Just over a month ago we advertised for a New Business Consultant and we’re excited to announce that we’ve found our man! Introducing David Ffyske – welcome to team WDL, tell us a bit about yourself….

1. Dave or David?

David

2. Tea or Coffee?

Make mine a coffee, white, no sugar.

3. Likes?

I love my scooters and I own a Vespa and a Lambretta, and a little auto that I use to travel to work. I’m also a Soul Music fan – particularly Northern Soul, and of course I like to spend time with my kids – whether it’s watching films at the weekend or motivating them to be the best they can be in life.

4. Dislikes?

As a scooter enthusiast I have a special dislike of bad drivers – it can be pretty dangerous out there! I can’t stand Europop and processed food really isn’t for me.

5. What qualifications do you have?

I’m a qualified Swimming Teacher… all jokes aside, I’m Prince2 certified as well.

6. What were you up to before you joined WDL?

I was an Account manager and I also worked in Online Marketing.

7. What would you say are the highlights of your career so far?

Meeting Kate Middleton at an Internet World exhibition a few years ago.

8. What drives and motivates you at work?

I love to see projects get finished and live. The best thing is seeing my client happy with the end result.

9. What do you like to do in your spare time?

Obviously plenty of Scootering about! Also a bit of beer drinking (not at the same time) and, due in part to the beer drinking,  keeping myself fit.

10. Wagon Wheels: Jammy or no jam?

Jam. It’s a close call though. May I be contentious and say I prefer a dark chocolate digestive?

11. WDL are considering setting up a Pub Quiz Team: What would your specialist subject be?

Northern soul records.

12. PC or Mac?

Mac.

13. First thing you would do if you won the Lottery?

Go down to the local pub and buy everyone I know a drink.

14. Do you have any phobias?

I’m Scared of Horses (back off, Silver!).

Anything to add?

Just that it’s great to be here: I’m looking forward to meeting our clients and helping them to realise their business goals for their online presence. Get in touch with me for a chat!

Google has just announced a change to the way storage is allocated and managed in their Apps for Business cloud platform.

What has changed?

Before the change, users were given 25GB of basic storage for their email and 5GB for documents and files in Drive. The new regime has been touted as an “increase in storage” to 30GB for each account.  In reality, all that has happened is that the GMail and Drive storage quotas have been combined into one unified limit.

How will this effect Google Apps for Business users?

The change might seem a little ‘smoke and mirrors’, but the real-world effect is actually far more valuable than a simple increase in storage space. Users now get 30GB to use as they please, either storing vast amounts of email, or using Drive as more of a Dropbox-type tool.

A proposition for small businesses

This rather simple (but significant) change makes Google Apps for Business an even better proposition for small businesses, as they no longer have to pay for additional storage if a user fills up one part of their Apps account. Of course, if more than 30GB is needed, Google Apps offers up to a staggering 16TB(!!) per user (although this does come with a price tag).

Using your storage wisely

Just as before, files created in Docs, Sheets and Slides don’t count against the storage quota, so you’ll get more space than you think. Storage will also be shared with photos you upload to Google+ which are larger than 2048px. For most small business users, the new unified storage limit will mean they’re unlikely to need to pay for additional storage for more than one or two users, if at all.

The new storage regime makes Google Drive viable as an option for backing up critical data on users’ computers – the desktop Drive application (available for Mac and Windows) allows you to use your Drive storage as a virtual drive on the computer. Files can be saved or dropped into it and they’ll be immediately uploaded to Google’s cloud storage; this is far more secure than using CD/DVDs or USB drives to store data.

Don’t forget that Drive can give you an online preview over 25 different types of file, without you needing to have expensive programs installed (for instance CAD files).

Find out more…

Get in touch if you’d like to find out how moving to Google’s secure cloud platform can help your employees work better together, and improve your business productivity.

It seems to me that almost every business that blogs has a Game of Thrones related post…

I feel that WDL should be no exception.

Game of Thrones, in case you don’t know, is a television series based on the book series “A Song of Ice and Fire” by George R. R. Martin.

