Surestate News

Welcome Aboard New Recruits!

2007-04-03T16:10:00.000+01:00

Thankyou to all of you who applied for the job of Junior Web Designer with us... the interviews are over and we've found not one, but two talented individuals that we're happy to have working under the Surestate umbrella!

We'd like to welcome aboard:

Steven Langford from Manchester.
A confident chap who performed brilliantly in interview. He answered the question "How do you feel about pitching for new business?" with "I look forward to it. In fact I've already got a website out of the B&B I stayed with last night!" Can't argue with that now can you.

Chris Lewis is a talented Flash Developer who impressed us with his existing portfolio, laid back approach and confidence in the speed and quality of his work.

We're really looking forward to working with these guys and offering our clients the increased skillset.

Scotsman Article

2007-04-01T18:35:00.000+01:00

A journalist from the Scotsman rang the office last week asking all sorts of questions about the Hay Festival Archive we developed last summer. David Brown seemed genuinely interested in our involvemnet in this pioneering project and whilst searching the net today I came across his article about the Hay Festival Podcasts. A small mention of us, well me (Finn Beales) and some interesting stats about podcasts from the Scotsman website - 25,000 downloads of one talk by Alexander McCall Smith... now that's a target to aim for!

New Team Members = New Services

2007-03-30T14:27:00.000+01:00

A new team member at Surestate has brought some new skills to the company. Chris has been a flash developer and photographer for over 10 years and is now our first port of call for anything... well... flashy!

360 degree panoramic tours seem to be his speciality and are presently the best way to show customers your business location on the Internet. They enable the viewer to look around a location with a 360 degree perspective and is the closest you can get to being there!

Now available with Flash technology so users no longer require the Java or Quicktime plug-ins to be able to view your tours.

They are a lot better than you might remember them...

Other News

We've been awarded the contract to develop the Rotterdam School of Management's online advertising banners... See the latest here: Leadership Masterclass

New websites in the pipeline include a Horse Whisperer from Argentina, an event management company from London and a De-Mining Charity that specialise in landmine clearing operations in the Middle East and West Africa.

Are you a Junior Web Designer?

2007-03-02T22:55:00.000Z

We have an immediate requirement for a Junior Web Designer to join the team in our Hay-on-Wye office, UK.

Responsibilities would include:

- Designing digital media - primarily websites, HTML emails and online advertising.
- Building HTML pages and templates from existing visuals.
- Updating existing websites and HTML emails.
- On occasion, answering the telephone.

Experience of the following is required:

- Photoshop, Dreamweaver.
- HTML and CSS authoring with an awareness of W3C guidelines.

To apply:

Please send your CV to finn AT surestate.net, including any relevant URLs or portfolio material and salary expectations.

ABSOLUTELY NO AGENCIES PLEASE!

Gorillaz Graphics

2006-04-20T11:08:00.000+01:00

New graphics from the Surestate stable. All are competition banners for websites... great to work with the people from the Gorillaz, they make life so easy, their illustrations make any piece of work eye catching. We used some nice photoshop brushes from Magurno to create the dripping paint graffitti style effects, helping to break up the block elements and create a more subersive "Gorillaz-esque" feel. The hazard tape strips help highlight the Terms and Conditions, but also tie in with the overall design.

The Red House Children's Book Award competition banner is a little more sober and traditional in it's design than the Gorillaz. The gradient effects and pastel colours chosen to tie in with Simon Dawe's nice illustration.

The Dubble Eden Project Banner was a little more complex as we needed to retain the branding of the organisers of the competition, Dubble Choclate, yet entice competition entrants by an unrelated prize - a family ticket to the Eden Project in Cornwall. The Eden Project website revealed their media pack download which contained some decent images of the domes. We 'cut out' the header graphic from the Dubble Agents website and layered this over the top of the Eden Project logo and pics... the combination of the Dubble strapline and the Eden logo worked really well! Copyfit the supplied competition text and the job was a good un.

2007 and all is well...

2007-01-18T12:09:00.000Z

News from the Surestate camp is that we are expanding the team again!

We are currently on the look out for a talented web designer. You should be able to juggle and switch between many projects at once. You must be able to make creative decisions on the fly and to work independently. You will be required to work in HTML, CSS, JavaScript and ASP. You'll need good skills and attention to detail. You'll be responsible for taking mock-ups and specs and building the front-end then working with a back-end developer to wire it all together.

If that sounds like you or someone you know, give us a call on: 01497 822 620 or email finn@surestate.net
NO AGENCIES PLEASE!

