Freelance Haulage and A&E Mechanical are companies that are specialists within their industry. They offer a range of services from transporting access equipment across the country and overseas, to giving old machines a full re-spray. Their variety of services allowed us to create two websites that marry up to one another and work together to increase business exposure and enquiry rate.

A&E Mechanical

The A&E Mechanical Website launched in December 2015, with the aim to highlight the company’s ability to sell on used Access, Plant, Trailers and other various machinery used within the industry.

The shop functions as an e-commerce site without the checkout functionality, this allows A&E to display the range of machines that they have on sale, and encourages users to get in touch with them to inquire about the machines. If A&E ever did decide that they wanted to move forward with a full e-commerce site they can do it in the future. (That’s the beauty of WordPress!)

The 2^nd element of the website was to focus on their Paint Shop, they cover a range of different types of paint jobs, from custom work, including spray painting a giraffe pattern onto a Cherry Picker for London Zoo to complete bodywork repairs, their attention to detail is second to none as we witnessed first hand when visiting them back in the summer.

The website follows their existing branding and colour scheme, and by using a similar style on their sister site (Freelance), we’ve been able to create a network of websites that can continue to grow with the business and mould to suit their needs over the coming years. Throughout the site, there is reference to key services that Freelance offers to push users through to the relevant areas on both websites within the company network.

Freelance Haulage UK

The Freelance website was to replace their current website, which wasn’t responsive and lacked structure and content. Freelance wanted a fresh modern approach to suite their growing business, and to have something that they can edit with ease, and keep up to date.

The company is very active on their socials and by linking their socials with their website it allows visitors to see that they are up to date and current with their methods and marketing.

The Freelance website is a brochure website, offering information about the services that they offer, and linking to their sister site – A&E Mechanical – where necessary.

Freelance take pride in their fleet of Drivers, and we wanted to bring some personality to the website, what better way than to introduce members of the team and their trucks (that they take so much pride in). Their news section will also play a key part in the development of their website, with new members of staff and fleet vehicles purchased all the time it will allow the company to show that they are growing and will keep on growing in years to come.

What Next?

We are looking forward to continuing working with Freelance UK over the coming years on many more projects.

Check out the websites below!

Visit A&E Mechanical  Visit Freelance Haulage

The post Moving Up a Gear for Freelance Haulage and A&E Mechanical appeared first on Fifteen.

Okay great, but what is it?

Well, 2 days ago they released this little beta feature in Adwords and we think it opens up a whole new area of opportunity for search ads. Table extensions will allow you to create a table underneath your ad, displaying the price for your products or services.

What can it do?

With table extensions set up, searchers will quickly be able to see what your prices are for the different services/products that you offer. This feature will enable your ads to attract searches with a higher level of intent of purchase, as they click your ad already knowing the all-important question of “how much?”

There are several limitations in the early stage of this release in that this feature can’t be used for products or services where prices change daily or regularly. This restricts industries like retail, flight, hotel or telecoms from using table extensions.

So, what does the table extensions feature mean for you?

Well, if you are not in one of the sectors where the feature is unavailable then it could mean an increase in conversions, increased average page duration and a decrease in bounce rate, as users are clicking on to your site with more information than ever before.

We’re really excited to start implementing this for our customers, and can’t wait to see how other people start implementing this new feature.

What are your thoughts? Do you think that table extensions will help put conversion rates through the roof? Do you think they won’t have much effect at all? Let us know!

The post Google Adwords Update: Table Extensions appeared first on Fifteen.

With their parent company (Facebook) and other social media apps having this functionality, and with the inability to upload posts from a computer, Instagram did run the risk of falling behind the competition. A lot of digital marketing agencies place less focus on the platform where they can, due to this previous inaccessibility problem. Take Fifteen, for example. If we had used Instagram for every single one of our clients’ digital marketing strategies to date, we’d probably have needed to hire a new person just to sit on a smartphone all day, logging out and back in again.

Now though, there’s a bit more flexibility with the app, and it becomes so much more accessible because of it. Because of this increased accessibility, we can offer Instagram account management to so many more of our clients.

It also means that business owners can have their own Instagram account, and easily switch to their business account when they see something relevant.

It’s such a simple change, but it makes everything that little bit easier, and opens up a lot of potential opportunities for marketing whilst on the go. We at Fifteen are really excited to see how this change can help us develop our marketing strategies even further.

Now the only question is, “When are you going to work on improving the desktop site, Instagram?”

The post Instagram – You Can Now Switch Between Multiple Accounts appeared first on Fifteen.