I’ve read all of the books, whereas Rob and Matt are currently watching the television series only. For them, and for anyone else still enjoying the series, I promise to give no “spoilers” for upcoming episodes. However, I will presume that you have seen at least the first two seasons.

One of the most amazing things about Game of Thrones, in my opinion, is that each House – or “family” for those not familiar with the series – has its own, distinct character. Each also has “House Words”, a saying associated with the family to sum up the personality of the House in as few words as possible: These make for great tag lines.

Shutterstock also noticed this, and ran an article, envisioning how the branding for the Houses in Game of Thrones may look if they were modern corporations.

After reading this brilliant article, I began to imagine how each of the brands Shutterstock devised could perform their online marketing, in keeping with the personalities each House displays in Game of Thrones. Please, do check out the Shutterstock article, and come back here.

Done? Good. Here is how I imagine these brands marketing themselves:

Air Targaryen

Daenerys Targaryen, throughout each season of Game of Thrones, is highly motivated to give the little people, the peasants, a voice.

For this reason, I expect that Air Taragyren would use a strong social media strategy. They wouldn’t use just one social network, but all of them. Air Taragyren would be interested in reaching everyone, no matter where they are communicating from.

On Twitter, they would take an active interest in their followers, re-tweeting any interesting projects they are working on or just asking people how their days have been. On Facebook, they would like to share content created by their fans, while on Pinterest, they would be really keen to re-pin any fanart.  Finally, on Google+, they would be constantly having Hangouts and informal chats with people. They’d utilise social media to really engage with their “common consumer”.

Lannister Investment Group

I see a large presence on LinkedIn for this company, connecting with influential people in business and investment banking.

Furthermore, taking their personality from the TV show into the real world, I imagine that a bit of reputation control may have to be done. For this, I foresee a heavy dosage of content creation being sent to the websites of charitable organisations.

The Lannisters would have, to represent their logo and House Words (“Hear us roar”), a microsite detailing their investment in Lion Aid, reporting on lion related news and how the money they donate is helping the animals. Their articles would contain links to financial reports on the main Lannister Investment Group website.

Baratheon Security

Stannis Baratheon leads the way to new things; in the TV series he, along with Melisandre, are promoting innovation in Westeros by pushing forward a new religion.

Being on the cutting edge of development, I see Baratheon Security bringing out their own range of security related apps to promote their business. All of these apps would prominently feature the Baratheon branding and links to the Baratheon suite of services.

Stark Outfitters

On Google Trends ‘Winter is Coming‘, the Stark House Words, are the most popular of the pseudo-tag-lines, even if you include the unofficial Lannister “Always pays his debts” within the trends report. For this reason, I see Stark Outfitters riding on this wave with a set of Image Memes such as…

 

Add a link to each of these images, and you have a strategy which could get people really talking about Stark Outfitters.

Greyjoy Cruises

For this brand, I imagine a heavy inbound content strategy.

The Greyjoy House Words, “We do not sow”, have always been taken to mean that they prefer to let others do hard work and then take it from them (The Greyjoys aren’t a very moral House in Game of Thrones). I imagine that Greyjoy Cruises could have the users of their cruises blog for them, to save on having someone in-house do it. They might even offer discounts to their customers if they, for example, write on greyjoycruises.com about their whale watching experiences.

Not only would this content please the search engines, but it could also give Greyjoy Cruises the possibility of gaining conversions from the interesting blog articles.

Arryn Communications

If House Greyjoy is all about  taking what other people have sown, House Arryn are all about not even seeing anyone to take anything from. Having distanced themselves from everyone, a modern day house Arryn are unlikely to want to display themselves publicly in areas where there isn’t any time to think about the next move, such as social media.

For Arryn Communications, an on-site strategy would be a better fit for their seclusive policies. Analytics would be analysed and reanalysed until the perfect titles and descriptions are inserted onto every page. The content would be fine-tuned to ensure the best chance of outranking any competitors.

Conclusion

Of course, this was a very simple look at what the marketing for these companies might be like. If they were to exist, and come to WDL, complex and detailed strategies would be thought out for them. I’d talk to them about their business goals, what customer demographic they most want to attract, and what they are most interested in doing as part of their marketing effort for themselves.