Other news
We have developed some more Flash banners for the Rotterdam School of Management for placement on the Business Week website. They have continued to use Van Gogh's artwork as a house style. Re-enforcing their Dutch heritage. We were asked to modernise his images through the use of Flash. I personally thought it sacrilage to alter such artwork, so suggested they use a modern transition to cut between his paintings which should be used as a backdrop.

We're soon to begin work on a re-build of the Traveller's website in time for the release of their 2007 brochure and also a rather secretive project for a group of Hollywood's finest scriptwriters - watch this space...

Oooh yes almost forgot... Surestate's creative director (me) is off to Colombia on monday, working for a sister festival of the Hay Festival in Cartagena. How pleasant a start to a new year can you get. Unless I get kidnapped by a bunch of FARC guerillas that is ; )

Happy New Year!

Consulting Mission to the Government of Lesotho is Successfully Completed

2006-09-13T17:29:00.000+01:00

Our technical director, Graeme Newcomb, has just come back from a sucessful 14 day consulting job to the Government of Lesotho. The project, funded by the UNDP and executed by the UNWTO, was to propose a strategy and action plan for the online marketing for tourism and tourism investment in the Kingdom of Lesotho.

This was an extremely exciting project as the scope included developing a strategy and action plan for marketing the entire country's tourism sector online. We are pleased to say that the final report, recommendations and action plan was delivered ahead of the scheduled deadline and the initial feedback has been very positive.

We have reviewed it [the report] and are very satisfied with its quality and content ...thanks once again for your excellent collaboration in this project.
UNWTO Programme Co-Ordinator.

Some interesting facts about Lesotho:

It is the country in the world with the highest low point. All of the country lies above 4600 ft.

It is home to the world's smallest fish, the Maluti Minnow!

It is home to Africa's highest single drop waterfall (Maletsunyane Falls - 624 ft)

Latest E-Commerce Project Goes Live: Online Book Store

2006-12-01T16:01:00.000Z

Our latest e-commerce website has just gone live. Hay on Wye Booksellers is one of the UK's largest second hand book retailers. They carry a vast stock of around 30,000 book titles, many of which are as good as new.

They commissioned SureState to redesign their site and build a new online shop. Like many second hand book dealers, they use the AbeBooks Homebase system to manage their inventory. SureState built a unique administration system that allows Hay on Wye Booksellers to maintain their online shop by simply uploading and importing a file from AbeBooks Homebase.

In addition, this site has some great additional features: it is run off a SQL Server database, which allowed us to exploit SQL Server's great text searching capabilities. It also uses Protx's blazing fast and cost-effective payment gateway that ensures that the customer never has to leave the merchant's site. Lastly, we built a powerful administration system that allows Hay on Wye Booksellers to manage their special offers, wholesale book sales and the processing of their online orders.

Works great! Very pleased with it. Thanks Very Much.
Oli Greenow, Hay on Wye Booksellers.

StreamUK Website and Showreel

2006-12-14T10:07:00.000Z

Our latest project has been the complete overhaul of the StreamUK website. Our aim from the outset was to rework the site using a tableless layout implementing xhtml and css to create a more flexible, accessible website. This layout can easily accommodate various text sizes and amounts of content. It's a design that expands or contracts along with whatever is placed within it. In addition, by separating the core content from the design, we have improved the ease with which content is edited and code updated and maintained, while at the same time not hindering the design.

We were subsequently comissioned to produce a showreel for the home page encapsulating StreamUK's core services. We spent a long time developing the concept - that televison is now being sidelined in favour of online broadcasting - and storyboarded this idea before we opened any animation packages. After tweaking the straplines with invaluable help from the client we developed a punchy, modern showreel which sells their services and entertains at the same time.

Thanks Finn, it looks great. So good it made me smile.
Duncan Burbidge - CEO StreamUK

Newsletters boost your business!

2006-10-06T16:56:00.000+01:00

Well the industry certainly is feeling pretty healthy at present... and if our workload is any indication it should be running a marathon!

We have been busy encoding talks after the first Hay Festival in Segovia came to its conclusion and to advertsise the additional content to the sites registered users we developed an email newsletter. After hitting send we noticed a 200% hike in site traffic and subsequent orders.

Email is a fantastic tool for retaining customers and encouraging repeat visits to your website. It is faster, cheaper and more interactive than its traditional counterpart - direct (printed) mail - and allows companies to reinforce and nurture their relationships with existing customers.

If you're interested in developing a slick looking email newsletter for your company please give us a call - 01497 822 635.

