The new site uses Google maps API to show the use body of work GE have been involved in over the years.

click here to visit the site or find out more

Although we believe that the law will only be used to bring to task any sites found mis-using cookies we do feel there are some steps you should take to be seen to comply with the law.

• First Step – Have an updated Privacy Policy in place which includes a declaration on Cookie within your site. To complete this you will need to list the cookies used in your site. We can help you update your policy to include the necessary changes.

• Second Step – If your site uses cookies to help the user navigate or stop the same page/offer appearing twice then you should put in some automatic notification. Devstars have written a simple patch that will ask the new user to help keep your site the way it is by approving cookies. If the user decides to decline then we will have some fallbacks in place to display a site without using cookies. They will possibly see some areas more than once, or not be offered the most relevant content but that would have been explained to them in the pop up.

• Third Step – communicate with your current customers. If you have an existing newsletter, facebook and twitter account you could request some help keeping the site just the way they like it. A simple landing page will ask the the user to check a box, acknowledging the use of cookies. If you use our Campaign Monitor system then the request can be entered directly into the user’s preference centre, negating the need for a bespoke landing page. In this way you have completed all your obligations to new and existing customers

How Devstars can help

1. Update existing Privacy Policy – 1.5 hours
2. Create a new Privacy Policy – 3 hours
3. Add automatic pop up to homepage and create if/then statements for use of cookies in site – 8 hours
4. Set up newsletter with landing page – 6 hours
5. Set up newsletter and preference centre in Campaign monitor – 2 hours

For around 2 days work we can have you fully compliant with the new laws, or for around 2 or 3 hours work we can get you started!

I hope you have found this information useful, please click here to get started

Jordan gave us a buzz a couple of weeks ago telling us he’d secured some advertising space for his upcoming new album “Imperfect” on the side of Panther Racings IndyCar and could we come up with some ideas for the graphics. Not our usual brief but we jumped at the chance of working with Jordan again and a top flight race team.

Roll on a few days and graphics were visualised, designed, art-worked and sent off to the printers in LA 3 days before the Long Beach race where the team secured a 5th place finish.

Find out more about Jordan here

Below is the current layout of our website showing where the basic parts of the current system are located.

The main feature of the old system, that we have used often with clients, is the ability to select a landing page for all visitors to see on their first visit. Unfortunately this is not possible in the new system.

I have outlined some other restrictions to the use of the new look below

-    the new Facebook page’s cover image (header) can not contain any call to action or contact information. It’s only meant for branding reasons. This header image should be 851*315 pixels maximum.

-    The application box is now shown underneath the cover image but you only have room to display 3 at a time. The apps are easily moved around so you can update the order often.

Even though there are some restrictions, there are plenty of new opportunities within the framework .  We suggest that you cover the following in any new designs:-

• New Branding style

The new picture size is 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall (at maximum) and really allows you to link together current marketing messages by using relevant campaign imagery. You would have to bear in mind the restrictions on usage, details to be found here https://www.facebook.com/help?faq=+276329115767498

An example of a new facebook image in action from Tiffany

•  Link to an App

When externally linking to your Facebook, you shouldn’t use the page’s direct URL (https://www.facebook.com/brandname). We suggest instead you put the link of the fan gate/default landing page. Doing this will make the default landing page restriction obsolete. When you do this, try to put another call to action on your design to direct people to your page wall (that’s eventually where you want them to go).  your Apps will need re-styling to use the new full width, Red Bull make good use of the new space. https://www.facebook.com/redbull/app_147501331977683

•  Rename and style your apps

Facebook allows you to customise the tabs. Important tabs that appear below the new header image can have any image you want.You can use this to your advantage by putting a call to action as the name of the tab “Like This!”. Another good way is to change the default landing page’s image that appear in your tabs to something more clickable and eye catching like “FREE video” or “FREE guide”…etc.

•  Re-organise posts

Another feature that Facebook has introduced in the pages is an ability to pin your own posts at the top of your page for an entire week. The posts that should be pinned are the ones that have shown maximum shares and likes. If you put them on the top, then you’ll ensure that other new people visiting your page will see those engaging posts and interact with them as well. You can also re-order the posts in your timeline and highlight others to really spell out the brand story.

•  Private messages

Fans can now send you private messages. You can leverage this by encouraging non fans to like your page in order for them to be able to send you questions so you could answer them. You could use it as a customer service inbox to handle all your customer’s issues without having to go through issues live in the wall.

• Direct link to website

Available through the summary info.  Feature www.devstars.co.uk in the summary and it will be displayed.  I found an article linking a a large gaming company here as an example https://www.facebook.com/assassinscreed?ref=ts

Please see below for a quick snapshot of new timeline features (using our new look Facebook page)

Plum Baby have a new campaign letting all the parents of the country know that their foods help build bones AND brains. After receiving some wonderful imagery from their design agency they had the idea of allowing visitors to the Plum site the chance to ‘make-over’ their own babies.

We were keen to avoid using Flash as it is steadily on the decline, we chose instead to toil over some intense JQuery, much to the harm of our development team. We are pleased to say that Plum has now launched their widget, just in time for their 6th Birthday on Tuesday.

The upload, photo manipulation and posting/ downloading had to be very robust, simple to use and available across as many platforms as possible, not simple with that much JQuery. After much hard work we are happy to have this live, please give it a go. We even managed to smarten Ben up a bit…

http://www.plum-baby.co.uk/our-community/einstein/

We at Devstars are not shy to get involved and have been pinning for a few weeks now. At first it seemed a little alien as the vast majority of content is generated in the USA. Just by clicking on the sports section of the site brings up many American sports as you would expect but the main difference is the gender of the pinned content. We found an interesting infographic here exposing the striking differences between US and UK ‘Pinteresters’.

The UI & UX job on this site is first class, once you have installed a ‘pin it’ link to your browser bar you can instantly pin any image in a page whilst you browse. Every time you pin an image you are asked to share that image on Facebook and Twitter or just see your pin. Driving users to view their pins each time must be one of the reasons for such high pageview stats.

After a few days of pinning I can see the appeal, sometimes facebook  has too many buttons to push just to throw an idea into your webspace.  Pintrest makes it very simple to organise your own boards, grouping similar interest images in one spot. You can group a whole board based just on your favourite colour, music or hobby. Other users can choose to follow, like and share the content of these boards without too much fuss. All in all, this is one new social channel that will probably be around for some time (at least 6 months!)

http://pinterest.com/

MG

G’nosh make gourmet dips that you will be able to buy from lots of cool shops like Selfridges.

Here’s the site…

As well as the store we also took the opportunity to update Chris’s web site to feature some of their new projects including Barclays Tennis Finals.

Sunday Best needed a simple stylish way to merge their label’s news and releases with a new store built on Sandbag’s fine platform. The two platforms we used share data between them but keep the CMS pretty simple for the client.

One of our favourite new treatments for displaying articles is this magazine style for their news section.

We hope that we helped keep the fun in their site but also allowed them to update and share their wonderful content as much as possible.

Technologies

magento/Wordpress/

With this in mind a one page site was built with a bespoke content management system that allows the client to update videos and sponsor banners.

Event entries and newsletter signups are supported with a newsletter system to allow easy contact with the competitors.

Click here to visit the site