However, if you would like us to create your own marketing strategy, get in touch. If I’m working with you, I promise you that you won’t have to be a House of Westeros (or to even know what that means) for us to do great work together.

We are pleased to announce that iChauffeur, a London based chauffeur car service, have chosen to work with us on expanding and refining their digital presence.

This is to be an intentionally close and collaborative relationship between Will Senior, Director of iChauffeur, and the team here at WDL in order to understand and audit their current digital presence.

Once this preliminary work has been completed a series of plans are to be put in place to expand and refine iChauffeurs digital capabilities, some of which include; a microsite marketing strategy, full deployment of a single CMS, ongoing PPC management, and for future consideration, a move into a responsive website to cater for the rise in mobile device use.

It’s an exciting opportunity and one that we are greatly looking forward to getting stuck into.

We were approached by Colchester-based PR and Marketing agency, Mosaic Publicity, to help them develop a website for the new spa facility at  four star Bedford Lodge Hotel in Newmarket.

Elliot Smith worked with Mosaic to produce a project overview. It quickly became apparent that the website for Bedford Lodge Spa would need to be a responsive brochure website, with a CMS to enable staff to easily update all website content from special offers to news and a Manager’s Blog. Calls to action to the contact form and information needed to be spread throughout the site to help fulfill the initial objective to establish a client-base.

Elliot had high praise for the brief we received from Mosaic, observing that “this was a lovely project for our designer, Rob, and developer, Matt, with a good brief from Mosaic Publicity”.

WDL designer, Rob McCarthy incorporated a prominent homepage slideshow into the design to showcase key imagery to appeal to the target audience for Bedford Lodge Spa. Because the secondary objective beyond establishing clients was to aid in the conversion of those clients from one-off to loyal clients who return and refer, the design is both welcoming and unashamedly luxurious.

When it came to building the website, Matt Beales developed the clean design into a responsive cms website. Matt said, “This site was a pleasure to work on due to the beautiful design. We’ve since handed the project over to Mosaic Publicity who are maintaining the content from now on.”

You can take a look at the site in more detail and view WDLs portfolio by visiting Our Work, or check out Bedford Lodge Spa.

In an age of social media where business can quickly tweet a special offer or use Facebook to talk about what’s going on in their world, it would be easy to side-line blogging as a superfluous exercise. How wrong you would be.

5 reasons to add a blog to your business website today

1.     Brand-building

A blog is a fabulous platform because it gives you the opportunity to go more in-depth into your latest successful projects and ideas. It also offers you a chance to enrich your brand and shows that you are a trusted and relevant voice of expertise. For example, if you run a diet and fitness business, blogging about successful weight-loss case studies is a great way to start. You could also talk about the latest products and services you are using to achieve success: Contextualise them – in which situations is a particular product fantastic?

2.     Exposure

As a low-cost method of marketing, blogging is quite hard to beat. All it takes is your time to write a piece 300 words+ about a topic you already know lots about (i.e. your business, projects and associated areas of interest) and you’ve got a new page on your website that you can then also send a tweet out about. Search engines love new pages as long as it’s good quality content. With this in mind, readability really is key – you should always aim to write for people, not search engines! A blog is a long-term asset as well, promoting your business for the duration of publication.

3.     Conversation

If you leave commenting on, a blog is a brilliant way to have a conversation with your clients about your products, services and opinions. We recommend moderating comments to make sure that nothing you’d rather not see on your website gets published, and to prevent automatically generated spam comments. Make sure you monitor and reply to comments to continue the conversation and offer your expertise. Blogs also offer you insight into your audience. You can use your analytics to show you which topics your readers liked most by seeing what is the most popular, which blogs drove the most click-throughs to the pages you want people to see (your products pages for example), and what was shared using social-media buttons.

4.     Drive traffic to your website

Blogs provide good, keyword-rich content that answer your customers’ questions. With relevant cross-linking to your website content and blog post links, a blog will improve your search engine optimization. Integrate your blog into your main website’s URL – for example http://example.com/blog – and make sure it’s easy to find your blog from your website’s navigation.

