There’s a simple fact of a website’s life: websites look different in different browsers.

It’s something that can really annoy people who are having websites created for them, but hopefully throughout the next 5 minutes or so you’ll understand a bit more about why this happens and actually, why it’ll mean your website will be better if it looks different in web browsers.

My website looks different in my older browser

This is probably the single most popular reason for websites looking different. As I mentioned in my last article about picking a web browser, modern web browsers are much faster, more efficient and more secure.

If you’re using an older version of a web browser such as Internet Explorer 6 or 7, your website will more than likely look different in those web browsers.

At Genius Division we merely provide a text-based design for Internet Explorer 6, and we’re increasingly supporting Internet Explorer 7 less. Shortly we’ll start providing Internet Explorer 7 a text-based design too.

We do this so we can build the most modern and future-proofed website we’re capable of, and that only comes from not limiting our websites to older browsers that are rapidly losing market share and aren’t relevant anymore.

I’ve got a modern browser, but my website still looks different

Sometimes you’ve taken the time to download and use a nice shiny modern browser, but you’ve noticed your website looks broken in your browser. Naturally, this is really frustrating.

This is usually down to a few things:

• Hardware issues
• Software issues
• The website is just plain broken

Hardware issues

Put simply, your computer may just not be up to the job of displaying your website properly. If you’ve got an old computer, it may struggle with advanced things like displaying video properly or animations, or displaying large image galleries.

If your computer struggles to display something like Facebook, then it’s probably about time you upgraded your computer.

Software issues

Some other things could cause your website to display differently on your computer, such as not having the right fonts installed, not having the proper browser plugins installed (such as Adobe Reader to allow you to view PDFs), and a multitude of other things too.

The website is just plain broken

Sometimes a website is actually broken. We all make mistakes and miss things. Just tell your web agency what the issue is, what browser and operating system you’re using (Windows and the version number for example), and they’ll probably get straight on it for you.

If you think this might be the case, ask your web agency if your new website is using anything special or relying on a particular technology to make it work properly. They should be able to help you out here to get to the bottom of it.

My website now looks right! Hang on…

And after you’ve installed a nice new modern browser, bought a nice new computer, and made sure you’ve got all the plugins and software you need, your new website probably still won’t look the same as it does on one of your other devices.

Ultimately it doesn’t really matter what your website looks like for you, but it really does matter what it looks like for your clients and audience. And your audience are using an even more varied assortment of browsers than you are.

It’s impossible to make websties look the same across everything. In fact, it’s largely a big waste of time attempting to, because they’ll still always be someone out there using a browser to view your nice new website that won’t work properly.

Which web browsers should my website support?

This question should always be answered after looking at visitor statistics and data. If you can, before you get your website redesigned, install Google Analytics and collect some statistics. This will be good data that a web agency could use to find out what web browsers your audience is using.

If a large majority of your audience is public sector based such as councils and government, we’d usually advise making sure your website works down to as low as Internet Explorer 7 and in extreme cases Internet Explorer 6.

Large organisations tend to have slower update cycles than most organisations, so they can be stuck with old software for a long time. Internet Explorer 6 is dying out in the public sector, but it’s taking a while.

Trust the experts

Web agencies spend a lot of time thinking about what browsers to support, and when to change how they support them. Trust me, they’ve spent far too much time learning the niggles with each browser, so they know what they’re doing.

Trust your web agency’s opinion on browsers, and which browsers to support. Unless a large portion of your audience is using an outdated browser, there’s no real reason to waste time supporting it, even if you use that browser.

Web agencies have learned to embrace this ebb and flow in web design, and you should too. Don’t force your web agency to do it the old way: embrace their new ways of thinking. They’re the experts.

At nearly 18, he’s a genuine Wunderkind and we’re really excited that he’s joining Genius Division.

He’ll be working alongside me to design websites, interfaces and other digital stuff, as well as building the HTML & CSS. He’ll be helping me do our website stuff and blogging too, so you may see him pop up here shortly writing articles.

Here’s a fact about him that I still don’t quite believe: he’s never eaten jelly. Or trifle. But thankfully, he’s seen Star Wars.

There’s 3 main reasons why people don’t usually switch, each of which I’m going to cover:

• I didn’t know I could change my web browser!
• I’m happy with the default—why would I want to switch?
• I really want to switch, but I can’t!

I didn’t know I could change my web browser!

Yep, you can. There’s actually quite a few different browsers out there for you to choose from.

