The Tippabush View: Web Design for Lincoln

April's Latest Web News

2007-04-27T14:51:00.000+00:00

Latest web news that could affect your business now or in the future...

27/4/07
Amazon.com open up worldwide distribution centres for use by independent sellers!

If you're an independent seller that sells products online on your own website, on eBay, wherever - you can now let Amazon take care of the shipping and packaging for you. You can even send Amazon stock to store for you, ready to ship when the orders come in. How? Through Amazon's Web Services intiative - which includes the Fulfillment program. You will effectively pay for shipping twice, however, it saves costs like needing your own warehouse and staff to manage that warehouse!

Full Story here > http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/technology/27amazon.html?_r=2&ref=technology&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

18/4/07
Google Base and Froogle renamed to Google Product Search

Do you advertise using Google Base? Search for shopping using Froogle? Well you'll now be needing to use Google Product Search instead - as that's the new name for it. They've redesigned the site too - it now resembles the main Google search a lot more closely. Head on over to http://www.google.co.uk/products to try it out!

Full Story > http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-6177393.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1023_3-0-5&subj=news

17/4/07
They've brought us free online writing and spreadsheet tools, now it's presentations...

Google is to add free online presentation software to it's Google Apps suite, by the summer of this year. Google Docs and Spreadsheets has already seen massive success - allowing users to write and collaborate with other users on word processing and spreadsheet documents, anywhere in the world, as everything is saved on Google's servers. Now it's time for presentation's as well, as Google seems to be taking on Microsoft in it's own backyard - Microsoft Office and especially Powerpoint needs to watch out!

Full story > http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/software/2007-04-17-google-presentation_N.htm

New Law on Websites for Limited Companies

2007-03-21T15:33:00.000+00:00

On the 1st January 2007, a new law came into place affecting what statutory information registered UK companies MUST HAVE on their websites. This affects all limited companies, whether they are private or public.

A website now must contain the following information - company registration number, place of registration and registered office address. This information MUST ALSO be included on email footers and order forms too.

Now part of Tippabush's standard process when developing a new website for a limited company, you can guarantee that all the above information will be put into the footer of your website - as it's displayed at the bottom of every page this makes it easy to access.

For further information on this new law, read this excellent source.

Why doesn't my website fill the entire screen?!

2007-03-12T11:50:00.000+00:00

Afternoon readers,

The subject of this next post is yet another aimed at educating business owners and other people on a slightly more technical aspect of web design, but one that is asked about a lot by new clients after a launch of a new website or during the testing phase of a project. If the word technical has put you off reading any further, please don't go...it really is a basic subject and we're sure you'll learn something by the time you've finished reading. It certainly is "stuff you need to know".

That subject is the question - "why doesn't my website fill the entire screen?".

The answer is a display setting on your computer called "screen resolution".

What is screen resolution?

Well, it's simply the number of pixels that your monitor can output on a particular setting. A pixel is a unit of measurement that defines accuracy of an electronic display, you'll see it used in descriptions of LCD televisions, and digital cameras (mega-pixels) as well as computer monitors. The higher the number of pixels, the more accurate the image / picture / photo will be.

When it comes to computer monitors, the screen resolution is measured by the number of pixels wide it can go by the number of pixels high it can go. This will be represented by two numbers, width first, height second, for example 1024 x 768.

To find out what your screen resolution is (on a Windows XP computer atleast), right-click on your desktop (that's the main Windows screen, that has your wallpaper on it) and choose "Properties". Then select the "Settings" tab, and in the bottom left of that window it'll tell you - complete with a slider to change it as well.

How does this impact on a website?

Unfortunately for us web designers, there are many factors that can affect the display of our work that are completely out of our control, screen resolution being one of them. This is because it's a local setting on each individual computer / monitor, and just think how many millions / billions of computers there are in the world today!

There are currently about 6 different screen resolution sizes being used... the higher the resolution, the more pixels there are to fit onto the screen, and therefore the smaller a fixed-pixel item (such as a website) will appear, and the more space there will be around it.

