Gray Nicolls Launch
It's Friday, it's been a big week, and we've got a lot done. All up, I think we've made the internet a better place.
Over the last few weeks we've been working hard on upgrading the Gray Nicolls website. Gray Nicolls Sports distributes, Cricket, Rugby, Netball, Hockey, Squash, Tennis and even Darts equipment to almost 1,000 retailers in Australia and New Zealand through brands like Gray Nicolls, County, Steeden and Gilbert. No one can argue, we love our sport.
This project has been a little different from some of the other work we've done. The design side has been handled by Adam at HD Design, while we've looked after the content management system. Adams a real pro - and the process could not have been smoother.
The site was and still is for the large part in Mambo/Joomla - to be honest, not one of our favourite systems. We've manage to work with and around the system to provide Gray Nicolls an elegant solution for promoting their products and news, while providing a different look and feel for each brand.
It's been a fun and rewarding process! Now on to a well earned beverage.
Have a great weekend,
David
Labels: design, launch, melbourne, web-development
Posted on Friday, October 12, 2007
Listen Carefully - A series of design experiments
Listen Carefully "... is the culmination of a series of design experiments, and the introduction to an exploration of the designer as the medium, through which media messages are communicated."
We've recently been working with Dan Peterson from Listen Carefully, helping customize a Wordpress blog template. It's great to work in web design on a non-commercial job and we've enjoyed being able to contribute to the Listen Carefully experiment.
In times gone by the humble blog was there for the angry nerd to voice his frustrations, complaints and issues. Nowadays, the blog has a whole stack of things going for it and a wide variety of uses for the individual, company or project ;
- it can be the 'voice' for the group or company it represents
- it's a way to respond and comment on news items or relevant activity out in the world
- use a blog to publish press releases, announce new products or relationships
- take advantage of RSS feeds and have instant updates go out to anyone who's bookmarked your site/blog
- tailor your content by tagging and labeling posts to help your SEO
Listen Carefully is a great example of the benefits that come from publishing work like this on the web. Bringing together 7 designers from Melbourne for the initial stage, now feedback has come from design studios and students all over the world, allowing the experiment to take on an organic element and grow with the people involved. The open communication involved via the blog medium allows for visitors to the site to contribute to the discussion and hence the experiment itself.
Take a look, wander through the site and comment where you see fit. If you want more information on how easy it is to update and run your own blog, feel free to get in touch.
All the best,
Mark
Labels: blog-templates, blogger, design, listen-carefully, melbourne, web-design, wordpress-customisation, wordpress-templates
Posted on Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Web Design Melbourne - Page 1 in Google!
We're pleased to say that we've finally achieved our goal of a first page ranking in Google for "Web Design Melbourne" within Australia.
We've focussed on these 3 keyword variations for quite some time now. Here's an approximate progress timeline.
June 06 - Beyond the first 100 pages of results for Web Design Melbourne
Nov 06 - Within first 15 pages
Jan 07 - Within first 3 pages
March 07 - Second page of results
The job is not complete by any means. Rankings change, and it takes work to maintain a position. Sometimes your position may slip because of changes other people make to their websites.
Our Google ranking strategy takes time, patience and focus. Our online stores are built with search engine optimisation in mind. The online store system takes care of the critical elements such as page titles, urls and meta data automatically. Website content is just as critical - so we set up a process for owners to add their content and news without having to know the technical stuff.
Either way, we're chuffed.
David
Labels: a-better-google-ranking, design, Online-Stores, SEO, web-development
Posted on Sunday, September 09, 2007
More than a placeholder - DesignLive
DesignLive specialise in building automation, window furnishings and contract joinery. Looking through the work this company does will help give you an understanding of how much of a specialty area it is. Bringing together architects, designers, developers, engineers and corporations to create a unique 'smart' building is no small undertaking.
We were lucky enough to be recently working with Cornwell on the placeholder site for DesignLive. Under tight deadline recently a placeholder was needed to coincide with launch of new products and brand work. A placeholder is normally a single web page, logo and contact details that does just what it says, 'holds' the spot until content and a complete website is finished. The work that we ended up doing with Cornwell was much more than a placeholder site, seven pages and a registration option for people to record their details that hooks up to a database for email marketing.
We think it turned out really well and can't wait to get working on the full website for DesignLive.
Labels: design, DesignLive, melbourne, placeholder, web-design, Web-Design-Melbourne
Posted on Thursday, August 23, 2007
Down and Dirty on MySpace
We've written in the past about our thoughts on MySpace. No matter what you reckon about the most visited site on the planet, you cannot deny the benefit it has to people in the music industry. Be they band or individual artist, a profile can be set, tunes can be posted and if done right, a good image can be portrayed.
Winterun are a band that have spent the last five years in Melbourne building a strong cult following. Heavy rocking blues or tunes that are like "logs let loose down the mountainside", these guys are good. A huge live following and their passion for what they do has brought the boys from Melbourne to the release of a new single Stompa from their forthcoming album : Into The Underground.
Efront had the pleasure of working with Winterun on their new MySpace page recently and we're chuffed with the results. Check it out, listen to the new track Stompa but most importantly when you get a chance, check out these fellas live 'cos if you like your rock... you're gonna get into Winterun.
Labels: design, MySpace, pimp, web-design, Web-Design-Melbourne, Winterun
Posted on Sunday, August 05, 2007
Father Bob Maguire Foundation
Inspired by the lifetime work of one of Australia's genuine heroes, the outspoken South Melbourne parish priest, Fr Bob Maguire, this is a foundation connected to the very fibre of our community and its pressing social issues.
The Fr Bob Maguire Foundation is a listed Public Benevolent Institution (PBI). That is, it's a non-profit institution organised for the direct relief of poverty, sickness, suffering, distress, misfortune, disability or helplessness.
We're pleased to have been able to help out by developing the
foundations website.
Why not take a minute to learn about the good work Father Bob's foundation does and help out with a donation? Every bit helps!
Click here to learn more.
Labels: design, Web-Design-Melbourne, Web-Hosting
Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007
MySpace Statistics and Design
We had a great response to the recent post on the MySpace redesign we did for Fiona Burnett - www.myspace.com/fionaburnett - and to be honest I was a little shocked at the traffic we got.
We all know it's popular, but I thought I'd look into the stats behind MySpace. Steve Reubel at Micro Persuasion has listed some info on (what I think) is one of the ugliest and hardest to use sites out there.
- It is the largest online social networking portal on the web
- It has 61 + million registered users with 21+ million unique visitors
**note : Media kit from MySpace now says 64 million** - It's the second largest destination on the web, by page views
**note : now relegated to number 6 behind Yahoo, MSN, Google, YouTube, Windows Live - alexa.com** - It splits 50.2% male, 49.8% female
- They reach more men online than ESPN.com. They reach more females online than iVillage.
- The primary age demo is 16-34
- They have 1.4 million registered bands, 350,000 band blogs
- The site attracts 220,000 new registrants daily
**note - what the??** - There are 50,000 groups including fashion, health, wellness & fitness, sports and recreation, music, film, TV, etc.
- And last but not least it costs $35,000 to launch a profile for marketing purposes.
Wow. Again, no matter how much any of us can disapprove of the way MySpace looks and works, you cannot argue with those numbers.
All we can do is continue in our quest to clean MySpace up. If you've got a profile you'd like cleaned up (re-skinned/designed/pimped etc) feel free to get in touch to learn more.
All the best,
Mark
Labels: design, My Space, MySpace, pimp, redesign, reskin, statistics
Posted on Wednesday, July 04, 2007