Website Design Aberystwyth, Wales

Pixelwave Web Design has recently started work on a new eCommerce website for a Wales based, responsible, clothing, home and garden company.

The company already had a website that had been built by another developer but was built using proprietary software and they hadn’t been receiving the support they had hoped for. In addition, the site had various usability issues and users were finding it difficult to achieve tasks on the site.

Initially Pixelwave Web Design was asked to move the site to a new server and work some magic on it to improve usability, but the proprietary nature of the software meant that this wasn’t an option due to the licensing agreements. The only option was to build a new website from scratch, this time using software that is freely and widely available and that any web developer will be able to work with.

The new eCommerce system will also allow us to address the usability issues and at the same time streamline some processes and therefore save some money on operating costs for the company.

If all goes to plan the new site should be launched sometime in July

Although you may not have a Twitter account I’m sure you’ve at least heard of Twitter and have wondered what all the fuss is about. Twitter is yet another of the growing breed of Social Networking tools. As with all good tools, it is really easy to use, and you can use it however suits you, but sometimes this simplicity means that people don’t quite ‘get it’

To start ‘twittering’ (or posting Tweets), you simply sign up and then you can start adding short posts about things you are doing, things on you mind, links that you come across etc. etc. etc. People can start following you and those that do will see what you post. You of course can also follow other people to keep up to date with their Tweets.

No right or Wrong Way

As a website owner or a business owner, such Social Networking sites can be a useful tool to promote your website or business. Although there is no real right or wrong way to use Twitter as a promotional tool, some ways are better than others.

It is of course possible to set up a Twitter account for your company and then simply post special offers and general promotional material. This is fine and if your company and promotions are of interest to people you may well develop a band of followers and your Twitter account becomes a useful broadcast tool. However, what prompted me to write this article was an experience I had recently from a company that uses Twitter to actively engage with its customers and rarely posts promotional material to its Twitter account.

Engaging with People

Graze is a company that delivers fresh, healthy snacks to your office. I’ve been using them for a few weeks and they are certainly switched on to the whole Social media and viral marketing scene. First up they offer a kind of affiliate benefits scheme for their customers. As a customer you get a ‘Feed Your Friends’ code which you can give to as many people as you want (My code is DZ3F24D). If you enter this code when ordering from Graze you will get a free box from Graze and your second box for half price. I also get £1 off a box too. Perfect viral marketing. I benefit so I tell as many people as possible, you benefit with a free box and Graze benefits as it spreads the word and encourages new customers.

Now, the other day, the postie arrived with a Graze box for me, and a box of live crickets for my pet frogs. I therefore posted an off-the-cuff remark to my personal Twitter account saying something like

“Postie has been with Graze box for me and live crickets for Frogs.. Must make sure I don’t mix them up!”.

The people at Graze picked up on this and sent me a message back saying:

“check out www.hotlix.com – you’d be surprised!”

As you can see, the message doesn’t promote Graze at all. In fact it links to a separate company which may seem counter-productive. However, it is engaging with me as a customer and talking TO me not AT me and most importantly it prompted me to write this post, once again spreading the word about Graze!.

I’m not saying that everyone should be doing this as it does take time and effort to do, but there are many ways to use tools such as Twitter and if you get it right it can certainly be a very powerful promotional tool for your website or company.

Something to Say?

If you have something to say then having a Twitter account to help spread the word is certainly something to think about. Use it to engage with your customers, spread the word about promotions and connect with other people that interest you. Don’t just use it to blindly promote you business, people won’t follow you if you do, but if you post useful content and people want to follow you then it is not only a very cost effective way of spreading the word, but fun too.

Pixelwave Web Design has recently released a new website for a long-standing client. Rather than spend days in the planning and consultation phase, it was decided to simply get something out there and see how it develops. Frogsworld is very much a project in progress and is likely to evolve into a very different beast over time.

This isn’t an approach I would normally recommend as in most cases the planning of a project is probably the most important aspect. Making sure the objectives of a website are well defined and developing strategies to achieve the objectives within the various constraints of usability, branding, technology, time and budget are essential steps in producing a website and they are usually paramount to the success of the website. In this case, there were no clear objectives or plans, so simply getting something up and running was the main priority, allowing my client to start experimenting to see what direction he wanted to take the site.

In a way, Frogswrold is a personal hobby site for my client so there were no real pressures or constraints as far as the project was concerned. At the moment, the site looks as though it will be using art to highlight topics relating to conservation and the environment, both promoting awareness of environmental issues and promoting the artists involved, but who knows, it may lead to something bigger.

The website was built using an open-source Content Management System and a  template. Pixelwave Web Design customised the template to fit the needs of the website whilst maintaining as much flexibility as possible. The reigns were handed over to the client within a day or two of starting work on the site so that he could start ‘playing’ with it, adding content and deciding which direction he wanted to go with it.

