Keeping your website fresh and updated is a key factor to it’s success and at Deckchair we would advise any company updating or changing their website to opt for one with a content management system.

To quote Wikipedia – itself the perfect example of a website with a content management system – a CMS enables “the publication of web content to websites and mobile devices, in particular, allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML or the uploading of files.” Wikipedia then goes on to invite people to rewrite the article!

In a nutshell, a website with a content management system means you take control of your website and can change most of the content at will without needing the help of a web designer.

There are two obvious advantages to a CMS:

1. Companies can make their own changes quickly, without seeking out their web designer
2. A company managing its own website reduces web management costs

But over and above this, having a website with a CMS greatly enhances search engine optimisation. A business which has control of its website is more likely to make changes to the content. The more often the content is changed, updated and reinvigorated the more it is visited by search engine ‘robots’ and the higher up the search engine tree the site goes.

While we’re still on the search engine topic; keywords and phrases which people search for are constantly changing; with a CMS you can change your text at will and keep up to date. Use your CMS and Google Analytics, and you can keep track of the keywords people are using to find your website, then change your content accordingly.

From a user point of view, updating your website regularly can maintain their interest and keep them coming back to your site for more. If your website never changes and you offer the user nothing new, why should they come back?

Having a CMS does mean you have to devote time regularly to managing your website and really consider how it can be useful to both you and your users. What can you regularly output from your site that will keep people interested? New and advice? Hints and tips related to your services? New photography or products you offer?

You can more quickly and easily add articles, news, case studies and testimonials, for example.

Deckchair will always be here for major website changes, for website advice and to guide you through managing your website but with a CMS you can get the best out of your website to ensure it fully promotes your business and brings you sales.

The brand encompasses not only your logo, but also your typeface (font), your colours and styles and how these present your business, consistently across the board. Everything a company produces should be thoroughly steeped in its brand and that includes its stationery, brochures, leaflets, advertising material, business cards and – of course – its website.

Take Deckchair for example – the brand of Deckchair is its typeface, its colours and its logo. The colours are used throughout the website and all offline communication, as are the logo and typeface. You can see our brand pink permeates all our pages as titles and all our links are a single blue colour.

Ensuring your company’s brand identity pervades its output, achieves three things:

1. All output is on target with the company message
2. The company gradually becomes recognisable as an identity
3. The company appears professional because its branding is clear and consistent

Your website is a vital tool for bringing your brand under one roof. A good website designer will be able to create a site which utilises and builds upon your branding and company messages, effectively acting as a ‘shop’ which sells your products, services and company.

Still unsure of the importance of consistent branding? There is a Heinz ketchup advert currently showing on television, which doesn’t have the ketchup bottle in it, merely shots of people shaking or banging the end of an imaginary object. Heinz has so permeated our consciousness that the company is bold enough to think it can air an advert which doesn’t show its product.

This advert alone should be enough to convince any sceptic of the power of the brand and being consistent.

The business world can be an impersonal place; its need to remain professional often belies what is really behind it: people. People with knowledge, opinions, beliefs and all the other things that make us human. These people are the personalities that will attract customers to your business and keep them as clients.

Traditional forms of marketing or advertising often end up hiding the people within the business. Whilst they may reflect the business’ premise, including the solution it can provide, these methods often share little of the business’ ethics, beliefs or more objective opinions, made up of the people behind the company. This is where a website comes into its own; its ability to connect the user with the people behind the website.

This doesn’t mean that on each page of the site a photo of a member of staff or personal opinion is required, but it does mean a business needs to think about the content on the website and make sure that it has a personal opinion behind it. It means that a business should regularly think about the messages its website projects and make sure that it believes in them.

Many websites become an entity that the business does not feel represents them and its customers are steered away from it like an embarrassing uncle. It is very important that your business’ personality is projected and people behind the business represented, as this is what will strengthen relationships with clients and bring new business.

A good example here is a blog integrated into the website, which allows people within the business to easily manage content and project opinion. A blog can also allow users to leave comments, which enables you to start a dialogue and answer the user openly.

