Yes…
…of course we do. There are a number of re-occuring questions that we seem to be asked so I’d thought it might be good to answer YES to all the common one here. YES; we’re all based in the UK (Yorkshire, actually) YES; we do our our work in-house YES; we really are 15 years [...]
Simplifying your web-site (part 1)
It’s well known that simple-to-use site work better than complex one but that’s not what I’m talking about here. I want to cover briefly the major components of a web-site and specifically where and how they should be developed. Many web-sites re-invent the wheel (for example a site search function?) costing in development resource and [...]
Nudge and better choices
We’re not always the rational creatures that classical economics makes us out to be. In 2008 Richard Thaler coined the term Nudge Theory (paraphrased “Where Economics Meets Psychology”). It’s a well trodden path and includes such exciting terms as Behavioural finance but fundamentally they all look at the ways in which our psychological biases get in the way [...]
Give HTML5 a big hug
The release of Internet Explorer 9 comes with a wave of relief and panic. Panic because in some development cases, this means we now have four (yes, four) versions of one browser to test website in which I’m not particularly looking forward to doing. The silver lining here is the better implementation of emerging standards [...]
Everyone is Irish on March 17th
To celebrate the greatest official drinking day in the world the Halifax office have all changed their names so we are now known as Sam Murphy, Doug Kelly, Martin O’Dower, Steve Ryan, Tim O’Lingard, Nick Byrne, Andy Fitzpatrick & Jerry Adams. To carry on this ancient tradition some of the group will be drinking until green [...]
A co-operative, of sorts
GiffGaff (Wiki-entry)has been around now for over year. If you’ve never heard of the name then don’t worry, they spend £0 on marketing, about £50 on branding and £0 on sponsorship. The basic idea is brilliant, take a product or a service that has lots of consumers and a continual or long buying cycle (GiffGaff is [...]
Real world A/B testing
Widely used since the 18th Century, AB testing is now one of the primary sources of web-site improvement but it’s also nice to see the conventional (ycrta: old) world embracing testing so it was interesting to see a US charity magazine (MotherJones) doing exactly that by testing two different covers to it’s February issue. They [...]
Avoid re-inventing the wheel
If you are thinking of re-designing your web-site then here are a couple of useful tips that could save you a load of development cost, reduce the hassle and speed up delivery. Just because you’re re-creating or re-building your site that is no reason to build the whole thing from scratch. Most of your visitors [...]
I’ve Started So I’ll Finish… I Promise
So week 1 of my first project and the pressure is on. Proper on. As in ‘ring spasm-ingly on’. But thats cool, I can handle that. Gulp. How the hell can you ‘Project Manage’ a vague idea into a product? How do you start?… Well here is the thought process we (I got some help [...]
Social media no longer sexy
Ask any traditional marketer about her potential marketplace and she’ll bark on about demographics, age, gender and various other segmentation approaches. In fact, most marketing departments would be a little stuck without their (fixed) demographic profiling. We are starting to see a change though. As likeminded people gather around fellow likers communities have been springing [...]