• On average, a graphic designer will work 37 hours a week. There is generally some flexibility in regards to start/finish times, and extra hours should be expected when deadlines are due.
• The working environment is mostly studio, office or home-based, generally working as part of a team. Travel may be required to meet clients.
• Work is available in most major cities with a focus on London, South East, Manchester and Leeds. There is a demand for British designers internationally but industry experience is necessary.
• A few health benefits are on offer and pay bonuses are definitely a possibility.
• High job satisfaction comes from working as a graphic designer due to the creative nature of work.

Career Progression

Common Career Paths

Salaries

Junior Graphic Designer

Average Salary: £17,000
Salary Range: £13,000 – £23,000
Male: 44%
Female: 56%
Expected Experience: 0 – 4 years
Best Location for Pay: London (12% higher)
Poorest Location for Pay: Leicester (20% lower)
Desired Skills: graphic design, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign

Mid-Weight Graphic Designer

Average Salary: £21,000
Salary Range: £15,000 – £32,000
Male: 55%
Female: 45%
Expected Experience: 1 – 9 years
Best Location for Pay: London (18% higher)
Poorest Location for Pay: Norwich (13% lower)
Desired Skills: graphic design, Adobe Creative Suite, web design, HTML, photography, marketing communications

Senior Graphic Designer

Average Salary: £29,000
Salary Range: £21,000 – £42,000
Male: 62%
Female: 38%
Expected Experience: 5 – 19 years
Best Location for Pay: London (15% higher)
Poorest Location for Pay: Belfast (11% lower)
Desired Skills: graphic design, Adobe Creative Suite, web design, HTML, photography, marketing communications, branding

Graphic Design Manager

Average Salary: £30,000
Salary Range: £20,000 – £42,000
Male: 63%
Female: 37%
Expected Experience: 5 – 19 years
Best Location for Pay: London (18% higher)
Desired Skills: graphic design, Adobe Creative Suite, web design, HTML, photography, marketing communications, branding

Art Director

Average Salary: £35,000
Salary Range: £21,000 – £54,000
Male: 57%
Female: 43%
Expected Experience: 1 – 19 years
Best Location for Pay: London (7% higher)
Desired Skills: graphic design, Adobe Creative Suite, web design, HTML, photography, marketing communications, branding, desktop publishing

Creative Director

Average Salary: £49,000
Salary Range: £29,000 – £94,000
Male: 83%
Female: 17%
Expected Experience: 10 – 19 years
Best Location for Pay: London (22% higher)
Desired Skills: graphic design, Adobe Creative Suite, web design, HTML, photography, marketing communications, branding, desktop publishing, art direction, user interface design, people management, project management

Fancy Freelance?

Freelance work can get you around £200 – £400 a day if you are experienced.

Tip 1: Do you research into other Freelancers’ prices.

Tip 2: Try charging hourly. This allows for flexibility in changing the scope of a project, and prevents you from underselling your services.

Tip 3: Try 3-tier packages. This prevents itemisation of your services.

If seeking freelance work, find the price and system that works for you.

Salary Progression Advice

• Experience in the industry will lead to higher salaries and better job progression, so keep on learning.
• If seeking to do freelance work, try gaining experience in an in-house or agency team first to build up a respected portfolio.
• London has the highest average salaries, but work is available in most large cities so search out the location and salary that works best for you.
• Ensure knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite, graphic design, web design, photography, branding, art direction, people management, project management and HTML to rise up the ranks.

The post Graphic Design: Salary & Progression appeared first on Fifteen.

So, how can you be sure that your landing page will not only attract traffic, but also keep it?

How do I attract users to my landing page?

URL’s

The first thing that Google reads when looking at your landing pages is the URL. It makes sense, as that will be the first thing presented to the search engine. Because of this, it’s important to ensure your landing page’s URL reflects the content on the page, and includes your keywords for that page too.

But, wait! Before you go ahead and fill your URL extensions with long lists of keywords, be aware that Google also looks out for over-optimisation of these too. According to some of the bigwigs at our favourite search engine company, the first 3-5 words of the URL are given more power than the rest, which have increasingly less weight with each word you add.

This means you need a short URL extension that sums up your page, and includes your keyword.

Take this blog, for example. We could have easily chosen the URL extension “/fifteens-amazing-SEO-guide-to-creating-the-most-wonderfully-perfect-landing-page-you-could-ever-want”, but instead opted for the much cleaner and SEO-friendly “SEO-guide-perfect-landing-page”.

Not only does this allow search engines to see what your page is about, but it also gives the user a clear idea of what to expect when landing on the page, once they click your link.