How do we get around this problem?

There are three ways of solving the issue.

To use a fluid web design, or not set any fixed-widths to the items on a website. This option isn't preferred by many, as it doesn't give very good control over how each individual item on a website relates to the item next to it. Often leads to a very "stretched" looking website when viewed on a higher resolution.
With the majority of websites now developed with stylesheets, or CSS technology, a lot of the larger websites often go for a method that involves detecting which screen resolution the visitor is using, and rendering the web page with a different stylesheet, that determines different widths. Whilst a perfectly suitable option for large website projects with large budgets, due to the longer development and testing time this method requires, costs will always be higher, and makes this an unsuitable option for many start-up and small business websites.
The preferred method used here at Tippabush, is to build the website to a size that will be viewable by the most users. By going for a smaller size, it is still viewable to those with larger resolutions. Using a larger size, those viewing it on smaller resolutions would end up having to scroll across to view the right-hand side of a website - and this is something that users simply won't do the majority of the time.

Current Screen Resolution Stats

By analysing current statistics, we can tell that designing for 800 x 600 pixels, often called the 800px rule, is the best option. The below statistics were taken from the last two weeks from TheCounter.com.

1024 x 768 - 53% of internet users
1280 x 1024 - 22%
800 x 600 - 13%
Unknown - 5%
1152 x 864 - 3%

Therefore, designing for 800 x 600 means that a website will be viewable by 91% of users (sum of all users using that resolution and everyone above it). This is likely to remain the standard for another few years yet, as people only usually get a higher screen resolution on buying a newer computer, and I would say that 800 x 600 would have to drop to below 10% of internet users, before many web designers start to design mainly for 1024 x 768.

Want to see what we're talking about?

Browse to our website www.tippabush.co.uk, which is designed for 800 x 600, and try reducing and /or increasing your screen resolution as described above (you may well get a warning that your screen will go blank for a few seconds), and see how the size of the website changes.

Another reason for 800 x 600...

Another major reason for designing for this size is what happens when a user decides to print out your website, or a page from it, which many people do for future reference, order confirmations and other reasons.

With any web page designed for a larger resolution, when it's printed, sections from the right-hand side will no doubt be pushed onto another page, wasting paper and annoying users (we've all been there!). However, one designed for 800 pixels wide, fits perfectly onto the width of an A4 sheet of paper.

Again, there are alternatives to control this, which leads us nicely onto our next blog topic...print stylesheets.

Please contact us for any further information on this subject or to make enquiries.

Latest Web News

2007-02-12T12:04:00.000+00:00

Here's a fine selection of the latest web news that either will or could affect your business on the internet in the coming weeks, months and years...enjoy.

1) Powerset wins exclusive rights to new search engine technology - 09/02/2007

A new, well financed search engine company from San Francisco has won exclusive rights to use "natural language" technology that has been over 30 years in the making at PARC (Palo Alto Research Centre, owned by Xerox). The Powerset search engine, which will be publicly available sometime this year, attempts to understand the user's query as the user intends it, not based on keywords and phrases as Google, MSN etc currently are. They've already got about 40 employees, with many high-profile search engine names leaving Yahoo for the company. Massive potential for this - Google, watch out!

http://venturebeat.com/2007/02/08/powersets-search-technology-scoop-may-scare-google/

2) Yahoo launches Panama Ad System - 05/02/2007

After months of testing (originally started in October 2006), Yahoo Search Marketing have finally changed over to their new PPC, or pay-per-click, advertising system. Intended to help close the gap on Google's AdWords, Panama offers campaign-based features, better localised targeting and new conversion tracking tools. However they have held off on introducing some 3rd-generation features as seen in Microsoft's AdCenter, launched last year. As if that's not enough, they've also introduced a new ad-ranking system, where by other factors also influence the ad position, not just "highest bidder wins" anymore, also extremely similar as to how AdWords operates.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=3907

3) European Mobile Phone Giants plot new mobile search engine - 05/02/2007

With an expected surge in people using search engines on their mobile phones by the end of 2007, all of Europe's biggest operators have commissioned secret top-level talks in Barcelona this week as part of the industry's largest annual trade show (the 3GSM World Congress 2007). Desperate to claw back some of the market from current dominators Google and Yahoo, the group, with a combined world-wide audience of 600 million, are to discuss launching their own search engine, and the possibility of striking a deal with the current market leaders for a slice in advertising revenues.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/02/04/cnsearch04.xml

So Why Do I Need Search Engine Optimisation For My Website?