5.     Offer the best service

Your competitors are likely to be blogging and if asked the reason why, they’d probably give you one, or more, of the reasons I’ve given. The ‘hidden’ gold-star reason to blog though is that it shows the human side of your business. A blog provides an approachable route for your customers to interact with you, within the context of your product, services, and the expertise you offer. This makes for better customer service, reputation and a better customer experience all-round.

In conclusion

While blogging is only one facet of a robust marketing program, if done well it will drive traffic to your website, engage with your users and build your brand.

 Blogging requires time and commitment – if you need help getting started with a blogging schedule get in touch with us today!

My profession of Digital Designer means I spend a lot of my time at a computer digesting information which does come at me through a number of different platforms, such as social media, computer software or a news feed. However when it comes to reading a book I actively don’t read on a digital device.

I really haven’t caught on with reading a book digitally and I don’t think it’s a case of me being behind the times, I just like reading, what I’d call, a ‘proper book‘. The type of book that feels different to the next and has a different smell when it’s brand new. That makes me sound old, doesn’t it?

More and more people now read books using an Amazon Kindle, an iPad, desktop/laptop computer and even on a phone, which got me thinking – “As a digitally led agency do we still take the time to read or do we just digest information that is given to us on platforms such as social media and news feeds?”

The late Roger Ebert said  ”You’ll never strike up a conversation on a train over a book someone’s reading on a Kindle.”

This led to me asking everyone in the studio what was currently on their night stand and maybe you (and I) will take some inspiration from what others are reading, whether it be digitally or not.

Matt

“I started reading the Steve Jobs biography and seriously need to finish it“. That good huh

George

“On my bedside table is my Nexus 7 which has PHP 5 for Dummies and JavaScript: The Definitive Guide“. George is one of the developers at WDL – can you tell?

Daniel

“My wife’s fashion magazines!” Right… anyway… Admittedly Daniel did redeem himself slightly by saying “I most recently read Life by Keith Richards.”

Emily

“London Under by Peter Ackroyd and Whispers Underground by Ben Aaronovitch“. Both were Christmas presents from her husband Craig who has an obviously cultured taste in literature, or maybe he was given a list.

Luke

Another cultured taste in literature is offered up by Luke who is currently reading “The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern whose writing style reminds me of Neil Gaiman (who wrote Coraline and that episode of Doctor Who where the TARDIS becomes a woman.)” – Sorry Luke, I lost you there.

Tom

“I’m reading a book of Zen poetry titled Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf by Ryokan. Is this too weird?” No Tom, not at all…

Me (Rob)

Currently I’m reading three books which does lend itself to getting story lines mixed up quite easily; Velocity by Ajaz Ahmed and Stefan Olander, Superteams by Khoi Tu and lastly The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

You

Why not let us know what you’re reading?

While watching the opening round of the BTCC (British touring car championship) a few weeks back I noticed the new paint scheme used on the ebay motors car: It was quite a departure from last years – but in a good way because the new ebay branding instantly modernised the paint scheme.

Recently I’ve been thinking about brands that have adopted a ‘refresh’ approach as opposed to a complete change. The reason for a refresh is simple:  You already have a recognisable brand or logo that you want to maintain, but it needs bringing up to date, perhaps to make it stand out within a crowded market or to make the brand and logo integrate better within web and mobile app design. Ebay is a prime example of this, their old logo was becoming dated yet was easily recognisable and of course they want to maintain this. It’s clear to see that the solution is to keep the simple marque of the original and update it with a simple ,yet playful typeface, therefore retaining the presence of the original.

With anything new, negative feedback is going to happen – and it did when the new ebay logo was launched last year. Many comments followed a similar theme, which boiled down to ‘I could do better’. But the logo has weathered the storm well, having been designed with simplicity in mind. Todays ebay logo is used in many different locations, from the favicon in your web browser to paint schemes on touring cars. This requires it to be adaptable – the simpler the better, because special effects and intricate detail don’t always recreate well at various sizes.

Now that the new ebay logo has had time to bed in, it has proved that it works effectively with the modern design of their website, mobile apps, right up to to more niche applications. This emphasises the usability of the new logo while retaining it’s key brand values and being instantly recognisable.