Meta Data

One of the most basic principles of SEO is the optimisation of meta data. Page titles, descriptions, alt text, and header tags all need to be considered, and optimised correctly.

Here’s a quick overview of what you need to consider.

Page Title

• Google displays between 50-60 characters of your title.
• We’d recommend keeping your title under 55 characters.
• You should mention the target keyword (or variation) within the title.

Description

• Google doesn’t use this a ranking factor, so you can tailor it to reach out to potential users and improve click-through-rates.
• Google displays between 150-160 characters for the description.
• Use this as an opportunity to tell your users why your page is better than the rest.

Alt Text

• Alt text is the text that is attached to images and similar rich-media content.
• This can be used to help add relevancy to your page, as well as increase the possibility of showing in Google Image Search results.
• The alt text should be used to describe the image as best you can, as it’s intended purpose is to display if the image doesn’t load properly.

Header Tags

• You can have up to six different types of header tag, H1 through to H6, but H1 and H2 tags are the most important to SEO.
• The rest can help with the formatting of the page, adding titles and subtitles. Correct usage can create a more aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly page.

Content

Use Keywords

In addition to implementing keywords within your meta data, you need to implement these terms within your content too. It’s no good telling Google that your page is about (for examples sake) healthy eating tips, and then going on to talk about funny cat videos or something else entirely unrelated to the subject.

Google recommends you use your keyword within the first 100 words of text, and throughout the content. But, they also recommend not using your keyword too often (see: keyword stuffing).

So, how do you use your keyword throughout your content without running the risk of keyword stuffing?

Use Related Keywords

Google (and of course, all other search engines) are placing more and more focus on the relevancy of content on a landing page. Because of this, it means exact keyword matches don’t matter as much as they used to. As long as the content on your landing page is relevant to the desired keyword, search engines will see it as relevant. In fact, Google now uses a technology called LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing), which allows it to do just that: read a page, check for the keyword, check for variations of the keyword, check for related keywords, decide whether the page is relevant or not.

Higher Word Count

A lot of people have been talking about this recently, and our research shows the same. A higher word count typically means better rankings, which in turn means more users.

We’re not saying that you need to go out and write a ten-part epic saga for each of your pages, because nobody would read it, but you need enough content to let Google know you truly know what you’re talking about. The “magic number” is somewhere around 2,000 words, but this changes depending on the keyword you’re trying to surface for or the industry you’re working in.

Links

Ah, links. Never before has anything been so necessary, yet so difficult to undertake successfully. The backlinks that are easy to get are normally no good, and those that are really good for your website are typically a lot harder to get hold of.

But backlinks aren’t the only important thing Google are looking for when scouring your pages for links. There are other things that you can do too.

Internal Links

A well-built internal link structure can direct your users (and search engines) to the correct landing pages for each topic. If every link that mentions (e.g.) “office cleaning” points towards your ‘office cleaning’ page, Google sees that as the most relevant page on your website for that keyword.

Link Out To Other Relevant Websites

“Why would I work so hard creating a great piece of content that ranks well, only for my users to follow a link to another website and read that instead?” We hear you ask.

Well, because search engines want you to, that’s why. As far as Google is concerned, a good web page is one that not only provides you with all the information you could possibly need on a subject, but also links out to other pages with more information on the same subject.

Whilst not as effective as a link back from a quality website, a link to a quality website lets Google see that your page is relevant to the subject in hand.

But, how do you stop people from leaving your perfect landing page? You’ll have to wait for the second part of our landing pages guide to find out…

The post SEO Guide: How To Create The Perfect Landing Page appeared first on Fifteen.

How Fifteen do it

Stage 1 – Browser tools

There are a number of ways to test a website’s responsive design capability throughout the development process. Initially, we use our browser’s developer mode, I tend to flip between Firefox’s responsive design view as I use Firefox as my default browser and Google Chrome DevTools’ Device Mode. As we near the end of a project and we think we’ve got everything pretty much there we’ll hop onto our device testing lab to really put the site through its paces. After all, there’s no better way of testing a device but on the device itself!

Stage 2 – Device Lab

There are a few reasons why we can’t just rely on the browser based responsive tools:

• Our development computers will (usually) be a lot faster than mobile devices, so we need to test our sites on the devices to make sure they load in an acceptable amount of time.
• The rendering engine used by our desktop browser tools will be different to the ones used by mobile browsers, so websites may end up rendering differently.
• While we know the resolutions for each device, they each have their own user interface which will affect how much of the site you’ll actually be able to see.