Note here that I’m only picking the most popular modern web browsers. I’ll come onto later about why you should pick a modern web browser.

The best choices for your desktop computer

• Google Chrome (Windows/Mac/Linux)
• Safari (Mac/Linux) (v5 for Windows)
• Firefox (Windows/Mac/Linux)
• Internet Explorer 9 (Windows 7)
• Internet Explorer 10 (Windows 8)

The best choices for your tablet/phone

• Google Chrome for Android
• Google Chrome for iOS
• Opera Mobile for Android
• Safari (iOS) – this will be preinstalled on your iPhone
• Firefox for Android

But why would I want to switch?

Modern browsers are like newer cars: they’re faster, more efficient and most of all: safer.

A serious tool

Most of us use the internet for serious tasks now: to pay bills, to check out bank balances or make changes to our bank accounts, book appointments for everything from driving tests to holidays. It’s serious business.

If it’s serious business, we need a serious tool. Only a modern browser can provide that. Older browsers such as IE6 have plenty of known security issues. Even Microsoft themselves have told us to stop using IE6 and IE7.

Faster

The biggest difference from an older browser to a modern one that you’ll notice straight away is it’s faster. Much faster. You’ll wonder how you put up with your older browser.

If you’re getting a new website from a web design agency, you may find that if you’re using an older browser your new website runs much slower than in a more modern browser. This is entirely normal.

But my website looks different!

Modern browsers are more efficient with how they show web pages, so new websites try and take best advantage of this. You may also notice that your website looks different in your older browser to what it does in a modern browser. Again, this is entirely normal.

In the past when we were all trying to make websites work in older browsers, we used to use less efficient ways of making websites. Now modern browsers are the norm and older browsers are starting to die out, we tend to make websites work in modern browsers first and older browsers afterwards.

Because we do it this way around, your new website can (and probably will) look visibly better in a modern browser. This is because a good web design agency will know the minority of web users are using older browsers, and make a website for a modern browser.

I really want to switch, but I can’t!

This is quite popular if you work in a large organisation. Often you won’t be allowed to install any new software, which means you probably won’t be allowed to install a new browser.

If you’re unlucky to be stuck with an older browser like Internet Explorer 6,7 or 8, then there’s 1 thing you can try to get access to a modern browser, and that’s Google Chrome Frame. This will allow you to get a more up-to-date viewing experience with your older browser, and it’ll likely be much faster than your older browser.

All you have to do is install the plugin in your browser and you’re done.

You should now have a modern web browser

Hopefully you’ve now got a nice new shiny modern web browser. Once you’ve used it for a while you’ll wonder how you ever lasted with an old browser before. You’ll be visiting web pages faster than you can think of them.

Go on, go Browse Happy.

When running a website, we’re often told to keep the content on our website fresh and new. We’re never normally told to not go overboard, because most of us don’t. We haven’t got the time.

Too fresh content

Normally somebody wouldn’t notice how many things you’re posting daily, but this is what my RSS reader count is looking like after not paying attention to Lifehacker’s feed for a few days.

391 posts I have to get through to catch up with Lifehacker. 391. That doesn’t make me want to read Lifehacker very much, because there’s too much for me to read. There’s too much choice.

Instead of attempting to read any of those 391 posts, I simply clicked them all to get rid of them. I thought they must have been out-of-date, so I didn’t bother reading any of them.

Too many choices of jam

Yep, it’s possible to give somebody too much choice that you actually stop people from making choices. When we’re given too many choices of jam, choosing our flavours becomes debilitating.

So what do we do instead then? Whilst it’s cliche, it certainly stands when it comes to producing new articles for your website: quality over quantity.

Quality over quantity, every single time

Unless you’re a news blog trying to keep up with everything in the world ever, you’ve no need to post 8 times a day.

Instead, hold some articles back and focus on releasing them at peak times of the day to maximise their impact: around 9am, 12pm and 5pm. Mainly around the times when people are starting to get bored at work, and might start browsing social networks.

Focus on slightly longer articles that get across your opinions, and offer good advice. Focus on writing quality, relevant content that your audience will find useful.

It serves 2 main purposes: your readers are more likely to share it, and Google loves relevant quality content and hates little or no original content.

Write less, and make what you are writing more meaningful. Everybody will thank you for it.

Aside from Pecha Kucha which has slightly more of a mainstream appeal (seriously, if you’ve still never been to a Pecha Kucha evening, you must go now), all the stuff we’re involved in could loosely be described as ‘community events’. You could probably also call them pretty niche.