Why Website Design is So Important

2006-08-02T09:11:00.000+01:00

Just why is website design so important to your business ... and why is it better to pay a premium to get your website designed by professionals and not "the kid next door who has done his own website"? According to Daniel Amor, a leading e-business consultant, the lack of physical elements (like a shop-front) in e-commerce means that the few "tangible" aspects of the business' online presence become especially important. He highlights three areas where website design is crucial for online success.

Place
Instead of a physical shop-front, the business will be only be on view through a computer screen, which is "why so much emphasis is put on website design".

Promotion
A business' image is created and carried through all of their promotional material. In e-commerce, however, promotion may "primarily come through an organization's website design rather than media advertising". This means that website design can play a bigger role in promoting a business than any other form of media advertising!

Branding
In addition to place and promotion, branding becomes even more important to the online business and it is "not sufficient to choose a cute website address and plaster this over hundreds of poster sites".

In the face of this evidence, do you still want your site designed by "the kid next door"?

We are doing our bit to save the world!

2006-07-18T17:32:00.000+01:00

SureState has recently taken over the website maintenance and website hosting responsibilities for Cleared Ground Demining. They are an NGO charity that that specialises in land mine clearance solutions. The cruel facts about land mines are that they affect over 20,000,000 victims and kill or injure a civilian every 30 minutes!

SureState is awarded UNWTO Consulting Contract

2006-07-20T18:26:00.000+01:00

We are very pleased to announce that we have been awarded a contract by UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organisation) to provide website development and online strategy consulting services to the Lesotho government. We will keep you updated as events unfold in this exciting project.

Useful Applications

2006-02-28T13:14:00.000Z

Welcome to the fresh new face of Surestate Ltd. We won't bore you with loads of gumpf about the company, but instead point you in the direction of some great tools and applications we've been finding useful over the past couple of months.

First up is Drop Send, using a simple web interface (or the small downloadable applications for OSX and Windows) you can navigate to a file on your computer, enter an email address, click send and your file, which can be up to 1GB (and you can send more than one file), begins its journey to the recipient. Once the email lands in their inbox, they simply click the link to download the file. It couldn't be easier!
Read a full review of the product at Pixelsurgeon.

Second is developed by one of our very own at Surestate. It's simple, effective and free. An Apple Dashboard Widget (sorry Windows users) that calculates VAT amounts at the click of a button. Download the widget from the Apple Website.

Feedback from VAT Calculator users... extracts from emails

I assume you have kindly generated the VAT widget which is GREAT, indeed brilliant!
Milan Svanderlick

Just wanted to say a big "thank you!" for the excellent VAT widget - this is going to save me hours doing my invoices...
Chris Allen

Hope those two snippits will help you save some time and effort, check back regularly for news and info regarding Surestate and the Internet world in general. Alternatively subscribe to our news feed and let your browser automatically tell when we've posted someting new.

It's all in the numbers!

2006-06-07T15:50:00.000+01:00

We have recently done an audit of the total amount of e-commerce transactions that have been processed by the various e-commerce websites that SureState have developed...and the results were quite surprising.

We discovered that our e-commerce systems have processed over three quarters of a million pounds (yes that's GBP 750,000) of authorised online transactions!

So if you are looking for an agency that has serious e-commerce experience, our numbers prove that we have what it takes to deliver e-commerce systems that work. If you are interested, send us an e-mail through our contact page.

Erasmus University Flash Banner

2006-03-29T22:52:00.000+01:00

We've just completed a Flash Banner advertising the MBA courses run by one of Europe's top Business Universities. Erasmus, based in the Netherlands, asked us to design a banner that reflected the range of courses it offers to business executives that are on the move and already have high flying careers. The result is a slick, fast paced set of motion graphics that deliver the message with movement as well as words.

Erasmus seem satisfied:

"Excellent result. Everybody here is very impressed with the speed and quality of your work, we look forward to working with you more in the future"
David Francis
Marketing and Admissions Manager

Click here to view the banner

By Royal Appointment

2006-05-21T10:38:00.000+01:00

Another competition graphic for the producers of the Hay Festival childrens programme... this one had to be run past the Royal Household before it could be made public. Their response: "We love the design!". We chose the wrapping paper graphic because of its similarity to the English flag - Queen of England, Birthday Party etc. Click the graphic opposite to see a full size version.

Other news
The archive website we're building for the Guardian Hay Festival is nearing completion. It will launch on the 26th May 2006 and our aim is to catalogue pretty much everything that takes place over the week and deliver the audio/video content via the site to users for a small fee. We have set up an iTunes feed that users can subscibe to for free that is already attracting a lot of interest - click here for more: Hay Festival iTunes Feed

Can't make Hay?