In short, a website needs a personality if it is to engage with the people who use it.

Let us know your thoughts!

A website is an address that can be easily visited by all, that represents the ideas and personality of the organisation behind it. The beauty of the medium means that as the ideas and personality change within the organisation, so too can the website.

Businesses still often treat a website as a static piece of marketing material that is produced once, then left to do its work until the next time they choose to have a ’spring clean’ and refresh the website’s look and content.

It is important to understand that the more fluid and current a website is, the more likely someone will find it useful. This does not mean that the site needs to constantly shape shift and turn inside out, but the relevance of the content within it needs to change to reflect the business.

If the site is to accurately reflect the business as a whole, it needs to be maintained and evolved, much like a retail shop needs to update its products and layout to keep its customers interested.

The best way to achieve this is to create a roadmap for your online presence and build a good relationship with the web design agency that will build the site. This way you can be clear about how the site will evolve and make sure that time and budget is allocated to implement the changes.

A website is ultimately a marketing opportunity like no other; one that the business or organisation can have a high degree of control over and, if it has something to say, one that customers and users will actively seek. It is a cost effective way to accurately represent your business and tell your existing potential customers about your knowledge and how you can help them with the solutions you offer.

Our next article discusses the personality of your website. What are your thoughts on this article? We would love to hear from you.

People believe there is a solution on the web that can help them. They believe that by searching they can find the right service or product that their business needs and will make their lives easier. As we said in our last article, the Internet is now the first port of call when people need to research or discover something.

When a user finds a product or service on your website, your website’s ability to give them detail and knowledge about the product is essential to the user feeling confident enough to make a commitment.

However, before they make a commitment, the user will now often check that others have used your product or service and had a good experience. At this point the user moves from an individual frame of mind to a collective frame of mind.

Your website needs to lead to an opinion that is external and that validates the claims your website makes. Related content on other networks and websites is so important, because it is a piece of your business’ content that you have allowed the collective to comment on. You have released control of projected opinion.

A good example of this is a review of a restaurant or hotel on Google Maps or Trip Advisor, where the public can leave comments and give a rating, as well as posting photographs.

In the internet world, your business has to release control of its brand and IP to the collective. It needs to embrace the collective opinion by listening and replying via the same medium. This means your business will be found and by the time your business is found the user will either have the inclination to buy or will know the means by which to get the knowledge or opinion in order to validate the transaction.

Ultimately, this gives the user confidence – firstly, that you are confident enough in the quality of your business to allow the collective to comment on it, and secondly, reading the positive reviews and feedback from yourself and others, validates the claims you have made.

Our next article will explore how to evolve your web presence. In the meantime what are your thoughts on this subject? We would love to hear from you.

Thankfully there are many great websites that get results.

Over the following weeks this series of articles will explore how to get the best out of your website.

We will look at how projecting clear core messages and getting a website that accurately represents your business, is essential to attracting and retaining clients.

Confidence in the web

Article 1 in the series ‘What does your website do for you?’

Confidence is key to ensuring customers take you and your business seriously.
Confidence in the UK in general is low at the moment; low confidence in our government, in our economy and therefore business, which often makes decision making difficult.

When the public is under confident and told by the media that they should be careful, the individual becomes protective and insular, so the need to research and gain knowledge before making a decision becomes paramount.

In this situation the web becomes the platform of research and discovery; the first port of call that requires no commitment, and allows the user to explore endless possibilities without feeling pressured or parting with their money.

Your business’s website should make the user feel confident by projecting clear, user-friendly messages. It should make it easy for the user to engage and should present your business’s core values. It is crucial for you to see your website as a key part of your business, not a separate entity, and this in turn will present your confidence in your website.

Ultimately, when the user feels confident they will make contact and they will buy into your services or product.

Our next article will explore how to build confidence in the web. In the meantime what are your thoughts on this subject? We would love to hear from you.

LabSkills is an e-learning resource tool for schools and universities. It is curriculum focused software that features experiments, videos, tests and exam-style questions, all aimed at enhancing lessons, aiding coursework and revision, giving excellent opportunities for practice and learning.

