If you’re reading this then you may be thinking about creating a new website, redesigning your old one, or developing a new site for a new business. If you’re thinking about it, chances are at some point in the near future it’s likely to become a reality. If so you’ll want your ‘project’ to run as smoothly as possible; want to look good in your boss’ eyes; want to save yourself and/or your company time, money and effort.

As project manager at WDL I and wanted to share some thoughts with you on how to make this happen by choosing the right web company and how to get the best out of them.

Who should I choose to work with?

The first and most important lesson you can learn is that most reputable web companies will expect you to work with them to achieve your business goals. While you might think you don’t have the time, inclination or knowledge to work closely with them, you will need to adapt. Without your cooperation it could be a precarious relationship that’s unlikely to produce desired results.

How can I spot good practice?

If your chosen web company asks you lots of questions, asks to have meetings to discuss your project in detail, and needs your input on (for example) site structure and provision of content, then these are positive signs. They obviously know what’s needed to help you achieve your goals and they’ll most likely deliver a solution that meets your expectations on time and on budget.

How do I spot bad practice?

If, however, they don’t ask you these sort of questions, or just say “OK we’ve got it”, then my advice would be to steer clear. I know I am bound to say this, since I work for this particular company, but in my professional experience, web agencies that don’t ask the right questions are probably not worth working with – they’re more likely to make mistakes, over-promise, under-deliver, go over budget and over time; none of which you need or want.

Why should I listen to them?

A good web company will advise you on good ideas for your site and will highlight the bad ones (your brother’s girlfriend’s dad’s suggestion that you need a flash animation on the homepage).

Even if you don’t like what they suggest, or don’t necessarily agree with them, you need to remember that they are the experts – they do this all day, every day and they want to help you make the right decisions based on their experience. They’ve already made mistakes and learnt from them, they’ve tried and tested any number of different ways of achieving the same goals and they’ve seen the things that work really well (and those that don’t) and measured the impact of these successes and failures.

Finally, any web business should be honest and open with you, and at the end of the day, what does a good reputable web company gain from giving you bad advice?

How do I get the most out of my web company?

If you want to avoid the multitude of mistakes that many people make when trying to get a new website up and running, the points below highlight the requirements you’re going to need to consider at the beginning of a typical web project. Prepare for this, as these are the ingredients for your website.

10 things you’ll most likely need to provide:

1.   Company Information (highlights of your business) – its USPs, strengths and weaknesses; your competitors, etc.
2.   Audience – who is your actual or preferred audience? Who do you want to target with your website?
3.   Design direction – have you got any ideas on what you want it to look like? Colours, layout, what sites do you like/don’t like?
4.   Site structure – what pages do you want on your site? Services, products, contact us, about us, privacy policy, terms and conditions, etc.
5.   Content – what imagery and text do you want for the (above) pages of your site? Take a look at this blog post about Content Briefs to learn more.
6.   Functionality – what do you want the site to do? What do you want your users to do?  E.g. contact forms, galleries, booking options, payments, etc.
7.   Technical – are there any specific technical requirements for your project? E.g. browser compatibility, integration with legacy systems, etc.
8.   Internet Marketing – have you considered how you are going to market your website online? E.g. pay per click, SEO, social media, etc.
9.   Hosting – can you provide hosting details, or do you want your web company to host the site and the site’s email?
10. Support & Maintenance – who’s going to look after your site when it’s built? Think about who’s going to edit and update the site, who’s going to fix any problems that may arise, etc.

If you are not sure about any of the above, speak to your chosen web company during the quoting stage. They’ll be able to offer additional services, consultancy and (at the very least) some guidance on what you need to do, or what they can do for you.

Hopefully, you’re clearer on what to expect, but if you want to work with a web company that’s been doing this for 10 years, contact us at Website Design Ltd and get the ball rolling.

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Regulations governing the use of cookies on websites were made law on 26/05/2011. The Information Commissioner has provided a 12 month lead in period to allow businesses time to prepare, meaning that the regulations come into force on 26/05/2012.

