You have probably heard the rumblings from last year that a new uk legislation on the use of cookies on uk websites was passed that makes more than 90% of uk websites illegal. On May 2011 the new law on cookies was passed, websites now need to ask permission from the end user before they can set cookies. Thanks to a lack of detail from the government there are lots of confused people out there with lots of questions about this particular subject. We are going to try and answer them for you.

What is a cookie?

Cookies are really useful and common pieces of technology that allow you to log-in to websites such as Facebook, remember your preferences on a site like text size and track certain bits of information about you such as, who you are and where you’re from and most importantly (for advertisers) to remember where you have been and target ads at you based on your browsing history.

Does it affect you?

Basically, if your business or website trades in the EU then YES! It does effect you!

Every website uses cookies and has done for years. All members of the EU had a deadline to create their own laws to combat the misuse of cookies by the 26th may. Out of 24 members of the EU only 3 countries passed legislation, the UK, Denmark & Estonia. The latter 21 countries have done nothing about it, yet. The new law means that every website now has to ask for permission to use cookies. The only way this is going to happen is more than likely going to be with a pop-up window (below) and because so many websites use cookies this means there will be a LOT of pop-ups.

The Exceptions?

The law does make an exception for what they call “strictly necessary” cookies. This does not include cookies that allow you to measure the traffic and visitors to your website through online tools such as google analytics and it does not include cookies that aid in targeted advertising and banner ads.

What are the penalties?

Penalties are financial and potentially severe. The ICO (the body responsible) has the power to serve penalties of up to £500,000 (about $800,000) to organisations that seriously breach the law. Details are still being defined and are likely to be tested in court.

What happens if I don’t comply in time?

The ICO announced at the last minute that companies have until May 2012 to comply. The ICO says:

“The government’s view is that there should be a phased approach to the implementation of these changes. In light of this if the ICO were to receive a complaint about a website, we would expect an organisation’s response to set out how they have considered the points above and that they have a realistic plan to achieve compliance. We would handle this sort of response very differently to one from an organisation which decides to avoid making any change to current practice.”

ICO Guidelines

Which means we at least have some time to change our websites, as long as we tell them that we’re planning to make the change. According to the ICO, although our time runs out around May 2012 they expect to see us working towards that deadline in advance.

How to protect yourself

What are the official recommendations? They are vague, but there are some suggestions you can act on today.
Now that we’re all suitably panicked about this new cookie law and know we might go to court if we ignore it, we expect some detailed and clear instructions for what we should do next. Unfortunately this is where the guidelines fall short. The recommendations are vague and it’s not exactly clear how we could ask users without ruining their user experience.
The official recommendations are:

1. Check what type of cookies and similar technologies you use and how you use them.
2. Assess how intrusive your use of cookies is.
3. Decide what solution to obtain consent will be best in your circumstances.

Whilst the first two are straightforward, the third is not. The ICO make broad suggestions involving pop ups, and getting users to accept your terms and conditions. Which website developers and owners won’t be happy about these as they are a major distraction from the website’s content. They haven’t specified any firm examples however, and seem reluctant to do so:

“However, we do not intend to issue prescriptive lists on how to comply. You are best placed to work out how to get information to your users, what they will understand and how they would like to show that they consent to what you intend to do.”

For more information you can look at what the ICO have done on their own website.

The Fallout

Well if you hadn’t noticed all of our favourite websites are funded through the use of advertising (banners and ads that use cookies) like facebook, linkedin, youtube .. well pretty much all of them. So what happens when the law stops these companies from making their main revenue through advertising? Lets just hope this doesn’t mean the start of monthly subscriptions to Facebook, youtube and the rest… We do NOT like that sound of that, what do you think?

sources: silktide.com: www.ico.gov.uk:

In no particular order…
Nameboy

Nameboy is a popular domain name search tool that bases its results on a primary word and a secondary word. Nameboy says that its intelligent engine creates name variations from the sound and meaning of the keyword. The feature that I like is that it immediately color codes the results depending on the availability status of the domain name.

Domize

Domize will check whether unavailable domain names can be bought on the secondary market or whether they’re soon expiring. It has a Power Search feature which can search a large combination of terms by entering a comma-separated list of words, letters or numbers. As special functions, it can also list out synonyms or derivatives of a supplied word based on a misspelling. Other functions include listing out words that rhyme with the one you enter.

Domain Tools

Domain Tools is a set of domain name search engines that help you uncover relevant information about certain domain names. They have a “Whois” search that reveals records about who registered the domain, a “Suggestions” search to help you find similar website domain names and a list of website domain names that are “For Sale” or “At Auction”.

