completed have been achieved where the client is able to be involved in the design process, but also able and willing to listen to our expertise and understand our decision process.

We also provide our clients with

Fully managed hosting so that they can ask us to help with setting up emails and such like
A content management system that we wrote in-house specifically with our customers in mind, it’s easy to use and also is updated constantly to strive for accessible and compliant XHTML/CSS
Free help with SEO so that they may SEO their own website with our help
2 hours annual free maintenance

Most of our clients are really happy with the service that we provide. Any *niggles* that we have had during a build have always been related to the clients budget and expectations that they might get a design equivalent to those we achieve on a 20 page budget than a 5 page budget. If you are a developer/designer yourself then you will understand that results are just a function of time. Explaining the difference in complexity of designs is always going to be an issue since have since we offer a fixed price service. To overcome this our portfolio indicates the package type under the thumbnail so that clients can see what complexity of design they can expect.

We don’t use templates and we don’t recycle old ideas for new clients.

We do start each design from scratch based upon

The brief which we obtain during the kick off meeting
The clients company branding
The clients content
Our own competitor and market research
2 designers work on the design before we offer the proposal to the client to review

I must also reply to the “Praying on unsuspected customers”. We absolutely do not pray, we have never made a cold call and to date have not even sent direct mail (however do have a campaign planned to see how it works for us!). 50% of our customers find us through referrals or repeat customers with the other 50% split between Google, meeting us at events and recommendations from Business Link.

I firmly believe that we are an ethical and transparent company, we offer much more to our clients than just website builds. We are also one of the few companies who offer genuine working opportunities for mums (and dads!) who want to work part-time from home. Our entire team work on a flexible basis around their family commitments.

So to conclude – thank you for your feedback. You have made me think about our product and services. I would very much appreciate a reply (if you are reading!) to let me know which thing specifically annoyed you about our website!

Regards

Zoe Brown – Managing Director, B Websites

Everything else | 3.08.2009 11:53 | No Comments