We’d recommend having a quick audit of your site to assess the use of cookies. Our audit will provide you with a report to give you a clear picture of how closely your site adheres to the new law, and a cost to implement the correct method for asking visitors’ permission to use cookies. WDL’s cookie audits are a fixed price of £100+VAT for any size of site, and there’s no obligation to have the recommended work completed.

Please fill in our quick and easy online questionnaire, or contact us at support@websitedesign.co.uk to find out how to make your site compliant.

New Law Summary

In summary, the new regulations state that websites that use cookies may be required to gain consent from their users to place cookies.

Those setting cookies must:

•    tell people that the cookies are there
•    explain what the cookies are doing
•    obtain their consent to store a cookie on their device

There is an exception to the requirement to provide information about cookies and obtain consent where the use of the cookie is:

(a) for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network; or
(b) where such storage or access is strictly necessary for the provision of an information society service requested by the subscriber or user.

‘Strictly Necessary’ applies when a cookie is required to provide a service. A cookie used to implement a shopping cart would probably be considered strictly necessary, but a cookie tracking an affiliate, or collecting statistics (e.g. Google Analytics) would not be.

Responsibilities

The responsibility for ensuring compliance with the regulations lies with the operator of the website. Website operators should consider the following steps:

•    Check what cookies are being used on a site and how they are being used (audit)
•    Assess how intrusive the use of these cookies is
•    Decide what solution for obtaining consent is appropriate

Operators must also provide clear information about the use of cookies on their sites, not just as part of a privacy policy. A mechanism for getting user consent for cookies should be put in place if necessary, and depending on the nature of the site could include:

•    popups, splash pages, overlays, header / footer bars
•    terms and conditions, which have to be accepted to use a site
•    settings (e.g. on a forum or membership site)

Enforcement

Enforcement of compliance starts on 26th May 2012, and is policed by the The Information Commissioner who has 4 main options for enforcement:

1. Information notice: this requires organisations to provide the Information Commissioner with specified information within a certain time period.
2. Undertaking: this commits an organisation to a particular course of action in order to improve its compliance.
3. Enforcement notice: this compels an organisation to take the action specified in the notice to bring about compliance with the Regulations. For example, a notice may be served to compel an organisation to start gaining consent for cookies. Failure to comply with an enforcement notice can be a criminal offence.
4. Monetary penalty notice: a monetary penalty notice requires an organisation to pay a monetary penalty of an amount determined by the ICO, up to a maximum of £500,000. This power can be used in the most serious of cases and if specific criteria are met, if any person has seriously contravened the Regulations and if the contravention was of a kind likely to cause substantial damage or substantial distress. In addition the contravention must either have been deliberate or the person must have known or ought to have known that there was a risk that a contravention would occur and failed to take reasonable steps to prevent it.

What Next

We are not lawyers, and can’t provide specific advice about the legal implications of the cookie regulations. We do suggest though that website owners read and understand the implications of the new regulations, and make up their mind about how best to proceed.

We offer cookie audits at £100+ VAT, which will include a quote for the work involved in making websites compliant.

Take the first step by filling in our quick and easy online questionnaire, or contact us at support@websitedesign.co.uk

NB: A practical interpretation of the law is provided on the ICO website at http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/the_guide/cookies.aspx – you may want to look at the pdf on the first link in the first paragraph for more information.

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We make websites, and websites are written using code. When you’re running a business like ours – that’s rapidly expanding – taking on more employees and more work, it’s easy to forget about how we work with code and focus management time and efforts elsewhere. But code is at the core of what we do. More importantly, well written, well documented, clean and semantic code is at the core of what we do.

We now have four employees whose full time job is to write code; Sam, Tom, George and myself. We’re split evenly across back-end and front-end development, but there are big overlaps in the work that we produce. I’ll sometimes dabble into some PHP to get something working for the front-end that I’m building, or Sam might write some JQuery interactions to try out some back-end stuff that he is developing.

It is sound advice (almost gospel even) to ‘always code like you are in a team’. This means having clean, clear, well documented code that another developer can look at and quickly get an idea of what it is, what it does and how they can work with it.

As the development team has grown it has become more and more apparent that we needed a smarter and more central way of managing the code that we write. Recently, we addressed one small part of this problem.

