Welcome to little Finley – the newest member of the splitpixel web design team!

Mummy Charlie gave birth to Finley on the 31st May at 11.35am whilst we all worked (and waited for the news). We’ve already had a few visits from the tiny chap and reckon he’ll fit in just fine in the office…big question though is: web designer or website developer? Or maybe project manager/smiley person like his mum?

We’re watching out for any classic signs. Looking at pretty colours and shapes; designer. Hiding away from the sun; developer

Big congratulations to Charlie, Jaime and baby Finley!

Jamie Lester, third in The Apprentice 2010, chose our web design company in Yorkshire over many London agencies after asking for help from his 11,000 followers on twitter.

We have recently launched Jamie Lester’s new website, www.jamielester.com. It’s received thousands of hits and many compliments!

Jamie Lester, commented: “Having researched many web design companies, Splitpixel are, without any doubt, head and shoulders above the rest of the competition – and this includes London agencies!

“Their portfolio is strong and this must be down to their hard work and dedication.

“It’s a dream when you find not only a company, but all the employees within the company, working with the same ethics.”

Greg Smuk, our Technical Director, made the initial introduction to Jamie Lester and we were then thrilled when he chose us to develop his new online identity. We met with Jamie, who made the journey up from London, in our Media Centre office in Huddersfield town centre.

It was fantastic to meet Jamie; we absolutely love The Apprentice and were all fans of Jamie to win from the start. He’s a genuinely great person – open and honest and such a fantastic client to work with…we’re looking forward to developing a strong long-term business relationship.

Here’s us in The Huddersfield Examiner:

To deliver a final Web Project Brief we work closely with clients to determine the High Level Requirements:

Your Market

What are your core products/services?
Who is your typical customer?
Why do new customers choose you?
Who are your main competitors?
What is your ambition for your new website?

Design Considerations

Site Focus – Consider the look and feel you’d like to covey. Identify 4 or 5 phrases to describe this (i.e. fresh, personable). We then look at how the design of the website can convey these accurately.

Instant USP – Must be easy to identify from a single glance what you do / what the website is about. The unique selling point.

Site Flow – What do you want people to do when they open the website? Where do they need to be directed? This ‘route’ may look different for separate user groups.

Key Action Points – Are there shared actions you’d like users to follow (for example, to sign-up, to view a video)?

Use of Attractors – These are things like competitions, fun stuff! What attractors can be used?

Website Language – what is the ‘copy style’ or tone?

Creation of Assets – what assets are currently available, images, copy, video. Where will other assets come from?

Hierarchy for Design – order of importance for website features / functionalities.

Websites you Like and Dislike – Including your reasons. These can be from any market sector.

Development Considerations

Navigation – As determined by the site flow; a site map showing the pages /areas of a website. Users need to be directed effectively without having to ‘think’ about what they should be doing.

Interactivity – Introducing features like twitter feeds, videos.

Browser Compatibility – Who will use the website? What browsers will feature most? How will the site look on the iPad? Does mobile access need to be considered?

User Satisfaction – What do we want them to feel when they leave the website, why will they return again?

As a web developer it is hard to build a site that is identical in every browser as there are now a high number of popular browsers that users prefer and favour.

All these different browsers have their own rules for rendering certain HTML elements; however this is generally not too much of a problem as these issues can be resolved with a bit of cross browser testing during the build process and before the launch of a website.

There is one browser though that still causes web developers like myself frequent headaches and has drummed up much debate for a large period of time now, even to the point that there are websites dedicated to venting your frustrations and leaving comments on how much you hate this particular browser!

Now if you’re a web developer yourself, you have already probably guessed what browser I am talking about but if not, the browser in question is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6.
Internet Explorer 6 was launched in 2001, so it has now been around for over 10 years, and in most web developers’ opinions, it has more than outstayed its welcome.

At the time of its launch I’m sure it was a decent browser but 10 years down the line web technology has advanced and brought about new techniques and features that can’t be supported by Internet Explorer 6. It also has quite a few bugs/problems that can cause havoc with the development of a website.

Being a web developer myself for Splitpixel, web design in Yorkshire, I have frequent encounters with IE6 (Internet Explorer 6) in my day to day tasks. As a company we still aim to build our websites so they work in IE6, although we do state that there may be some slight differences in IE6 compared to newer browsers. This is because although the percentage of IE6 users is now much lower in comparison to newer browsers, there are still a number of users choosing or being forced to stick with it.