Deckchair was originally approached to develop the logo and branding for the new LabSkills product, and from then on has supported the product through exhibition design, software case artwork, packaging concepts and most recently a new website.

LabSkills has received huge publicity so it was crucial the design and branding portrayed the product and its nature successfully. There were key factors central to the development of the LabSkills brand – educational, scientific, professional, serious, cutting edge – as well as the inherent considerations; ensuring the logo is memorable, unique, consistent and appropriate.

The exhibition banners, case artwork and packaging that followed continued the LabSkills theme, clearly presenting the information and brand whilst appealing to the target market. The unique icon, movement shapes and strong colours ensure the contemporary, scientific nature of LabSkills stands out.

The latest addition to the LabSkills brand was the website, launched towards the end of 2009. The key aim was to inform users about the product and it’s unique capabilities, acting as an important and sole reference point. Here, we utilised rich media to engage the user and enhance their experience through the website, using video, slideshows and imagery to boldly display the product and how it works. Static pages simply wouldn’t have done it justice. The website focuses on imagery/media, concise information and calls-to-action, ensuring the user is quickly and easily presented with the information they require.

You can visit the LabSkills website here.

The next step is to add further product information to the website, featuring extra video tailored towards the end-user, and from there, we look forward to the next stage of development, whatever that may be!

See the rest of the LabSkills work in our portfolio.

The web is an entirely different ‘beast’ to say 10 years ago, and it is vital to keep up with the flow, assessing the value of current trends, and not get washed away with the tide. The potential for interaction between a user and a website is huge, and very exciting and it’s clear to us that a website should be centered around the user and what they need to obtain from the website, as well as the business the website belongs to, and what the business needs.

We’re really excited about the websites we’ve been producing recently; we’ve really enjoyed the design process and have been able to implement some nice technical features. As part of this, we’ve been refining our processes, working towards achieving the most effective methods of working internally, and externally with our clients.

We’ve adopted Expression Engine as one of our primary content management platforms, owing to its extensive customisation features, ease of use and powerful modules. We’ve also officially elected jQuery as our Javascript library of choice – enabling us to quickly implement some choice usability enhancements as seen in the Money Saints site below. Our developers have been hard at work in the background improving our tool chains, tightening up security features, introducing Object Oriented programming principles into our code base and working on some Enterprise level systems for use in future applications/projects.

Have a look at some of our most recent work…

Money Saints

Yet to reach the masses, this website is ultimately aimed at lead generation but hopes to provide an experience that is useful, easy and helpful for the user. Employing JQuery helped us create a neat tool for the home page – an easy, and slightly fun way of drawing the user in. The overall design seeks to move away from the typical doom and gloom of most debt-related websites and inspire the user to take action.

Wesley Conference Centre

This website gives Wesley Conference Centre a strong online presence. A clean and easily accessible design, useful content and enquiry forms help the user find the information they need. The content management system behind this gives our client full control over the images and text on the website, as well as allowing them to add/remove PDFs, special offers and news stories.

Stuart & Frank Training

A presentation website to showcase Stuart & Frank Training, introducing their services and way of working, through textual information and a video introduction (provided by the client). Typical of the majority of our client relationships, we are currently producing an entire range of work for this client; branding, website, presentations, advertisements and character illustrations. Case study to follow soon!

H Sweet & Sons

The first online presence for H Sweet & Sons, displaying their services, as well as former projects through image lightbox galleries. Similar to Wesley Conference Centre, this website employs Expression Engine and gives the client full control over their website.

Feel free to let us know your thoughts on the above websites.

Ultimately it will benefit you, the user, as we want to offer much more on our new website – a more rich and user-friendly experience, detailed service and process information (how we can help you, what we do and how we work with you), regular design/technical/industry information and more.

We’ll keep you posted!

And also to inform you of our new address… As of 22nd December 2008, Deckchair’s address will be:

Deckchair UK Ltd, 54-56 Park Street, Bristol, BS1 5JN.

All of our other contact details will remain the same, so please continue to call us on 0117 9299150

Have a great couple of weeks.