Internet Marketing Blog

Chic Fashion Jewellery came to Juretic looking to launch their ranges of costume jewellery and fashion accessories online.

The site required an easily adaptable ecommerce solution as well as integration with 3rd party social media sites.  We started with a full branding operation during which we styled vector based logos for the main website and the subsidiary range pages.

Following usability research, the site was then designed and built on the Magento ecommerce platform and was integrated with Twitter and Facebook and was further enhanced by the addition of a Wordpress blog and a styled ebay store to allow Chic to reach potential and existing clients through as many routes as possible.

The design of the site allowed for an easy navigation through the styles and ranges available, leading to a secure cart using Sagepay (formerly Protx) for credit card processing.  Each product is optimised as standard, so as new products and ranges are added, they are automatically optimised.

Let us know what you think of the site.

http://chicfashionjewellery.co.uk

Little things sometimes make you laugh when you are online all day. In fact I guess that it is a little lunacy which creeps into your subconscious when your brain is not just looking at every webpage you visit, but analyzing everything about it: the way it loads, the information architecture, the use of differing technologies, the design, the social media integration and the search engine optimisation of the page.. and this is just what I am wondering as I log on to Hotmail™.

Well, today I managed to crash Google Chrome properly for the first time. ( Not a good Google day today considering that Gmail™ is down as well ). So, irked slightly with Google I decided to use Safari for a while. I install it on most of my PC’s, though never really use it as it seems rather an affectation.

Safari has Apple.com as its home page and the first thing I was greeted with was the alert box below :

Yes, I am cackling wildly at the prospect of Safari crashing on Apple’s home page…This then reminded me of another, similar anomaly. Chrome, now my default browser is fast and sleek. It opens up quickly and has a great interface.

However, as with most people whose job entails search engine marketing I like to have the Google Toolbar Installed – it generates the PR Bar ( which is an interesting though not accurate representation of a site’s importance on the web in Google’s eyes ) and it has quick links to other useful SEO functions.“It’s free and installs in seconds”, boasts Google on the download page.I am, quite understandably beside myself with mirth when I receive the following alert :

When Google’s Toolbar Installer does not even recognise Google’s browser.

Hmm, I feel I should spend less time looking at the screen…..

Culinary Concepts came to us looking to renovate their existing site. They had had their current site for a few years but wanted to take it forward and improve its whole look and feel.

They had new branding and had carried out some beautiful product and lifestyle photography to complement their range of stunningly designed cutlery and homeware.

The new designs were extensivley analysed to allow an easy click path for customers and to make room for enlarged versions of the new product imagery.We also took their branding and looked at ways in which we could improve on the information architecture of their current site, to improve retention and conversion rates.

The site was also integrated with Protx online payment processing gateway which allows a secure online transaction to take place, removing the need for manual payment processing.

The result is an easily navigable ecommerce solution which works and looks good.

http://www.culinaryconcepts.co.uk

I had been using Gmail (Google’s web based email service) for a while and had been quite impressed by the speed and functionality of the application. The service allows a quick and intuitive access to all email whilst providing a high degree of spam protection. It was not long before I started having all my work emails forwarded to my Gmail account so that I could search them easily from anywhere and keep up to date with any work developments from a simple and fast interface which was also quite accessible from a PDA or mobile phone browser. Soon I wanted to use this interface for all my emails but when I added an account and sent emails from my work email address Gmail added the (on behalf of Sam, Juretic Media) to the email address field, obviously this was not going to look good for work purposes. It then occurred to me that it would be nice if one were able to somehow use Gmail on your domain. It was a good idea and one which happily occurred to Google before I had thought of it. A quick search found the starting point : Google Apps – Software-as-a-service for business email, information sharing and security.

Investigation

As email is a vital part of daily business for our company I was not going to rush this process so I started out my research with a personal domain. First you have to verify domain ownership by uploading a small HTML file to the root directory. You then change the MX Records (those which govern where emails to your domain are routed) for your domain to those of Google’s servers. This is stage one. You have now pointed all emails sent to your domain to Google. This went quickly and easily and within an hour of verification I was able to send and receive emails from the Gmail interface from my domain.