When trying to build a compatible cross browser website that works almost the same in IE6 there are a number of techniques that can be used to help accomplish this. Firstly there is the option to use a browser specific stylesheet. This method involves having a stylesheet specifically for IE6 which is loaded if the user viewing the site is doing so in an IE6 browser. This method can be time consuming if there are a lot of changes required to the original stylesheet to get the website to look the same.

Another option, and the one I personally use the most, is to use javascript and other hacks for any individual issues that arise within the website in IE6 browsers. This method works for me the best as I have come across a lot of IE6 issues in websites I have built over the years and therefore have the knowledge or techniques to solve these issues. Every time I come across an IE6 issue and find a fix I document it for future use.

A new method that I came across recently in a blog post was to create a basic text layout version only of the website for IE6. However I am not currently convinced that it is possible to use this solution in a web design agency as clients would be reluctant to agree to this for a website they were paying for as they would expect all their users to get a similar experience.
With the many different methods of solving IE6 issues discussed on the internet it is obvious that there is no wrong or right way in which to tackle such problems as it mainly comes down to what works best for you individually.

It does seem however, that IE6 is showing no sign of disappearing anytime soon and a new browser compatibility issue is growing for us web developers with the increase in users viewing sites on mobile phone and mobile device browsers. The joys of cross browser compatibility!

We can’t be expected to design and develop websites all of the time…so, last Thursday the whole splitpixel team took a well-deserved break and got into the spirit of Halloween.

Organised by our lovely Media Centre, all proceeds went to support the Pakistan Flood Appeal.

The splitpixel team took the challenge very seriously – dedicating lots of time to choosing the right design and carving the magic. But Neil went that extra mile and travelled home to pick up a drill. Yes a drill. Oh dear!

Voting took place on Thursday and Friday and not quite sure how I managed it but my little cute bunny and scary claw made it to a very respectable 3rd place! You can view all of the entrants here.

Now to practice for next year…

Ok, this is a poem we wrote at the very start of the business a couple of years ago…thought it was worth a publish…just!

Do you know a business whose website is poor?
Maybe they wish people visited more?

I’m from splitpixel, and Charlie’s my name
We’re in the website and marketing game

We’re passionate, committed, dynamic and driven
We’ll ensure your website sins are forgiven

Whatever your website, requirements and needs
Splitpixel can in-crease your web driven leads

We create websites your users will love
An online presence you’re proud to speak of!

So contact splitpixel, we’ll meet you for free
Our number is simple… 483 093!

With the UK release date of Apple’s iPad finally behind us, could the slow rise in popular screen resolutions be about to reverse course?

According to W3C, in the year 2000 the most popular screen resolution was 800×600. This means that the user could view 800 pixels from left to right on their computer monitor, and 600 from top to bottom. Back in 2000 this made sense as monitor sizes were still fairly small and square, which suited the almost square resolution, however it has become more and more common for people to have access to varying monitor sizes, big and bulky CRT monitors are rarely seen in today’s stylish and modern offices, giving way to slimmer LCD screens.

Since then, 800×600 users have slowly declined to the point that only 1% of reported users still browse the internet using that resolution. Larger resolutions have taken its place; 1024×768 took over as number 1 in 2004 and remained the leading resolution for 4 years before being replaced. It’s now reported that over 75% of users browse in a resolution higher than 1024×768, which is the native resolution of the iPad.

Because of the slow rise in resolutions, web designers have to be extremely careful when laying out a webpage design. Designing for the most common resolution runs the risk of excluding users who may not be able to view pages this high, such as people browsing on their mobile phone, while designing for a lower resolution can leave a lot of empty space towards the edges of larger monitors. To try and satisfy both sets of users, it’s common to create a design which displays perfectly at lower resolutions and extends the design further to the edges of the screen on larger monitors.

A perfect example of this is the design SplitPixel did for Halifax Agricultural Society last year. Users with lower resolutions can see all of the information and still have a pleasant visual experience, while users with higher screen resolutions haven’t been shunned and get a little bit extra aesthetical pleasure.

This type of design method will be extremely useful when the iPad becomes as popular as it is expected to, with over a million sales in the United States already that’s looking quite likely!

Apart from the fact that we are nice !

Firstly, we listen to what our clients want from their website…but then do our research and identify the solution we recommend is best for them – and this honestly doesn’t mean more…sometimes it’s less than they think!

