hi there » Blog

Why is SuperStore killing brands’ stories?

2012-01-30T16:22:21Z

Perusing this week’s SuperStore flyer I saw the “Holiday BIG BRAND$ Sale” (yes they used a dollar sign for an “S”). Anyway, I thought it was odd that they’re associating a number of products with their larger, parent brands. Not only do I think these brands are big enough on their own, the real problem is that they’re undermining the products’ stories.

Take Chef Boyardee for example. You’ve seen the ads where Hector’s mother or grandmother takes him to the market to buy fresh ingredients for his pasta sauce. Inspired, he is still making it the same way she did. Or something. That’s what I want to think about, not a big, cold factory run by ConAgra Foods, which, without the addition of “Foods” would probably pass as a chemical fertilizer company.

Furthermore, this is the first i’ve ever heard of “parmalat” and it doesn’t sound very appetizing, and Unilever is a soap company. What’s wrong with putting Black Diamond cheese or Hellman’s mayo on sale? As a marketing guy I don’t even want to be reminded of the bigger brands behind these products, so I can’t understand how this is a smart marketing tactic for the general public. Or is it just me?

Why would anyone follow my business on twitter?

2011-11-23T23:37:01Z

Why would anyone phone your business? Why would anyone email you? Go to your website? Google you? Purchase your services?

Mobile websites and responsive design: The Internet isn’t just on computers anymore

2011-11-12T23:47:33Z

Displays keep getting bigger and better, but they also keep getting smaller and better. Over the last few years something interesting has happened, I think probably starting with the iPhone: Just when bigger was always better, people started to be perfectly happy with smaller screens. Crazy eh? Everyone wants mobile devices. They’re basically pocket computers. Now there’s devices like netbooks and MacBook Airs, iPads and Anrdoid tablets, smartphones and even iPods with web browsers that work surprisingly well. It’s really incredible. Both Nick and I went form a 15″ laptops to 13″ MacBook Pros; they’re nice and super portable (of course we have other displays to plug into for work). My friend Allan travels with nothing but an iPod touch to stay connected. As it’s turned out you can do a heck of a lot on a small screen if the interface is designed for it.

Enter responsive web design. Jeffry Zeldman wrote about responsive design over a year ago, and of course A List Apart was probably the first to have an article on responsive web design. The big deal is that, in most cases, you can design a site that will adapt to fit the screen no matter what device you’re on (tiny phone or giant TV) with a pretty reasonable increase to budget.

The great part about responsive design is that it’s all controlled by styles, so the HTML – your actual site – remains the same, all in one piece. This means you can run your favourite CMS or blog platform and have a WordPress responsive design where you’ll just be managing the same website while offering a better experience to non-standard devices (mainly Apple and Android – Windows Phone just started supporting this technology, and BlackBerry, well, sorry).

But people aren’t really going to my website on a phone, are they?

Sure they are. And they will be more and more. Web traffic on non-standard devices (desktops and laptops) is set to be under 50% by 2015. Again, crazy eh? Things have gotten more difficult for us web designers. Whether someone’s searching for info on your business while out and about (think restaurants, especially), doing researching on the go, or clicking links in emails or from their friends via social media, there’s lots of ways people can get to your site on a smartphone or other mobile device.

If you’re thinking about redesigning your website, or starting a new project, now’s the time to start thinking mobile websites.

Look at some of our latest responsive web design work and see how much nicer everything looks and feels. Yeah we’re totally plugging ourselves but hey, it’s nice work eh? Visitors are instantly engaged in the experience rather than clicking and zooming around or struggling to read small text.

hi there wins an award

2011-11-01T20:02:04Z

Good news everyone! Our work for Carbon Sense won “Best SME Website” at the this year’s AIM Conference.

The site really came together well. The result of good planning and design direction, we produced a gorgeous looking site that engages prospective clients with key questions to help them navigate to appropriate offerings. And it’s a responsive design, meaning it adapts to look its best on smartphones and tablets. Powered by WordPress for the CMS and blog. You can read more about it in our portfolio.

Fabulous new package!

2018-02-28T15:03:53Z

Our brand new welcome package includes a handy quick reference sheet, official certificate, stickers, and more! Packaged in a handmade, hand spray-painted envelope.

Delivered at the end of a project, we don’t see it as a goodbye, but a hello and welcome to the Internet.

Hey, new website!