2007-01-30T15:25:00.000+00:00

So, if you've read the last post, about the relationship between search engines and websites, we're guessing you now want to know more.

Read on if you want to know why you need search engine optimisation for your business' website, and even if you don't want to know - we suggest you read anyway! The below is taken from an SEO brochure that we give out, please Contact Us if you'd like a hard copy.

1) The Internet, Search Engines and Your Business

An estimated 37.6 million people from the UK are online 1 , over 1 billion the world over - so whether your business is local to Lincoln and Lincolnshire, is regional, national or international, someone somewhere is looking for what you do.

Approximiately 80% of the above internet traffic goes through the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN etc) - so to be cost effective you need to put your efforts into ranking highly with these top search engines first!

2) How Tippabush Can Change Your Rankings

A recent report 2 revealed that a staggering 62% of search engine users click on a website on the first page of results, and 90% within the first 3 pages.

Therefore, you MUST be on the first page for your main keywords, and within the first three pages for your secondary keywords.

SEO - The Truth
Don't be fooled by exaggerated claims GUARANTEEING to get your company to the top of the rankings. If the offer seems to good to be true then it probably is.
Our Promise To You
We GUARANTEE to try our best to get you on page 1 of the big three search engines (UK Search Engine Share - Google 74.67%, Yahoo 9.3%, MSN 5.46% - Feb 2006 Source: Web Side Story).
We GUARANTEE to use only legitimate SEO techniques, that will bring short AND long-term results.
We GUARANTEE to be always "upto speed" on the SEO industry.

3) Our SEO Services

Basic Package

An affordable solution for smaller businesses, ideal for new businesses on a limited budget, or where competition for keywords is less intense.

The service includes:

keyword research and analysis;
keyword placement and content optimisation;
keyword density checks;
internal link development;
sitemap creation;
management of a Google Webmaster Tools account;
a monthly rankings report;
and an optimised link from our own website.

Advanced Package

For the best chance of first page rankings in competitive markets, having related quality links pointing to your site is essential. To give your website a boost, this package is the ideal cost-effective solution.

The service includes -

all of the basic package above plus;
creation and development of an external linking and link management campaign;

PLEASE NOTE: WE DO NOT USE AUTOMATED LINK EXCHANGING SOFTWARE. WE ENSURE QUALITY BY DOING EVERYTHING MANUALLY.

If you are not sure which package is right for your business, we can help. For a small fee (refundable when you have an SEO package from Tippabush 3) we will do some initial keyword research and a competitive study before giving you our recommendations.

4) Do We Know What We're Doing?

Try this search on Google "search engine optimisation lincolnshire", and see which company is #1 (at time of writing this post). Yep, it's Tippabush! 1st out of approx. 71,000 pages.

5) Contact Us For A Quote!

Email info@tippabush.co.uk, or call Paul on 07877 800538.

Footnotes:
1 - statistics provided by InternetWorldStats.com (18 Sept 2006)
2 - report by iProspect.com dated 11 Apr 2006 - view press release here
3 - both SEO packages consist of an upfront payment for the intial work followed by ongoing monthly fees for reporting and follow-up work

Websites and Search Engines: What's The Deal?

2007-01-12T16:45:00.000+00:00

Our first post of 2007 is going to concentrate on dispelling a certain myth that seems to crop up time and time again amongst people wanting new websites...the relationship between a new website, and the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOLSearch etc).