Bespoke Web Solutions

We start with a blank canvas and design a website completely bespoke for client…to fit their identity, their strengths and their client base. We don’t use any templates for web design and we don’t stop until the customer is 100% happy.

Hand Coded Websites

We ensure easy categorisation by the search engines and any areas our clients need to update regularly are developed bespoke to their needs; meaning they can update their site quickly and easily whenever they want.

Be Happy Online.

We have invested in our very own dedicated hosting server which is managed entirely in‐house. To date, we have had 100% up‐time (no loss of service) and excellent page load speed which the search engines love.

Yours to Keep!

Also, the client owns the website. Which sounds simple really but not something every web design company allows.

Splitpixel are proud to be…

Business Link Approved Advisors
An Approved Supplier on the Yorkshire & Humber Suppliers Register

Who do we work with?

Our customer’s industry sectors vary, but the main areas we operate in are Retail, Leisure, Property, Finance and Manufacturing. We also work very well with other creative companies, such as branding, marketing, pr agencies…as we allow them to expand their services to their clients, because we ONLY specialise in website design and development and online marketing.

First there’s a simple website with 5 pages or so, just to get a business online so they have a presence. These start from only £325 (view online at www.splitpixel.co.uk/microwebsite)

But what we are really specialists in, are the larger, more interactive sites. These feature updatable areas for our clients. Such as Latest News, Case Studies, Videos… and these usually take the form of a client’s second website, when they have outgrown their initial site. They may be rebranding or growing, or expanding their services. Examples of extra functionality are integration to existing software, like with a property sales/lettings agent, a downloadable secure document area, searchable articles, galleries, blogs and even 3D animation/walkthroughs.

We call this our

Website Innovation Service

as sites like these are designed to do more than simply get their presence online. They enable our clients to reduce some business admin by incorporating it within the site, and are an effective sales tool as well as being exciting to navigate by the online users.

The final types of site we specialise in are

e‐commerce websites

, which provide clients with everything they need for an online shop business. They are designed for people who are serious about selling online, and we work closely with clients to achieve success.

These websites feature voucher codes, wishlists, quantity discounts, as well as an easy to use admin area with invoicing, stock control, and they can also be integrated into sage stock software and other CRM databases.

There is also the important element of online marketing.

Full Search Engine Optimisation

is a project in itself and the result of this is a site that ranks well for given search terms. An SEO project includes keyword research, competitor analysis, on‐page optimisation, and off‐page optimisation.

The time needed to get a site ranking on page number 1 of Google for a competitive search term could take between 6 and 12 months. We provide our clients with full information on how the search engines work to allow them to get the most out of their online presence.

With all of our websites on‐page search engine optimisation is provided as a minimum – this is where we ensure effective search terms are used throughout the build and we also submit the website to all search engines and add tracking code so that our client can see how many hits they’ve had, how people found them and which pages they like best.

Social media marketing is about creating a BUZZ…get people interested in you, get interested in them, get talking about current topics!

Some ideas for posts and information sharing: new clients, office moves, big team nights out, business developments, inspirational and motivational comments, questions and ideas, linking to articles and blogs and photos, posting opportunities and asking for help – even just letting people know you’ve been to a great place or would recommend someone else’s product or service.

Balance between business and personal information, it needs to be friendly and approachable – speak in your own language. These sites offer the chance for people to see the personality behind the company. There are no rules, no set amount of times you need to update these; it’s all about fitting it in with your business.

How to get followers and fans! You get people to follow you on twitter, read your blog, become a fan on facebook by advertising your presence within these areas. Put the logos on your website, add them to business cards (maybe just to the 1 you use the most), make people aware you are there and they’ll join you.

You can use these social media sites for a variety of things too – like testing out opinions of a new product/service or asking for answers to a question (i.e.  How do I build this tricky element on a website!).

Will this take up all of my time? No! You don’t have to be on all of them but as with any marketing activity it’s all about being visible and as with any networking it’s about making connections; so embracing just a few of them will increase your network, open your business to new opportunities and provide a useful resource of information. You may even enjoy it! To save time and bother you can sync all platforms together so that by updating just one status, twitter for example, this will automatically update other medias such as LinkedIn and facebook.

But one BIGGIE not to forget is that you will increase traffic to your website, you will generate new connections, you will gain more knowledge and your online presence will increase because of this! A by product of these things just happens to be more business. Have fun!