Our custom built testing lab has a huge range of devices (increasing by the day) that allow us to test for device specific problems much like we test for browser specific problems.

To speed up the testing process we’ve linked all of our devices together so interactions are carried across to all connected devices at the same time, including scroll events, button clicks and even page changes!

After the completion of our device lab, we’ve been able to speed up the time required to test on separate devices dramatically and concentrate our time on giving our users a better user experience.

The post The Importance of Device Testing (and Fifteen’s Device Lab) appeared first on Fifteen.

You may think to yourself “Why do I need to pay a professional website developer / designer / design agency to create my website? My cousin Fred did something with computers at college, why not just get him to do it?”

Professional Feel

Chances are that your cousin will say that he’ll do your website. However, 9 times out of 10 he is only saying this to placate you. He’s not getting paid to do this, so there really isn’t that much incentive for him to do a stellar job. At best you will end up with a website which looks good but you have no idea how to use, and at worst you will be left with something which looks like it was made in 1999.

This leads me on to:

First Impressions

First impressions are crucial to your business. Your website is often the first port of call for customers to get to know your brand, and if that first impression is bad, then you may lose out on business.

A typical user will spend an average of 3-10 seconds on your site before deciding whether or not to click away or learn more. When you think about it, 3 seconds is not a very long period of time. You’ve spent longer than that simply reading this paragraph (so you must like our brand new website! ). This only compounds the importance of a good first impression.

Designer OR Developer

It’s quite a rare feat that someone is both an accomplished Designer AND Developer. You can be good at both but not truly accomplished, lending credence to the phrase “Jack of all trades, master of none”. This is why here at Fifteen we have a team of experienced Designers – in order to create things which a family member wouldn’t think of such as a colour scheme and brand identity – and a team of skilled Developers who will create your website, and then focus on the minute details, making sure everything is pixel perfect, before going on to test it on all devices to ensure that it looks fantastic no matter where you’re looking at it.

Personal Interest

There comes a time in every website’s life cycle where it’s at a stage in which you, the client, are ready to see it. It’s hard to say, but sometimes you may not like certain things and want those to be changed. Unfortunately, your cousin Fred has spent some time on these things and you risk hurting his feelings by voicing these concerns. This may lead to you keeping quiet, not voicing concerns and not being truly happy with the finished product.

The beauty of a hiring a web design agency is that our feelings won’t get hurt. We’re as invested in making you as happy with this website as we are, and in the end, we all walk away happy with the end result.

Technicalities

There’s a lot more to a website than design and development. You need a Domain Name you need Hosting, you need Web servers. Fred may be able to build you a website, but if he can also set you up on hosting, buy you a domain name and manage your server then the chances are that he’ll probably want paying anyhow.

Support

One of the major benefits of hiring a Digital Agency like Fifteen is that we’re here to support you every step of the way. We cannot just decline your calls and ignore your emails, or we wouldn’t have any clients! We enjoy looking after and supporting our clients, before, during and after their website launch. Don’t believe us? Check our testimonials page.

In Conclusion

It pays to have a Creative Digital Agency develop your website. We think of things that others may not. Analyzing and scrutinising on a pixel by pixel basis until everything is just right. Interested? Check out some of our Case Studies and Get In Touch today!

The post Why You NEED A Professional Website Developer appeared first on Fifteen.

Where did the Hamburger Menu Icon come from?

We’d like to take a look at where it came from and how it is has evolved since it’s inception. Although it has rapidly become a popular visual icon for the web and apps, it’s actually a lot older than you might think. Back in the 80s, Norm Cox was responsible for its design as part of the interface for Xerox Star, and not much has really changed about its use today.

In an interview with design Geoff Alday, Cox told about how the symbol was created as a “container for contextual menu choices”. The design had to be simple as there were only 16 x 16 pixels to work with.

Since then the earliest use of the symbol seems to be from Apple’s old iOS system available on the iPhone 3Gs ‘Voice Memo’ app. The symbol brought in a side menu of recording and further options within the app.

Some would credit Apple for the resurgence of the hamburger icon, but its use within Facebook’s app has also caused a revival of the three little lines. All in all, it hasn’t derived too far from it’s initial creation back in the 90s.

Is it a good icon?

There is some debate on whether the hamburger icon is good or bad for digital design. One of the main benefits of the icon is that you can use it to hold as much or as little information as required, so it can function to your needs. What’s often seen as a drawback however, is that some everyday users still don’t identify it as a universal symbol, perhaps a few more years of use are what it takes to solidify this icon up there with the trash icon (usually a trash can) and the save icon (for some reason it’s still a floppy disk! Surely that one needs an update?).