THE 1ST RULE IS: HAVING A WEBSITE DOES NOT MEAN IT WILL AUTOMATICALLY TURN UP AT OR NEAR THE TOP OF GOOGLE'S SEARCH RESULTS FOR WHATEVER KEYWORDS YOU TYPE IN (or any other search engine for that matter).

Let's back peddle a bit first for some background information on how search engines work. We'll only cover this briefly here - it's well worthy of an entire post of it's own sometime.

A search engine is basically a massive database of web pages and other documents available online. It finds these pages by using small automated programs called "robots" or "spiders". We'll use the latter. These spiders constantly crawl through the web (hence their name) following links from one web page to another, and report all the information they find back to the search engine. An algorithm with hundreds of influencing factors then decides what subject the web page is, how important the web page is within it's own website and it's industry etc, and cross-references this with all of the text content on the webpage.

Once this has happened, the web page is now indexed by the search engine, meaning that it is POSSIBLE for someone to come across it in a search, but is only likely to if they type in your company name. Once indexed, this becomes a continuous process, with the spider re-visiting your website to get new information and new content (if any) once in a while. How often depends on how important it feels your site is.

So, given the above process takes time, the first thing you should learn is that YOUR WEBSITE WILL NOT APPEAR IN THE SEARCH RESULTS THE SECOND AFTER IT HAS BEEN LAUNCHED. The most we've known it to take (with Google anyway) is 6 weeks, if you have a website designed and built by Tippabush it takes on average about 2 weeks to get indexed. This is because we always put a screenshot, description and link of each finished project on the portfolio page of our website - and because our own website is considered fairly important, the spider visits us quite often.

THE 2ND RULE IS: HAVING A WEBSITE DOES NOT MEAN IT WILL AUTOMATICALLY TURN UP AT OR NEAR THE TOP OF GOOGLE'S SEARCH RESULTS FOR WHATEVER KEYWORDS YOU TYPE IN (or any other search engine for that matter).

"So how do I get my website up or near the top of the search results?" I hear you cry. The answer is simple, the work involved is not - as well as having a website built, you need to have a service applied to it called... SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (or SEO for short).

The good news is... Tippabush can offer you this service. It can be carried out on existing websites as well as new ones (we offer a 10% discount on the overall price if a new website order is complemented with an SEO order). Contact Us Now!

The bad news is... There is a lot of time-consuming work involved, especially with our fully comprehensive service. Whilst time costs as with all business, you'll be pleased to know that with every SEO quote, Tippabush provide a 3-page document explaining EXACTLY what we do for your money - which it must be said, many other "SEO firms" do not.

The next post on this blog will address WHY you need SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION applying to your website, but if you can't wait to find out more, head over to our website and read the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION FIRMS UK page to learn more.

Alternatively, you can Contact Us Now and we can send you a FREE SEO LEAFLET.

THE 3RD RULE IS: HAVING A WEBSITE DOES NOT MEAN IT WILL AUTOMATICALLY TURN UP AT OR NEAR THE TOP OF GOOGLE'S SEARCH RESULTS FOR WHATEVER KEYWORDS YOU TYPE IN (or any other search engine for that matter).

Ok, we're sure you're getting the picture now...

Latest Web News and Merry Christmas!

2006-12-18T14:56:00.000+00:00

Dear Readers,

With the run up to Christmas entering it's final week, we here at Tippabush HQ felt that you all probably needed something light on the brain and easy to digest. So welcome to our first web news update. We intend these to keep you up to date with the things that could affect you and your business on the internet, so read away...

1) Google tests radio adverts - 8/12/06

Not content with dominating the online advertising market with it's Google AdWords technology, G has now completed a test that uses similar technology to broadcast advertisers ads across US radio networks. Complete with an online system to create and manage your adverts, it's set to shake up radio advertising as we know it. It's only US at the moment, but it's a useful insight into the future...

http://www.cnn.com/2006/BUSINESS/12/07/google.radio.reut/index.html

2) ICANN Meeting produces interesting results - 11/12/06

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) have agreed amongst other things the introduction of a new top-level domain (.co.uk, .com) for the Asia markets to start using. The new extension is .asia.