The biggest lesson we’ve learned from them all is that to get people to turn up to your events, you need to hold them regularly. You need consistency. Even if they’re consistently held only once a year, make sure they’re consistency held then, at the same time.

If they’re not, then people forget about your event. Quickly. We all have busy lives full of trying to just get our normal stuff done in a timely fashion, let alone trying to turn up to events as well on top of that. To combat that, make sure you keep your event regular.

The Geek Social Club

I feel a little bit daft offering that advice above, because that’s exactly what we haven’t done for 4 months with The Geek Social Club (has it really been nearly 4 months!?). We haven’t been consistent with it, but this is a quick post of reassurance to let you know that from now on, we will be.

This month’s event is this Thursday, 4th April, at Old No. 7 in Barnsley. To get back into the swing of things we decided it’d be better for a bit of a catch-up this month, so they’ll be no talks, just chat.

Following on after that, we’ll be back into the regular talks. If you want to do a talk, tweet us.

Our first Geek Social Club event was The Really Hard and Geeky Pub Quiz, with our excellent Quizmaster Colin. It went down really well, we had about 35 people turn up, and much head scratching was provided by the quiz.

The Geek Social Club Volume 2

Our next event will return to our traditional format: 2-4 short 15 minute talks about geeky, webby, digital or anything vaguely techy. We’re looking for speakers right now.

After the talks, there’s a few hours of chatting and sharing stories.

Where do I go for more information?

In the meantime, you can sign up to speak and check out the website, or follow T.G.S.C. on Twitter for updates.

We’ll be announcing the next Geek Social Club very soon. It’ll be in October.

Sponsorship

Genius Division have partnered with the event’s organisers (@mkjones & @mwtsn) to help provide attendees with a delicious – but most likely not nutritious – lunch. I hope you like pizza! We do. There’s also some goodies up for grabs on the day courtesy of Heart Internet and refreshments made available by one of my favourite companies, Campaign Monitor.

What would Paul Daniels do?

Craig is also stepping up to the plate again to deliver his talk entitled, “What would Paul Daniels do?” which he’s keeping close to his chest as usual. It’s bound to be both informative and entertaining – much like Paul Daniels.

After the Digital Barn

We’ve also said we’d help run an event after the Digital Barn draws to a close – expect details about that to follow.

The weather was on our side, which meant that after the initial shock of having around 10-20 people turn up in the first 30 minutes, most people moved outside to take in the glorious sunshine.

What more can I say? A good time was had, most of the beer was drank, and everybody ate all the doughnuts and cookies. We even had the very kind Julian Dyer taking some photos.

All photos by Julian Dyer. You can see the other photos he took on Flickr.

As an SEO specialist and professional web content writer, friends (both real and virtual) often ask me for tips on producing effective and engaging web copy. Although I’m obviously happy to provide copywriting services myself, I think it’s important to educate others and facilitate their own creativity if they’d rather produce their own content.

With that in mind, here are my top tips for writing web content.

Bringing out the writer in you

Research well – if you’re creating web content for your own site, then you should know your subject pretty well. However, if you’re writing about something new or helping somebody else out, you need to know the product or service well enough to be able to write convincingly. Never go into writing blind, it will be totally transparent to your readers and will lose you respect and authority.

Know your audience – in a similar way to the first tip, there’s no point in writing something unless you know who you’re writing it for. While some topics will have wide appeal, you may have a particular target market you’re aiming towards. What’s the demographic? What approach will make them most receptive? What tone should you adopt?

Tone of voice – leading on from the previous tip, setting the tone is essential. Choosing a ‘business voice’ is part of your overall brand, and all of your copy over any marketing materials should be consistent and written with the same tone. This will help to give your business a clear identity – so think carefully about what you want to sound like. Consider qualities such as professionalism, friendliness, authoritativeness and anything else that will put a ‘personality stamp’ on your web content and marketing copy.

Introduce a character – to help with the above, it can be helpful to take on a character while you’re writing. Writing is a little like being an actor – you have to get into the role and write your content from a reader’s perspective. Are you someone they’d identify with? Are you selling your product/service/story in the best way? Once you’ve found a character, you can use this when you write to get into the correct mindset – find your role and play it well!

