Fylde Coast carries out some vital work in the community that adds real value to the lives of the people who use their services on a regular basis. It was essential we made the new site as informative and useful as possible whilst also being engaging and fun to use.

Given the different audiences Fylde work with we needed a cohesive online platform that would provide opportunities for personal and social development through various community based and social initiatives. The new site will ultimately increase brand awareness, act as an effective resource tool for existing and potential clients and create an online information portal.

Not only are we extremely happy with the result, the project has also been a thoroughly enjoyable one to be part of. Have a gander and let us know what you think!

We’re somewhat proud of the result – using some cracking photos of projects Eric Wright have worked on they can now showcase the diversity of their projects both on the homepage and within each division.

We’ve a few favourites too – the boardroom used under divisions makes Lord Sugar’s look rather bland!

The response from internal staff has been fantastic. Have a look and see what you think – www.ericwright.co.uk

Studio North & the Eric Wight Group have worked together for several years having previously helped them with their corporate rebrand and it’s been a pleasure to watch their business evolve.

Why not use the Internet as a vehicle to reduce administration costs in terms of managing clients? (for example – possibly reducing technical support calls through an effective knowledge base centre). It could also be an extremely effective source of data capture and through email marketing a simple way of segmenting this data and delivering personalised information that really hits home. After all, an effective dialogue with existing clients is probably more profitable than new conversations with cold audiences who are harder to sell to.

Could your website be a suitable platform to demonstrate relevant and timely sector insight usually associated with expensive PR driven support?

One thing is for sure, to have what we simply refer to as a ‘brochure site’ is not really good enough, never moreso than in the current economic climate. “Quick, we need a website by the end of the month” We have experienced it so many times. Websites being treated as a transactional one-off project. Plan it, write it, design it, get it live….and then leave it for another few years until a point in the future (typically a few years) when it becomes so woefully dated that a complete overhaul is once again required. What happens in between? Probably very little that really impacts on the business. The logic of this method is seriously flawed. Possibly appropriate in the early years of the Internet but certainly not in an era when digital channels are evolving, overlapping and providing numerous ways of engaging audiences and achieving business objectives.

The truth is that no matter what size your business is, your website should be just one part, if an integral one, of a complete digital marketing strategy. It should be given regular and appropriate attention to ensure that information is relevant. It should most definitely be designed with accessibility and the user in mind. Not the creative and clichéd photographic wishlist of a Marketing Director. It should be refined through simple trial and error methods of working out what works best over time.

Remember the digital environment changes constantly, so do the rules and so does browser behaviour. What is good in 2009 might not be in 2010. If you aren’t serious about online you need to be very soon or risk never being able to play catch up with the competition.

1. Screen size, handsets and browsers
If you thought multiple screen resolutions and browser versions was a nightmare for standard website development then welcome to the world of mobile phones!  Bearing in mind the huge range of handsets in current circulation, mobile site development needs to aim towards the lower end of the spectrum. Many users will be looking at your site with a screen that can only display 128 pixels (width) by 160 pixels (height). That’s actually only about 10 words per line so you do the maths!

2. Bandwidth and graphic filesize
For a start, most user’s access to the internet comes either for free at work or for a small fixed monthly sum at home. Consequently they can (and often will) spend literally hours surfing away on the Net in relative comfort. Visitors who are browsing your mobile site are unlikely to be in the same position – they might be waiting in a queue, travelling on the train or the bus, running to the departure gate, or lost in an unfamiliar town late at night and trying to get somewhere. Mobile internet is also far slower than your average broadband so these users don’t want to hampered even further by hanging around for large graphics or complicated layouts. Mobile web pages need to be short, snappy, and give the specific information that a user needs. If they want to browse for hours they have the option of doing it much better on their home or work PC.

3. Useability
People don’t use the internet on their mobile phones the way they do their desktop computer. Normally they would have the luxury of a full size keyboard and a mouse for point-and-click duties. Now suddenly they have their mobile device’s scroll buttons, numerical keypads and various other proprietary controls to make even the simplest operation, like filling in a form, a lengthy procedure. All information on a mobile site needs to be instantly accessible from the main home page menu and designing the hierarchy and navigation of a mobile site means thinking simply at all times – nested folders, lots of clicks to get to information, and complex site structure or navigation will simply not work.

4. Web standards
One of the most important aspects of web design for mobile use is to make sure the site complies with current web standards. Desktop browsers can be relatively forgiving and easy to please. A few misplaced HTML tags here and there will, more often than not, be fixed automatically by the browser so that your page is rendered correctly. However, this functionality equate to more code, which means a bigger install and requires more processing power. Mobile browsers, on the other hand, are much less forgiving. They generally won’t have the luxury of a 2 GHz processor and 100MB of disk space available to them. Therefore, rigorous testing is an absolute must if your site is going to be accessible to mobile phone users so make sure your code is clean, precise and passes the W3C online checkers.

5. Oh yeah, it’s not a PC
Many people wonder why their current website cannot simply be changed slightly to fit on a mobile screen. Like many aspects of technology, unfortunately it’s not that simple. Mobile phone browsers do not display websites in the same way as a normal computer – they render a site to varying degrees of success and may choose to not display (or simply cannot display) certain types of information such as Flash. Occasionally, due to factors mentioned elsewhere, what appears on the mobile screen looks nothing like the original site; notably tables, complex graphics and overly complicated layouts often get ripped apart or distorted beyond recognition. Likewise, as mentioned previously, users who are surfing on a mobile device have different needs and requirements to desktop users, so to force-feed them the same content as that displayed on the traditional site is a recipe for disaster.

And finally, just remember, If you can create a mobile website that functions well, looks good, and is easy to navigate, you will have the potential to reach an audience of mobile and PDA users that runs into the millions. And who wouldn’t want that?

Since 2002, BCM has been providing greener, more sustainable building services design solutions to a wide range of clients in both the public and private sectors. Leaders in electrical and mechanical design, they have established an excellent reputation through work on many high profile projects.

Visit www.bcmconsulting.co.uk

Myebook.com (http://www.myebook.com), a web-based ebook community, is launching to give people the tools to create book content and ‘get it out there’ for free. Every aspect of publishing content is covered – from creating, to sharing and reading – in a slick and simple way.

Studio North’s specialist identity and digital teams worked in collaboration over a number of months to create the brand identity and design the myebook website which has been developed in-house around our page templates and user interface designs.