Namestation

NameStation.com is a domain search workstation that offers a variety of name suggestion methods that help our users find available domains. A really good site for finding your website name with website name suggestions and competitions. With just a few clicks you can enter your suggested keywords and combine them with prefixes and suffixes. Set a minimum and maximum word length and get your domain name results.
- Domainsbot

The domain name search engine! Not quite like Google, but if you are looking for the best website name domains bot can help, with a search and a who-is lookup Domainsbot is worth keeping handy when building a new website. + Your perfect website name, the domain name, is something that should not be taken lightly. We have probably all been there, sat in front of a blank piece of paper on the second or third coffee, trying t
And finally…
Domain Hole

I know we said in no particular order, but if we had to play favourites, this would be our one to use. Domain hole has pretty much all the tools you need on one place. Domain name search for you perfect website name, Expired domain search, name spinner to put a name together for your website based on a few others, complete check, availability check, website name generator, domain alerts, bulk website name checking and a brainstormer.

If you like this guide please bookmark it for later use, share it with your friends on facebook, linkedin, google+ and give us some feedback so we know what you think. If you like these website guides, then we will keep writing them! If you want to find out more about how we help businesses go from a blank piece of paper to a roaring success on-line through our website design & online marketing services then contact us today.

Beginning the Relationship

Much like a tentative first date, it is best to use precaution when approaching those customers. Honesty is the best policy and beginning the relationship on good terms is the key to building a strong connection. Clear brand messaging, consistency across all your communication mediums is key but most importantly – be there. There’s no point hiding away from what you don’t want to hear.

For instance, a lot of small business fear the wrath of TripAdvisor reviews, and whilst there can be some scathing reviews left on their by the odd disgruntled customer, it’s actually a wealth of free customer research allowing businesses to see what areas they do well in and err… also not so well. Whilst it’s nice to see all the good points, it can be valuable to see where your weaknesses lie so you can move forward and turn those frowns upside down.

Taking it to the Next Level

So now you have your customers, but they’re still susceptible to being snatched by your rivals – what do you do? What your competitors don’t have is that foundation that you’ve built upon with your customers. Personalisation is a great way to really build upon this and make the customer feel known.

Amazon and many other e-tailers used product recommendations to help tailor the online experience for their customers. Think of it as similar to a friend recommending you a product, which it’s essentially trying to replicate. By showing the customer they know what they want (even if it is just data wizardry), Amazon et al can show you that they really know you as an individual. That’s one of the really great things about digital marketing, because it’s computerised it’s inherently a lot easier to collect data, the hard bit is deciphering all that.

Advocacy

Much like Amazon’s friend simulation, creating advocates is creating brand representatives out of your customers. Hands down the most effective method of communication is word of mouth, so an example of this in an extreme is when things go viral i.e. the Old Spice ads. But it’s a tricky mistress to tame, for example look at the worldwide recognition that Banksy receives, through not trying to create a brand, he’s created one of the most talked about movements in the past couple of years and a brand in himself;  yet no one can pinpoint why.

As customer relationship management has progressed we’ve seen the small local companies knowing all their customers, to the multinational conglomerates buying data about their customers.  Although we don’t know the future, it’s undeniable the customer knows best and the information that digital marketing can provide us is key to progressing it even further.

Now, enjoy some photos of some crazy and sore-looking brand advocates:

With the ‘London’ Olympics not actually being hosted entirely in London it means that spectators are going to travel up and down the country getting to see more of this lovely, yet rainy isle. Is your business one that can benefit from the implosion of tourists? Whether directly or indirectly, there a few steps you can take to ensure that you are ready and raring to go.

Get Social

Yes, yes I know it’s the standard response to most business dilemmas these days but it is for a good reason. With so many different types of social media and so many different ways to use it, have you got a strategy in place to make the most of it? The Olympics is a great event to link with, provides the opportunity to capitalise on the emotional connections people have to the event and also to show your national pride! More than getting social it is important to get listening too. Sites like Social Mention allow you to search social networks so you can find out what people are chatting about, a great tool to get your strategy started.

Get Visible

Are you on the first page of Google? It’s a well known fact that if you’re not you could be seriously limiting how easy it is for people to see you. Search engine optimisation and pay-per-click can help you get up there and relevant. Use keyword research to see what searches are popular, link up with local tourism sites and get on social recommendation sites like TripAdvisor, Citysearch and epinions.

Get Usable

Is your Facebook page accessible from your website? Do you use your twitter to follow up with customers? Having a web presence is one thing, but connecting all the parts into one smooth strategy is the ultimate goal. If someone were to visit your site is it obvious what you do? Can they contact you? Are you sharing the same brand message across it all? The Olympics means that people from all over the world will be searching for things like accomodation, eateries, leisure, retail and more. This is adding more potential markets onto your existing strategies which could in turn require alterations in your messaging.

This has been a whirlwind and admittedly very generic post about the Olympics and preparedness but hopefully it may have been of some value. If you need some help getting those strategies sorted or getting your online presence to where you want it to be then just let us know.