When you work on a large number of projects, patterns in your code are bound to emerge from time to time: the same piece of functionality, similar layout or styling. What is the point in wasting time writing out the same piece of code time and time again when there are a million other things to get done on the project. Sometimes you just want a quick and simple way of inserting something that you, or another member of the team has already written.

Up until a little while ago I had a code library (of sorts) stored in a simple set of files on one of the resources drives in the office. It served a purpose, but it wasn’t very clever. It was only accessible from within the office, it was slow to find what you wanted and slow to get the relevant code into the document that you’re working on.

So, the solution. We needed a central, online storage facility, and a lightning fast way of interacting with it.

We found this provided by GitHub, or more specifically by GitHub Gists. Where GitHub is a repository for full projects, GitHub Gists allows you to store and manage a library of smaller snippets of code. Because Gists run on Git, they are also open to versioning, meaning that we can update our snippets over time, but roll back and access an older version at any point.

The latter is made possible by our new text editor of choice, Sublime Text 2. Words cannot describe how much of a difference this amazing little app has made to productivity. It is a world away from slow, hand holding editors like Dreamweaver. I don’t want my hand held, and definitely do not want slow! I want a fast text editor with a minimal interface and tonne of power under the hood that’s ready to hulk out when I need it. That is what ST2 is, and it integrates with GitHub and (more importantly for this issue) Gists.

The combination of these two tools allow us to quickly create, search for and insert a specific snippet of code at the drop of a hat. Everything is organised and aptly named, is accessible from anywhere, easily updatable and did I mention it’s quick?!

This is just one small step towards a bigger goal of working with code in the most accessible and efficient way, but it is already having a big impact on our work.

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Local independent financial advisers Matthew Douglas Ltd asked WDL to take their existing site and refresh the design in line with their print and branding media to create greater consistency throughout their different media.

We did this by including a cleaner layout, using fresher colours that allowed the main blue and orange from their branding to be used as accent colours, whilst not overpowering or dating the overall effect to achieve a modern design, which offers cleaner navigation.

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I would just like to introduce myself as the new member of WDL. My name is George, and I am a Front-End Developer – I have been employed to help with the current workload in the Front-End office.

My fascination with technology started many years ago when I first started taking things apart (and sometimes even putting them back together again!) As a child I wanted to be an aircraft engineer, after hearing so many of the stories that my late Grandfather had told me about being an engineer for the RAF during the second World War. With such a young brain, that level of technology amazed me.

My interest soon moved on to technology of a smaller scale when I first got a computer of my own. I was forever playing with new software, which, to cut a long story short, led to my love for open source software and the community that goes with it. Many hours were spent installing new operating systems, looking at a terminal window and trying to figure out what was going on.

Since then, I have completed both my GCSEs, and A Levels in Computer Science, Maths, Physics, 3D Product Design and General Studies at Colchester Grammar. I made the decision not to go to University because, at the time, I felt like I was pressured to make a decision that I wasn’t sure about. I was worried that I would rush the decision and choose to study something which I might not enjoy. Instead, I found a number of part-time jobs and continued to teach myself anything technological which took my interest.

I eventually found employment as a Web Designer/Developer with a small promotions company. While I thoroughly enjoyed the job, there were only two of us managing the website side of the company and I was still teaching myself. I knew that eventually I would have to find a job with a greater opportunity for my personal growth, and one where I would be working with a group of talented people who are more experienced than myself. Naturally, I have ended up here at WDL!

Why Web Design?
My passion for building websites stems from a keen interest in how technology and a sense of intuition can dramatically improve workflow, productivity and usability. The abstraction of an incredibly complex idea can so often lead to such a simple solution, and I love being a part of that process.

The rate at which technology develops in this industry is astounding and at times can be difficult to keep up with. Inevitably there are hurdles to overcome in every single project we take on, both in the design and the development. There are constantly challenges, for which there are always solutions – but these solutions are not necessarily easy to reach.

Thankfully for all our clients, I can safely say that everybody here (including myself) loves a challenge!

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Up and coming composer, musician and songwriter Mitchell Gibbs needed a brand and a website when he came to us at the end of last year. He was effectively starting from scratch and needed our help to create a platform to showcase his work and bring him to the attention of the industry and potential clients.