Write for them, not you – I’ve already mentioned writing your web content from a user’s perspective, but it deserves its own dedicated tip. You may be amazing at what you do, or your product may be the most innovative of its kind on the market; by all means, do mention these points, but beware – your website needs to read as if it’s been created for the benefit of the visitor, not just as a platform for bigging yourself up! Arrogance is a turn off and self-congratulation gets embarrassing after a while; what your readers really want to know is how your service or product is going to benefit them and how it’s going to improve their life/save them money/make them happier/ increase their health/build their knowledge.

A fresh perspective – are you working in a saturated industry, competing against thousands of other sites? If so, research the competition and ask yourself how you can do it differently. You need to stand out from the competition, for the right reasons, so try and identify what others might be missing. What additional selling points can you think of? What are your USPs? How can you approach the subject in a fresh and more interesting way?

Feel the rhythm – no, I’m not suggesting you write poetry, but writing can have a beat and a rhythm. Once you’ve written your content, read it out loud. This will help you to see if any sentences are too long, and also give you the opportunity to see how it flows. If you’re gasping for breath halfway through a sentence, you need to revise your phrasing and punctuation. If anything sounds clunky or clumsy, edit it. Some subtle rhyming and alliteration can be adopted as long as it’s used with caution, but be careful not to let it end up reading like a children’s book – unless that’s the audience you’re writing for. What you’re looking for is writing that has a nice tone and ‘lift’ – if your phrasing ends on a really negative tone or a word grates, find a substitution and see if it works better. The thesaurus can be your friend here, but don’t go crazy using words that aren’t generally used in common speech, or you risk alienating your readers.

Second opinion – if you’re not a confident writer, ask someone you trust for a second opinion. Remember that you’re trying to create a good impression, so if you don’t know anyone who has first class grammar skills, it may also be worth getting a professional to cast their eye over your work. You may not want to invest in a professional web content writer, but the smaller outlay of using a proofreader could be well worth it.

SEO – I couldn’t really put together a blog about writing web content without mentioning one of my favourite things now could I?! Unless you’re writing for a niche industry, you really should optimise your site for the search engines. I’ll put together a post soon to share some tips on SEO.

Break it up – if you’ve got lots of content on your site, don’t just ramble on in one big chunk of prose; use headings to break it up into sections and guide your reader through different elements so they can easily find the information they want. Bullet point are also a great tool to group together key points or benefits.

Hopefully these tips will help you to write your web copy – I’m going to stop at 10, but I’m sure there will be a part 2 to follow in the future! As a web content writer with a real passion for the power of words, I’m always happy to offer advice, so if you need a little help, feel free to contact me.

You can contact Louise through the Advanced Writing Solutions’ website.

What is a website?

Seems everyone and their Uncle (seriously) can ‘do web design’. What that means differs greatly depending on who you ask, but in really high level terms it means designing and building a website; a series of interlinked & related pages usually focussed around a company, service or interest. It could contain text, images, photography, video – but, generally with the exception of a couple of forms, it’s all delivered to the user to consume.

Got it. So what is a Web Application?

Technically, a web application is still a website. It works in much the same way, using similar technologies. Where they differ though, is in the functionality they offer. A web application is usually put into place to provide some sort of utility or service – for example an online accounting system or a project managment system. There’s usually a lot more input from the user, which results in more output from the application.

So then…what’s a Web App?

It’s a web application! Just with a catchier name. ‘In the beginning’, Apple championed Mobile Web Apps (a web application designed or optimised for mobile devices) over their native counterparts.

All seems pretty straightforward. What’s an app then?

When someone says ‘app’ these days, it’s usually prefixed by a brand name (iPhone App, Android App, Blackberry App). These type of apps run natively on the device they’re specifically built for, using a language specific to that device, allowing them to leverage a lot of the cool features available. Native iPhone apps such as Instagram for example make use of the iPhone’s camera functionality, something that as yet a mobile web app couldn’t do.

I understand the differences, but which is the best?

Simply put, it’s not that simple. Each solution has it’s pros and cons which might mean a different route is chosen. Web apps (and mobile web apps) work on a multitude of platforms for example, significantly reducing development time when faced with writing the same app for several platforms. In another situation, the app might need to be used offline a lot, which can cause problems when using a web app – although web technology has improved a lot recently, it’s likely a native solution might be better in this circumstance. Many large web applications offer a web and native solution – Facebook is a good example of this.

Hopefully that helps you to understand Websites, Web Apps, Native Apps and how they can interact and complement each other. As I said, there’s a blurry line a lot of the time, if there’s any questions or comments use the form below. Thanks for reading!