Codeacademy

Codeacademy is a great online tool that uses an embedded coding area to teach you the basics of coding. It works on a simple progression system of lessons, including a couple which teach you to make a game of Blackjack. Achievement badges similar to the look of Foursquare and easy one-click facebook integration means that this isn’t just educational, it’s competitive. Unfortunately at the moment the lessons are just limited to just Javascript, the start-up is creating more open source courses including favourites such as HTML and CSS.  Aside from all the fun bits we simply love how easy Codeacademy is to use and more importantly understand.

Tuts+

Tuts+ is a veritable goldmine for knowledge around design and technical matters. Their course which offers to teach you the basic in just 30 days comes with daily videos comprising of about 10 minutes or so each, which is more than manageable. The videos are presented by the likeable Jeffrey Way who is a great teacher and takes the time to explain the ins and outs of code (even though we do think his choice of t shirt is questionable).

W3Schools

The home of web development W3Schools is a foundational resource for both those just beginning and those who are well versed in web languages.  W3schools utilises the same coding area method as Codeacademy but in a much more austere fashion. This one is for those who are serious about developing their skills and want to progress at a structured level. W3Schools offers a wide range of languages to learn which makes it a great long term resource as it keeps up to date with new coding such as HTML5 and CSS3.

We hoped you enjoyed our little rundown of some great code resources and encourage you to make 2012 your year of code!

 Pinterest 

This is one of the newer social media platforms and allows users to take photos from (almost) any webpage and put them on a virtual pinboard. It’s great for pulling together ideas and acts as an visual storage repository for those ideas you don’t want to forget. And! users can ‘re-pin’ the photos which means that the potential of your network is HUGE.

Infographics

Move aside charts and line graphs, infographics display information in whole new ways, typically using beautiful typography and themed to complement their content, they provide and interesting way to present information that also entertains. Infographics provide the perfect way to introduce a little bit of fun or humour into what you do. Check out some amazing examples at visual.ly

Augmented Reality

Apps like Layar allow developers to take objects and give them a new lease of life by adding extra digital content when scanned with a camera. Basically like a super QR code, that doesn’t even have to be a code. By far the coolest use so far is Wikitude Drive, an AR Sat Nav that puts you on the road so you can see where you’re going for real.

Instagram

Now although this is only for iPhone users (grumble grumble), it is the most popular app to be associated with the vignette-y photos that have been cluttering social media newsfeeds. The recent trend for retro looking photos has given a new way for companies to share photos on a much more personal basis. (Rumoured to be out soon for Android – finger crossed!)

We hope you enjoyed our quick run down of some of the visual media tools out there in the deep, dark webspace. Let us know what visuals you like or what you currently use.

Various wizz boffins at various clever colleges spend a lot of time tracking eyeballs to work out what people look at on a webpage and for how long and whilst you could read more about it here, there aren’t any pictures of polar bears on their site.

What?

Interestingly the research from Missouri S&T showed that the longest time was spent looking at the logo on the webpage at 6.48 seconds. Now whilst this doesn’t sound a lot, given that the average time recorded for sections of the webpage was 180 milliseconds, it tells a lot about the importance of the logo. Furthermore the study states that “the use of social media links may be of particular interest for college students, more so than for the general population” highlighting the need to tailor to your audience.

Where?

There are three main views as to designing the layout of websites:

The F Pattern - As the name suggests, this study by the Nielsen Norman Group proposes that people will look at content in an F shape, giving prominence to the left hand side of the page and the top section.

The Z Pattern –  Again as the name suggests, this says that people look at the page in a Z shape. This idea gives prominence to the top. There’s a lovely article explaining more on tutsplus

The Gutenberg Diagram - Unfortunately this one doesn’t have a self explanatory name but essentially proposes that people will go from the top left corner to the bottom right, more can be found in this lovely article.

Whilst all these different viewpoints originate from different areas, the common theme throughout points to the top left as being your most valuable bit of web real estate.

But how?

There are a myriad of ways to go about this but like most things, simple is best. Here are our top three tips for keeping it simple:

1. What is your website for?

Is your website offering online sales or information about your brand or both? Is this obvious from the first impression of your website? Having clear and obvious motives towards your customers makes them happy (and also lowers bounce rates if you’re delving into the world of PPC).

2. Customer journey

As much as you will want to cram all that lovely juicy marketing material on the front page it is important to remain calm and breathe. Spreading the content out across relevant pages can create a story that the customer can use to create a journey through your website.

3. Err…hello?

Whether you use social media, email or snail mail to keep in contact with your customers, make sure you let them know. Use your website as an extension of your CRM system and let people know that you’re there!

WARNING: This is an extremely condensed version of the subject, but hopefully has highlighted some points of interest for you. If you want to spend more time discussing F vs Z or want to channel some our web brillance – let us know!