Pixelwave Web Deisgn have been providing support and guidance along the way and will continue to provide technical support were required. I have a good, well-established working relationship with this client and often have long chats on the phone about various possibilities. Many of these ideas never see the light of day but with Frogsworld we just decided to do it and see what happens. If nothing else my client is having fun with the site and enjoying the process. I too have enjoyed the project so far as the lack of any real plans have had a slightly liberating effect! the website may have been quick and inexpensive to set up and may remain as a ‘hobby’ site, but in my experience, it is sites such as these, where the website owner is passionate about the content that often prove the most successful.

I’m pleased to announce that the latest website design by Pixelwave Web Design is now live for all to see.

Morris and Bates Solicitors are one of the largest law firms in mid Wales with offices in Aberystwyth, Knighton and Llandrindod Wells. Their new website is a brochure style website that outlines the wide range of legal services they offer and introduces you to the practice partners. The website also provides background information and contact details.

The website was designed to give a professional, clean, ‘business-like’ look to reflect the personality of the company. It was also built to be standards compliant with conformable xHTML and CSS. Accessibility was also of prime imprtance whilst building the website and of course it was built to be search engine friendly.

Morris and Bates have said they are delighted with the website, and I shall soon be adding a Welsh language version to it. I’m pleased with the results and hopefully you like it too.

We all need to be more aware of the impact our actions have on the environment. I’ve always been fairly eco-friendly here at Pixelwave Web Design although it has to be said that my motivation was often to reduce costs (which I can then pass onto my clients) rather from a moral obligation to ‘save the world’. However, I’ve recently become a registered ‘Green Achiever‘ so thought I’d comment on my green credentials here.

Of course, as a freelance website designer I do need to use some energy and can’t be completely carbon neutral. My office does have a fairly powerful computer in it and I use two screens for my website design and development work, I also have several external hard drives attached to it along with other peripherals such as routers, USB hubs etc etc. All of these consume power. The good news is that I do always switch it all off when I’m not working, and peripherals such as printers and scanners are only switched on when I need them. I do have another computer that is on 24 hours a day, but this drives the Borth and Ynyslas Weather Station which serves files to the web every minute of every day so can’t be switched off. It doesn’t use a huge amount of energy though and rarely has any additional devices attached to it, even the monitor is usually switched off.

As far as heating and lighting goes, then I’m a home worker so I’m not heating and lighting a separate office, just a room in the house. Being a modern house we are well insulated, have efficient heating and energy saving light-bulbs, so energy consumption there isn’t too bad. I’m also a firm believer in an extra jumper in the winter rather than turning up the thermostat. I do have to keep my working environment fairly comfortable, it is afterall a little difficult to type with mittens on, but if I close the office door it actually gets quite warm in here anyway.

Elsewhere around the house we are pretty good at switching things off rather than leaving them on standby. We have an energy monitor which shows us exactly how much electricity we are using at any given moment, so we can see which items use up the most and are careful to keep our monthly consumption as low as possible. We’re not perfect, but no-one is and ironically the energy monitor itself uses up a tiny amount of electricity, but I think it is worth it as it does make us aware of our consumption.

Being eco-friendly in the home and office isn’t just about saving electricity though. Working from home means I’m not using petrol or diesel for a commute every morning and evening which has to be a good thing. We’re also very good at conserving water. It’s a long story, so I won’t go into it but we had several years without any drains here so got very used to using next to no water. We’re still pretty careful and have also recently installed some water-butts in the garden too, so don’t waste water there either. As far as waste goes then everything that can be is recycled and shredded paper and kitchen waste is all composted.

There are still plenty of other things we could do to improve. Overall I feel that Pixelwave Web Design is a fairly ‘green’ business which is why I registered as a ‘Green Achiever’. The scheme itself doesn’t really mean a huge amount but it does make people aware of their impacts which can only be a good thing.

Pixelwave Web Design currently has a design student from Bangor University on work placement. He is here for 7 weeks and so far has done a relatively short first week.

So far he seems fine, punctual, interested in what I do and with lots of relevant questions to ask which is always a good sign.

Unfortunately I don’t have much actual ‘design’ work on at the moment as I’ve been busy with web development and website maintenance work. I have therefore spent a bit of time devising some tasks for him to do, none of which are needed at the moment, but they may come in useful one day and they should give him something to get his teeth into and to add to his portfolio.

It’s also quite nice to have someone else in the office from time to time for a change and it forces me to take coffee breaks now and then as well! Hopefully he will gain some useful skills from the exercise. If nothing else, he will realise that a freelance website designer actual does very little website design on a day to day basis, but does do lots of admin!

There are plenty of instructions online telling you how to add custom error pages to your website, but why do you need them and what should they contain?

What is a custom error page?

When you request a web page from a server, normally everything is fine, the server finds the page and your browser displays it, but if for some reason the server is unable to find the requested page then the server will provide a standard error page instead. The “404 – page not found” is the commonest error page and it simply means that the page you requested could not be found on the server.

A custom error page is simply a replacement for this standard error page.

This article will consider the custom 404 error page and what can be done to improve it.

Why would MY website need a custom 404 error page?

The main reason for having a custom 404 error page is to keep people on your website. Most people following a link to your website will simply leave and go somewhere else if presented with a standard 404 error page. Your site may contain exactly what they are looking for, but if they don’t get past the error page and into your site proper, then they’ll never know and you will have lost a potential new customer.