Implementation

For our work based email we needed a bit more careful planning. We have many email accounts, many of which had aliases associated with them. You can upload all of these via .csv but the manual process was only 30 minutes of work. As ever with a well made application the process was simple and intuitive. All members of our domain were informed of the impending change and we flicked the MX switch, moving away from our traditional route to Googlemail for our domain.

The experience

Luckily it seemed that we had not overlooked any issues before making the leap and it was not long before we all were experimenting with the new interface for our emails. Those of us accustomed to a folder structure as per Outlook© had to master Gmail’s labelling system. There are still those traditionalists is the office who have resolutely kept their grip on their traditional interfaces such as Outlook© or Macmail© but I think that they will see sense soon. For me, the realisation that one is no longer tied to a desk and that being part of the cloud is a real driving force. Setting up the email client on my smartphone via IMAP has also been a lesson in mobility. IMAP synchronises all folders simultaneously, meaning that you can respond to an email on your mobile and next time you login to the Google Apps interface you will see your mobile sent email in your sent items – beautiful.

“Cloud computing is a general concept that incorporates software as a service (SaaS), Web 2.0 and other recent, well-known technology trends, in which the common theme is reliance on the internet for satisfying the computing needs of the users. For example, Google Apps provides common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.” from the Wikipedia Cloud Computing

You see, suddenly you are absolved of the necessity to log on to a particular computer, or even to keep with the same OS (operating system) this is the web / workplace of tomorrow – no dependence on local RAM or Hard Drive space but just logging onto a sophisticated web based application.

The conclusion

It is still early days, the freedom that a perfectly web based email provides is a joy. The other facilities appear to be well featured but to tell the truth we are still getting to grips with them. We share all our calendars and documents now online and can see via sites that we will be able to collaborate more and more online and will reap the benefits of this tool in the long term. My hope is that there are many other companies out there doing the same and that the Google Apps arena will expand to include proper project management tools and time management applications to run through the system.

Every now and then you have one of those little problems, you are sure there must be a simple solution, yet for the life of you – you can’t find it.

Today I had the task of converting a few hundred supplied images into a useable format for web use. The supplied files were produced on a mac, and were free of defining extensions.
We Windows users do tend to find file extensions useful as do many online and offline applications.

Martin, our Senior Designer, who is recovering swiftly from allowing his 2 year old daughter to shave his head, managed to work out that the correct extension for these files would be a .tiff – (Tag Image File Format), having tried .eps , .bmp, .jpg and a few others.

I looked into the options available – those of you who have tried the Windows rename tool will understand that this was not the best way to proceed.

Initially I looked at Microsoft Picture Editor which, though not a great editor, has a very useful file renaming routine. The program, however, did not recognise the files I pointed it at as image files ( as they had no extensions ) – so refused to have anything to do with them. Next I researched several downloadable programs which promised to batch rename files, but had no real luck.

Ah, the joy of the Internet ( only last week I fixed my washing machine following advice on a forum), I found mention of a command line rename tool which I could use directly from Windows Vista. It recommended me to try opening up command line in the folder ( shift and right click ) I wished to edit :

ren *.* *.tiff

You can of course change the last bit to be anything.

As if by magic all files in the folder were immediately and swiftly renamed with the chosen extension.

Now that the files are viewable and editable Martin is batching them into .jpegs.

A year or so ago we accepted an application from a student from the University of Brighton who was studying for a BSc in Internet computing. He came highly recommended by his tutors, and represented himself well at interview.

Scott joined us in July 2007 and immediately became part of the team. His CSS, Design and Development skills were leapt upon and as he got better, so we urged him on the more.

A year went by with Scott more and more a valuable member of Juretic Media.

He commuted manfully, even often heavy with dissapointment following his antics on the football pitch.

Then the time came for Scott to leave Juretic and finish his degree and so we have wished him well and sent him on his way with a remote control helicopter, a life-time supply of noodles to help with his student life and a belly full of beer following a pretty good send off, that in true Juretic style, ended with him losing a shoe.

Scott has been a ray of sunshine and we shall miss his willingness to get stuck in and be apart of the team.

We wish Scott all the best for the future and will see him soon, when he comes to get his shoe.