This project allowed us to be very creative in its approach, and after consulting with Mitchell we had a clear idea of what would work for him as the main content was his music. We felt an elegant one page site layout was the best route to take.

Taking his inspiration from beautifully simple one page sites WDL designer Richard Wilde complemented this approach by focusing on creating a design that wouldn’t get in the way of the content. Richard states, “We used a clean layout taking inspiration from sheet music, which is where the black and white colour palette came from, accented by a limited use of colour to provide subtle details and rollover states. This was teamed with a logotype designed to capture the aesthetic and style from well known music brands to give Mitchell a recognizable marque within his field.”

When the design was signed off Senior Front End Developer at WDL, Matt Beales, was keen to go to town with the one page site format. He says, “The page utilises a fixed header, keeping the branding and navigation within reach as you scroll down. Speaking of scrolling down, give it a go! The header is slightly opaque at the bottom and a slight shadow creeps in as you move away from the top of the page. It’s an extra layer of detail that not only makes this site great to look at, but a pleasure to use.”

Take a look at the site and while you’re there have a listen to Mitchell’s tracks too. www.mitchell-gibbs.com

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Specialist contractors Greycurve approached WDL to design and build a website for them following their appearance on Channel 4’s Grand Designs programme. The episode which featured a basement ‘nightclub’ saw Greycurve carry out the interior wall and ceiling installations for the London Mews House.

Greycurve knew that they wanted the London Mews House to be featured quite heavily on the site, but it was also important to them that they could add new case studies as and when they wanted. With this in mind the site was built in a CMS (content management system) allowing them access to add and change any elements of the site when applicable, whilst retaining the styling of the design elements.

The simple design of the site echoes their brief, which was to create something to compliment their services and company image.

You can visit the site here – http://www.greycurve.co.uk/

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WDL have recently completed a design and build project for a new website for Ecocultures, which included creating a logo and brand. You can view the results here – ecocultures.org

The Ecocultures programme aims to bring together “the best current understanding of what it means to be a ‘sustainable community’, how sustainable communities maintain social-ecological resilience, and how we can transfer lessons from these communities to improve ‘mainstream’ policy practice.”

The programme was founded from the University of Essex Global Challenges fund in late 2009. Read more about the programme here – ecocultures.org/about

WDL have thoroughly enjoyed working with Ecocultures team from the University of Essex and wish them every success for the future.

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Working with Holy Cow! and Blue Cube Studios, WDL have completed work on the new Landex Property website, which is now live!

This project saw WDL liaising with the client, the third party designers and 3D animators to pull the site together. There are some nice features of the site which allowed everyone involved to be creative and add some interesting functionality. The individual development areas were fun to build and we think they work really well, whilst still enabling the client to add and remove developments as and when they need to.

We thoroughly enjoyed working with Landex and wish them every success in the future.

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About Saffron Tax Partners

“Saffron Tax Partners is a specialist tax business, providing a dedicated and proactive personal service to private clients.  Based in The Gherkin building in the City of London, we provide a wide range of tax services, helping clients steer a path through increasingly complex tax legislation.”

Expertise

“Areas of expertise include compliance with the rigours of the Self Assessment regime, through the completion of annual Tax Returns for individuals, partnerships and trusts, and dealing with all correspondence with HM Revenue & Customs on our clients’ behalf.  We are particularly experienced in dealing with the specific, and especially complex, tax issues for individuals not domiciled in the UK.”

“We also address any appropriate tax planning issues with a view to the mitigation of liabilities, covering capital gains tax, inheritance tax matters and at the same time raising awareness to any other relevant commercial considerations.  Most importantly, the Saffron team of vastly experienced tax professionals all take real pride in understanding our clients’ differing needs, and building long-term business relationships.”

Working With WDL

“We have worked with WDL since our inception, and they have proved invaluable in establishing the Saffron brand.  We have received several compliments on the quality of both our website and corporate identity, a testament to the fine work undertaken by WDL. We have been especially grateful for the highly responsive way Elliot Smith and his team have dealt with our business.”

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