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/7906/53/

3) Google launches US Patent search - 14/12/06

You can now search through all US patents by year, keywords, or patent number to find patents that might interest you or your business.

http://www.google.com/patents

Well, that's about all for now. All that remains is to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all from us folks here at Tippabush.

Please remember, we are closed between Xmas and New Year, but please contact us on the usual email addresses and we'll action anything as soon as we start back.

Browser Compatability : Internet Explorer 7, Firefox and Internet Explorer 6

2006-12-08T10:05:00.000+00:00

Good morning readers!

Well, starting today, is your education on what we're calling "stuff you need to know". Of course, this relates to web design and is mainly aimed at those businesses in Lincoln and Lincolnshire who are considering having a website done, or already have an existing website and need it re-vamping. This browser compatability stuff is important - it directly affects how different people around the world will be viewing your website. The content of this could be classed as technical, but we'll keep it in layman's terms and explain it as best as we can.

So what is a browser?

Simple really, it is the program that you access the internet with, on whatever computer or device you're using. For most of you this will be Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which will have came pre-installed with Windows on your computer. We'll refer to this from now on as IE to save space. Those of you who know a fair bit about the internet may be using Firefox instead, a free alternative to Microsoft's IE, that you have to download. To complicate things even more, both browsers come in several different versions. Most IE users are still using version 6 (IE6), however you should by now have been asked to upgrade to the new version - Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), if you take notice of your Windows Update requests.

Why is this important to me?

Again, this is simple. DIFFERENT BROWSERS DISPLAY WEBSITES DIFFERENTLY.

How can Tippabush help?

If you have your website designed, developed and built by us it will be fully compatible with the above three mentioned browsers - IE6, IE7 and Firefox. You can then be rest assured that 94% of the world's Internet users are viewing your website exactly as the design we agreed with you.

The statistics below show the current market-share for the browser industry (source: TheCounter.com).

Internet Explorer 6 - 72%
Internet Explorer 7 - 11%
Firefox - 11%
Safari (Mac Users) - 3%
Other Older Browsers - 3% (if this is you - please upgrade now!)

Unfortunately, it is impossible to get a website to display exactly the same on every browser in the world, but I'm sure you'll agree - 94% is pretty good going as part of our standard service. Fear not - if you know that a lot of people in your industry will be using a Mac to look at your site for example, we do have tools at our disposal allowing us to check websites in Safari, or any other browsers for that matter.

How do Tippabush differ from other companies?

If you're the person or company that's just looking for the cheapest possible website - think again! Can you imagine only 72% of people seeing your website correctly?! What is mentioned above is extremely important as I'm sure you agree, yet remains as one of those things that many lesser-professional or cheap web companies may not offer. If you're approaching companies for quotes ask them directly about browser compatability - if they pause, stutter an answer together, or tell you something drastically different from above - walk away and come to us!

Tippabush do offer this as standard, and whilst not the cheapest, we are certainly not the most expensive out there either - our promise to you is simple, you will get a value-added quality website from us.

So if you're after Lincoln Web Design - contact Tippabush now!

Welcome to The Tippabush View

2006-12-07T15:53:00.000+00:00

Hi There!

Well, this is the first post to get the blog started. The title and description above say it all really - on here we'll be blogging about web design in lincoln (UK) and the surrounding county of Lincolnshire.

What can you expect? Everything and anything to do with web design and surrounding subjects such as search engine optimisation is the answer to that!

We'll be covering issues that we feel the people of Lincoln and Lincolnshire need to know about before going ahead with a new website project - perhaps some technical stuff that's important to know, common questions and theories that always come up when dealing with our clients, information and news on Tippabush and our services, and wider ranging news such as what's going on in the internet world to keep you nicely up to date.

Finally - we'll be keeping this blog fresh with content, so be expecting an entry every couple of weeks or perhaps more frequently to start with (we've got lots to tell you!). If there's anything you want to know or want us to write about, please email info@tippabush.co.uk with the subject BLOG and we'll see what we can do for you.

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