Naturally being a designer this has made me consider other brands that have chosen a refresh rather than a complete change. A good example of a successful re-fresh is the rental company Hertz,  who subtly adapted their logo by using a new typeface. The brilliant thing about the Hertz re-fresh is that most people wouldn’t recognise it has changed. What’s the point of that, you might ask? Well, it demonstrates that the logo has retained its original identity and company image, while also offering a more modern presence which integrates seamlessly into modern web design, social media, mobile apps and works well on their range of rental vehicles. Their older, more dated logo would stand out for the wrong reasons on modern applications so they made the right choice with a refresh.

Another example which supports this approach is the Bridgestone tyres logo. Here, a modern typeface was also employed to replace the chunky font of the original.

These examples show how careful consideration of the original design can bring a brand logo up to date without losing the presence the original design holds.

Why not get in touch with us and see how we can help you to refresh your brand.

For further reading, here’s a great before and after logo resource
http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew

Did you see it? Yes it was short lived but this weekend there was actually some sun. Unbelievable, I know! Even today, on a Monday, it’s looking less blue which really is promising.

Whilst the winter has been very long and dreary, it’s now time to shake off the cobwebs and focus on the next few months which has prompted me to write a series of blog posts. The topic will be on what I’ve got planned over the coming months with a focus on the local area.

You may read the upcoming series and suggest something else for me to do or warn me off something I have planned. Either way I hope you enjoy the series of blog posts and maybe you’ll even take some inspiration from my plans for your summer ventures.

So what have I got coming up in the next few months…

Mum’s 60th Birthday

It’s a surprise so I’m not going into too much detail but I’ll let you know how it all goes, fingers crossed.

Friends

I’ve got plans to meet up with some old friends for lunch somewhere in-between Colchester and Bury. It’s pretty wide open at the moment but we’re looking for a cosy pub where we can eat good food and also have some drinks in. I’m sure we’ll find one in the area but if you have any recommendations, do let me know?

Cycling

Lots of it. Oh and local pubs. Basically cycling between pubs. It’s great fun with a large group. However, if you do it, please do bear in mind the laws of the road. Usually it results in walking between pubs with bike in tow. Anyone fancy it?

Flatford Mill and Dedham

When the sun is out these areas just can’t be beaten for having picnics with friends. Last year my better half and I took a row boat out at Flatford Mill which was great fun. A little tiring when you’re the only one rowing, but still enjoyable.

More…

There is more but I’ll save it for the series. Hopefully you’ll check back and have a read through, and like I said earlier, you may even get some inspiration for your own summer ventures.

If you know of any enjoyable events, excursions or days out then send me an email or leave a comment. If I go, I’ll let you know by writing about it.

When asked by Hostcomm - a market leading hosted communication services company – to help them make their website more appealing to corporate channels, we got to work right away on a new brand strategy.

WDL designer, Rob, says: “A lot of the work on this project was design-led. We worked closely with Hostcomm to define several areas where design work would make their offering more appealing to corporate clients – as per the brief. We have achieved brilliant consistency in design. It’s fantastic to see this across the entire brand for Hostcomm.”

It was clear from the outset that our contact at Hostcomm, Chris, wanted us to take the lead with producing high level requirements and refining those to a polished and finished website. That’s not to say that we didn’t work hand-in-hand with them – they really engaged with our consultative process and fed back regularly to help us refine what we were doing to suit their brief.

All this, and the website had to be responsive – looking great on mobile devices as well as standard browsers, which has a significant influence over a finished website design.

WDL Developer, George, built the website using the Information Architecture created by our design team, then Craig (WDL Systems and Support) synchronised the systems and data between the old and new websites before transferring it all to a new server. It was here that timing was key to ensure the best continuity of service for Hostcomm, and for their own web traffic.

WDL’s Managing Director, Elliot, says: “what made this project so appealing was the broad scope to make swathing changes where appropriate; what made it work so well was the client, Chris at Hostcomm, trusting our consultative process and challenging us to produce a very high standard of design, build and support.

You can take a look at the site in more detail and view WDLs portfolio by visiting Our Work –  or check out Hostcomm.co.uk.

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