Why would visitors to my site get an error page?

There are many reasons why someone visiting your website might be presented with a 404 error page. It may be that the page they were looking for has been removed or replaced with a page at a different URL. Obviously if the link the visitor followed to get this error page was from your own website then that should be fixed, but it isn’t so easy to fix broken links from external sites.

If you have a good number of inbound links to your site, then there is a strong possibility that some of these will point to pages that no longer exist. Search engines too can point to pages that no longer exist. Even if your site is fairly static and pages haven’t been removed then it is likely that some inbound links will contain typos that then lead to 404 error pages, or people may themselves simply type in an incorrect URL to the address bar of their browser.

Whatever the reasons, people will get 404 error pages when trying to access your site, and if this error page is a standard 404 error page they will simply leave.

Replacing the standard 404 error page with a custom one is relatively easy and will allow you to retain these visitors and guide them to the correct place.

What should a custom 404 error page contain?

A custom 404 error page can contain whatever you want it to, but in my opinion the following are important and some, if not all of them should be on any custom 404 error page.

1. A consistent look: It makes sense to make your custom 404 error page look the same or at least very similar to the rest of your website. This allows people to know that they are at least in the right place, even if they haven’t found exactly what they are looking for. It also allows you to display your company branding.
2. Explanation: This is an error page, so explain that. Let people know why they may have been presented with this page and what it means.
3. Reassurance: It is always a good idea to reassure your visitors. Let them know that the error isn’t their fault and reassure them that you’ll soon have them back on track.
4. Options: The most important thing a custom 404 error page should do is get the visitor back on track. So it should present them with some (but not too many) options. Maybe links to the most important parts of your website will be sufficient.
5. Search Tool: If your website has a search facility then this should be a prominent addition to any custom 404 error page. The search tool will hopefully allow the visitor to find what they are looking for.
6. Navigation: I tend to include the standard top level navigation elements of a website on the custom 404 error page. Normally this helps provide some consistency with the rest of the website and also provides the wayward visitor with a means to navigate to other parts of the website and get back on track.
7. Contact / support details: Custom 404 error pages should also contain a means of contacting the webmaster. If the visitor is unable to find what they are looking for despite the options above then you should provide them with a means of contacting you so that you can point them in the right direction and help them on their way.

These simple steps can make a huge difference to visitor retention on your website but are often overlooked. Click here to see the Pixelwave Web Design Custom Error Page, I think you’ll agree that it is much more useful than the standard 404 error page and is something that every website should have.

If you would like to add a custom 404 error page to your website and need help doing so, then feel free to contact Pixelwave Web Design, it is an inexpensive addition to your site that could have a huge return on investment.

Pixelwave Web Design is pleased to announce the release of a new website for the ‘Ystwyth Mountain Biking Club’.

I’m actually part of the club so the site is still a work in progress as I’m sure new features will be requested as members start to use it. The website, built and maintained by Pixelwave Web Design, is intended as a way for members of the club to stay in contact with each other, organise rides and share photos. It is based around forums and photos galleries.

It is hoped that a good community will develop and it will not only help promote the club but also responsible mountain-biking in the area.

YMBC Screen Shot

Pixelwave Web Design is pleased to announce the release of a brand new website for SoccerTrolley.

SoccerTrolley is a brand new product designed for sports coaches around the world. Available now, the unique design is currently being used at Aston Villa FC.

The website will be developed by Pixelwave Web Design in the future to include more information and news and reviews but it is currently there to serve as a holding page containing some information on the product along with contact details for those interested.

We’re in the midst of an economic crisis and things have been fairly quiet with new projects here at Pixelwave Web Design, but I’ve been keeping busy despite this. As always I’ve been working on updates for Fairies World and its sister sites as well as developing a few new ideas for them. I’ve recently finished a few additions to the BabyFeet website and I’ve even had time to work on my own Forces-of-Nature website, including giving it an all new, leaner, meaner home page.

I’ve also just started work on a website for a new client and his exciting new ‘SoccerTrolley’product. Watch this psace for more details as the website develops.

On top of all this I’ve also recently started work at Aberystwyth University as a website editor for the Designing Libraries project which now has a brand new website.

The economic crisis may be biting but things are usually a little quieter at this time of year so hopefully it will pick up in the New Year as usual. No one knows how the web design industry in the UK will suffer, but it is possible that is could benefit from these hard times as businesses turn away from traditional media and advertising and spend their budgets on more cost effective and less expensive web-based projects instead. A website can be so much more than just an advertising tool and is so much more flexible than the traditional print media, especially when content needs to be changed regularly. It can be used to improve customer loyalty, customer support and cut down on admin. Web design may come out of the the economic crisis better than some other traditional industries.

Whatever happens, as a one-person web design studio I have very few overheads which allows me to keep my costs down and remain flexible in times such as these. I can adapt to better serve my clients in times of economic uncertainty and can continue to offer a service when larger companies may be struggling.

Whatever happens, I’d like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and wish you all the best for 2009.I look forward to working on your web design projects in the New Year.

Alan.