2011-09-13T16:03:28Z

It’s that time of year (well, sort of). hi there recently celebrated its 2nd birthday in a state of quiet busyness. Each year since we started the company we’ve redesigned our own website – finding time for yourself can be tough but it’s something we think is pretty important to keep current. And you know, we sell them. This one is a big one. We removed yet another section (“Services”, before that it was “Approach”) and sort of melded that into the homepage and moved the contact info to the footer for easy access. And of course it’s a responsive design – try it on your phone, it looks super-sweet on a Retina display!

Here’s our first and second iterations:

hi there '09

hi there oh-ten

The portfolio got totally revamped to showcase our work in a fun new way to tell more of a story about the project and details that went into it. The blog became the Superblog! We jazzed it up with it’s own theme and images all around.

We’re pretty stoked and hope you are too. What’s you’re favourite new thing? We’d love to hear what you think – leave us a comment!

Where do the +1’s play? [updated again]

2011-09-09T02:09:36Z

Update September 8, 2011

And now we’re rolling:

Update August 29, 2011

Looks like Google is working on integrating a “Share on Google+” feature to go along with the +1 button. I think this is great – it just makes sense – and kind of figured it’d be coming along at some point soon anyway. And I say working on because it hasn’t changed for me yet. Anyone?

Original Post

By themselves. +1 and Google+ have a bit of an odd relationship. Or maybe it just seems odd because it’s different than the other social networks, namely Facebook and Twitter. When you click a +1 on a website, blog, video, etc., my expectation was that it’d get published to your posts stream on G+. But it didn’t. So what does it do other than telling google (and your friends) that “this is pretty cool”?

It goes to your profile under +1’s. This is only visible to you – by default. In the settings is the option to share with the public. But what this does is let people view this list too, not publish your +1’s in your stream. To enable, go to “Profile and privacy” in your Google+ settings, click the “Edit visibility on profile” button, then “the “+1’s” tab, and you’ll see the “Show this tab on your profile” option.

Still way early in the game, but it just doesn’t seems as “social” as it could be. Maybe it’s not a bad thing, maybe it cuts down on clutter. Or perhaps they’ll integrate it in time. Should it add the content to your Google+ stream?

Maybe the question is, is the content that is being +1’d across the Web content that should show up amongst the content you post on G+?

In the kitchen with hi there: the one where we make a really hot burger

2011-08-21T21:13:17Z

Slider, actually. Because they’re cool, and as such, we’ll never make anything but sliders ever again. This time we’ve got a patty infused with cayenne, fresh ground pepper, and a pinch of sea salt to season, topped with jalapeno havarti, bacon, red onion, fresh jalapenos, and our super-secret sauce featuring the Bhut Jolokia or Ghost Pepper, and garnished with hi there’s own freshly-picked spicy basil. Below is our official food review.

We’re up to something…

2011-08-21T18:52:39Z

Excited? Intrigued? Go sign up to be notified, or don’t, but we’d prefer if you did.

You can win one of whatever it is we’re making! Sign up to be notified and we’ll enter everyone in a draw, and when we launch you will be overcome with joy as you are the very first to possess what will surely be the envy of your friends and family. Get another chance by tweeting it, too.

#ie6countdown, why everyone bitches about Internet Explorer, and other true stories

2011-08-21T17:34:40Z

The short: Internet Explorer (aka IE or Internet Exploder) doesn’t display web pages they way they’re designed to be, let alone work with any code that is relatively new, yet there are still people using old versions of it.

Ok, so basically the way browsers work is they look at the code of a website (the HTML and CSS, etc), interpret it, and then show you the webpage. The problem is they all interpret it differently. Newer browsers like FireFox, Safari, and Google Chrome are pretty much on par with each other. Plus they’re generally fast and secure.

Internet Explorer, however, has a pretty bad track record of keeping up with the latest technology. And by latest technology I mean not even really the latest at all. This stuff was in development years ago. It just doesn’t do a good job displaying web pages the way they were designed to look. It can do some pretty wacky things that have to be dealt with, taking extra time to make “fixes” for different versions of the browser.

The thing with Internet Explorer is that a lot of people using it haven’t updated it in years. A small percentage (about 10.9% worldwide – 2.7% in Canada and 2.3% in the US) still use IE6, which is a decade old. A handful of these are likely the Nova Scotia government. To be a little bit fair, these weren’t really issues back when these browsers were developed, so now there’s no real way to get to the people using them to get them up to date. And users of other browsers tend to be more likely to keep them up to date. But this is where we’re at. It’s pretty much agreed that IE6 is dead now that big players like Google and Facebook have ditched support for it, even Microsoft wishes everyone would move on. IE7 is on its way out too.

That’s the gist of it, anyway. Just say no to IE altogether. Friends don’t let friends browse with IE. You get the idea.

Pass it on: bit.ly/IEwhatupwiththat