One particular way of using the icon and helping users identify its use is to have the icon sit alongside the word ‘menu’. In a study by James Foster (New Zealand web developer), using the word ‘menu’ in tandem with the icon can increase the click rate by 7.2%. Putting the icon inside a box (making it more like a button) is said to increase the click rate by 22.4%.

Should I use one on my website?

We believe it all depends on your target market, nature of your website and size of your menu. Most experts would suggest to only use the hamburger menu on mobile devices, as these compact the menu where it is appropriate.

However, we have seen some great examples of it on desktop sites, so we wouldn’t completely rule out the minimalist style if it suits your site. There’s always the option of split testing, where you run two versions of your site side by side, with different versions of a menu. This way you can see which menu works best for your audience and apply it.

The post What Is A Hamburger Menu? appeared first on Fifteen.

When the iPad was launched in 2010, it introduced the concept of browsing web pages with swipes of the finger rather than clicking or dragging with a mouse or pressing keys. This graceful motion had the effect of making regular scrolling actions seem jerky and clumsy – even using a mouse wheel started to feel unwieldy (‘unwheeldy’?).

Worst of all was the use of anchor tags. These are the handy indexing links that jump you to a certain point on the page (the references on Wikipedia, for example). These links – the kind that add a # to the URL – may get you to the content you need, but they are also abrupt and disorientating. Following an anchor link on a long page can leave you feeling bewildered – how did I get here? Have I gone up or down? Is this even the same page? Do people laugh at me behind my back? Is the government spying on me? (The last two may be slight exaggerations.)

Leaps and bounds

The touchscreen revolution pushed web designers towards smoother navigation. Unfortunately, while mobile app developers can add elegant transitions between their screens, on the web we’re mostly limited to clicking from one page to another – a quantum leap that it is up to the browser to handle.

In the quest for offering users smoother websites, this had led to a revival of the long page. If all your content is one page, rather than split between many, you have more control over how visitors traverse it, and can include navigational elements that recreate the tablet experience for traditional desktop users.

The Fifteen 10th anniversary minisite is a great example of this (I didn’t build it so I’m technically impartial in the matter). Each full-screen section of the page has a handy arrow that whisks you smoothly to the next section, recreating the response a downward swipe would bring on a touch screen (if you are browsing on a tablet, you’ll notice there is some clever code that frames each ‘splash’ neatly on the screen after detecting a swipe).

A different dynamic

We did a similar thing for our award-winning Imran Khan Cancer Appeal site, combining vertical movements with horizontal sliders to create an engaging interface (engagement, after all, is what gets you conversions).

The Stirland Paterson website we built last year adds another aspect by tying dynamic content to the scrolling action. As certain key figures come into view, the numbers start increasing before your eyes – who wouldn’t keep scrolling down to see the final total?

These are subtle techniques for improving the way your website ‘feels’ and adding a more modern flavour. A word of warning, though – smooth scrolling should only be used when the user wants to scroll, i.e. if they click or swipe. Automatically scrolling or otherwise meddling with the traditional movement actions will make users think their computer is possessed!

The post Smooth Talk – How Scrolling Actions Can Improve Your Website appeared first on Fifteen.

So what’s changed?

It seems as though Google have added a lot more content into its ‘General Guidelines’ sections. It has eliminated old headers and instead, revised the content of this section and broken it into expandable content areas (unusually, Google don’t recommend this practice!).

The new sections under ‘General’ are:

1. Help Google find your pages
2. Help Google understand your pages
3. Help visitors use your pages

These guidelines are incredibly useful by forwarding you on to relevant resources, such as ‘Image Guidelines’, ‘robots.txt Tester’, ‘PageSpeed Insights’ and much more tools that will only increase your chances with Google.

What’s the same?

While the General Guidelines have received a big overhaul, the ‘Quality Guidelines’ have stayed the same. However, the advice alluding to these guidelines has been reworded.

Previously

“Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the “Quality Guidelines.”

Now Google has eliminated the phrase

“even if you chose not to implement any of these suggestions…”

This tells us these guides are more important to follow than ever before.

What should I do next?

Study it! Once you’re finished on this blog of course!

The more you know and the more up to date you are with the best SEO practices then the more benefits you will reap from your website. It’s as simple as that.

If you’re looking for more information, you can get in touch with us today. Fifteen offer SEO packages to suit your business and are official Google Partners.

Need help keeping up with Webmaster Guidelines?

The post Google Has Updated It’s Webmaster Guidelines – What You Need To Know appeared first on Fifteen.