Now social recommendations aren’t a new innovation as we know, most of the social media giants use it as a gateway for brands to speak to their customers under the guise of their peers. But one of the latent problems with Google doing this is that they are using their monopoly on web searches to promote their social network, potentially harming other networks.

However, for the searching public this could be an amazing way to see what  is really thought about brands. One of the biggest criticisms of the way Google shows search results is that it gives ‘unfair’ weightings to brands. A key example that is proffered is United Airlines, voted as having one of the poorest customer service functions in the airline biz, and untied.com, a website dedicated to the delivering the other side to the brand.

As with anything there were always be the positive and negatives, and we can’t wait to see how this one plays out. One thing that’s for sure is that it’s going to mean companies will need to focus evermore on managing their brands online.

Navigation

We have talked before about the importance of search-ability of website content, but this is only half of the equation. The second we can term “find-ability”. Employing intuitive navigation techniques will significantly increase the usability of the site, and for that reason user satisfaction & return rates. Fixed-Position Navigation yields more results when compared to slideshow content, especially for mobile browsers fixed navigation is more suitable since it removes the worries of screen resolution and other issues. Find your content easily and the user hangs around.

Typography

Web designers will give lot of importance to the header of any website, but its not always about the logo. Selecting the right font, shading, weight, color and white space is a big (and important) task. Thus, Typography has become a part of the web design process. The year 2011 has seen the growth of Typekit font. Most of the WordPress designers preferred this font database (at a cost). During trail period, it offers free font library. Now, the scenario has changed, the new craze is Google Web Fonts. By using this Google tool, now the designers can easily use the typography of their choice. So we feel Google Web Fonts usage will grow in popularity as they are now supporting a whopping 422 font families.

HTML5 and CSS3

We use animations for capturing the attention of our website audience. All though this years flash animations dominated the animation scene. For the year 2012, a lot of people are expecting the domination of HTML5 and CSS3 over Flash, since HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery facilitated the usage of less coding lines as well as ease of use. Now, most of the web designers consider HTML5 and CSS3 are replacement to Flash. But Flash has got its own importance. We believe that Flash will continue to enjoy its popularity, especially among entertainment site designers and it is going to remain a favourite choice – for now.

Infographics

2012 is going to see more and more Infographics on their websites especially in content and data heavy industries. This trend is going to increase in popularity pretty quickly this year. People prefer Infographics instead of plain text since it facilitates the presentation of data along with images, charts, and supporting imagery so that the web users find it very easy to understand what we want to say. An Infographic is like a link between the content and user interactivity, so maybe we will start to see more interactive infographics… now that would be cool

What do you think is coming up this year? what is going to be hot on your next website?

“ While a good chunk of application development is aligning towards mobile apps that are in many cases initially scaled back (as updates follow) and/or even disposable — somewhere, in the cloud data centre and on the web, things are getting more complex. But what makes a complex web site anyway? Issues here include the operation and management of “bigger” back end servers and the systems integration challenges that naturally come with these blocks of data.

So-called Big Data as well as Complex Event Processing technologies will also make the delivery of data to a web site (in many cases via a Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress, Drupal or Joomla. The challenges mount, so naturally we start to look for the path of least resistance to get complex but still stay online? Onward from the web CMS, there is also a need to look at the WCO factor i.e. Web Content Optimisation. This is, in a word (or three) “application-specific resource management” and if that app happens to be on the web then so be it.

One solution in this space is Riverbed Technology’s Stingray Traffic Manager. This is a virtual Application Delivery Controller (ADC) that provides “flexibility and a single point of management” for accelerating enterprise applications hosted on servers. It provides developers with what the company refers to as “advanced scripting and enterprise-level functionality” in the form of the branded TrafficScript code. Traffic script manages the content that the app is fed. So for example, if it were a web site that has a lot of images — the technology would work to scale back the images hitting the web site and just send the text first. This is global load balancing, with a sprinkling of bandwidth management, a side order of “rate shaping” and some service level monitoring to boot.

Also from Riverbed in this space comes Stingray Aptimizer, a WCO solution built to deliver both internal web applications, like Microsoft SharePoint… and external web applications, like e-commerce and highly customised websites. According to Riverbed, “Typical websites can have 50-200 file requests and for each request, in addition to the network latency, the performance of websites can be severely impacted. Stingray Aptimizer reduces page load times and reduces bandwidth by transforming the content (multiple image formats, JavaScript, CSS files, etc.) that is delivered from a web server to the web site viewer, accelerating website performance in some cases by up to 400%.”

Riverbed wants to see the Application Delivery Controller now sit in the application stack rather than the network stack. The company’s vision sees Web Content Optimisation become a tool for operating any public web site or “connected” enterprise application. Riverbed LIKES this. I wonder what the rest of us think. Consider this a POKE.”

Article sources: Computer weekly