2006-05-08T17:29:00.000+01:00

The PR machine has started to roll with regards to the Podcasting/Videocasting website we are creating for the Hay Festival this year. Sarah Crown from Guardian Unlimited called me on Friday asking for an MP3 of last years Blasphemy Debate as she was writing an article on the archive for their site. She wanted to use the Hitchens and Fry debate as a teaser for the service we are launching on the 26th of May. Read the article and listen to the most talked about event at last years festival by clicking here.

The Guardian Hay Festival Archive will be launched on the 26th of May 2006.

Record Breaking Sales!

2006-05-03T10:35:00.000+01:00

Isn't it pleasant when the first email that arrives in your inbox of a morning is a positive and happy one. The following is an extract from a message sent by the Box Office manager at the Guardian's Hay Festival:

We took a record **,*** Pounds online yesterday, it took 3 hours to print and it finished printing at 1am this morning!!

The bespoke online ticketing system we built for them seems to be working then : )

Last year the on-line ticket booking system we developed accounted for 25% of all ticket sales. Not only does this system increase the Festival's sales channel, we calculated that the system saved the box office staff over 300 hours. During the peak period in the run-up to the Festival in June, their web site (which we host as well) was recording over 13 million hits a month... the aim this year is a substantial increase on the stats above in an effort to save the overworked Box Office staff even more time... it also has the added benefit of making ourselves look good ; )

Karen Wallace - Author and Scriptwriter

2006-04-07T12:40:00.000+01:00

We have just added the final touches to a website for childrens writer Karen Wallace. Karen is an award-winning author who writes books for children aged five to fifteen years old. Karen also writes scripts for children's television, natural history programmes and the occasional documentary. Some of her most recent development work has been with Aardman Animations and Platinum Films.

Karen wanted a website that illustrated the vast array of books she has had published. The design of the site was inspired by a deck of cards (the header) and a christmas tree (the footer). The site is quirky, original and fun, and thus reflects Karen's writing and also makes it appealing to the intended audience: Children and Teachers.

I am delighted with my website. It looks great and says everything I want. Best of all the experience - for an established technophobe - was quick, clean and painless. Even pleasurable! I shall spread the word immediately. Thanks a lot.
Karen Wallace

Karen Wallace - Children's Author

Equine Blades Direct

2006-03-22T15:33:00.000Z

We have just finished a new website design and e-commerce engine for Equine Blades Direct Ltd.

The new site went live yesterday and they have already had a successful online sale! The site was developed using our quick-rollout ASP.NET E-Commerce and Content Management System modules, which allow ut to rapidly create new e-commerce sites with a fully branded secure online payment.

An increasing number of our UK clients are choosing to use Protx as their secure payment gateway: they are simply the most cost competitive for small and medium-sized online merchants. If you are using another payment gateway (e.g. WorldPay, Netbanx etc.) then checkout Protx's prices to see if you could save.

How much is a website anyway?

2006-03-07T17:38:00.000Z

We are frequently asked by potential clients to develop a quotation for online work before we are commissioned. After spending up to a full day to develop a decent proposal, we are sometimes asked to justify the costs quoted: "I know a mate of a friend of my aunt's neighbour who got a website done for 200 quid" is an oft used phrase.
Charles Wyke-Smith (a member of San Francisco's Multimedia Task Force and teacher of multimedia at the Computer Arts Institute in San Francisco) has written the following article on exactly this subject:How much do websites cost anyway? There is an awful lot of work that goes into the creation of a website and how much time can you expect a vendor to invest for a return of £200?

For more information on typical market rates, have a look at the following examples (look for HTML and CSharp/.NET skills):

IT Jobs Watch (Developers)
IT Jobs Watch (HTML)
Contractor UK

These survey shows that the market rates for people with our skills are between £350 to £430 per day. We think you'll find Surestate's rates pretty competitive.

Mail Big Files!

2006-03-14T20:00:00.000Z

Many ISP's limit the size of files that can be attached to an email, often as little as 10 or 20 MB's is the maximum size.

Or perhaps you've received a large file by email in the past and found that you have to wait whilst it downloads before you can see the rest of your emails?

Well, now there's an alternative - and it won't cost you a penny unlike Dropsend (an app that does a similar sort of thing) we featured a couple of weeks ago.

Mail Big File

* Files sent through Mail Big File will be available for up to 7 days, or a maximum of 3 downloads.