As you can probably tell by that terrible pun and by looking at the site, there is definitly a subtle emphasis on humor which is there to show that something like emails and landing page which are all too often viewed as ‘boring’ and ‘templated’ don’t have to be! It’s still possible to have clear and consise messages and include a bit of ‘fun’ in the email designs. This is actually surprisingly good at getting conversions as it has been proven that people are more likely to purchase things when they’re in a good mood (Psychological Mind Tricks). In short, a bit of humour can be good for business and ‘Malcolm’ (That’s the name of our mail mammoth) knows this.

We’re working hard to get the full site live as soon as possible, but we’re taking on email campaigns and landing pages right now, so if you’ve got something that could benefit from having an email campaign with a bit of weight put behind it, head on over to Mail Mammoth and submit your project. It will make Malcom happy.

Malcolm the Mail Mammoth

Something quite drastic happened to the computing world last year, yet it doesn’t seem to have been talked about as much as we feel it should of been – for the first time more smartphones (such as the iPhone) were shipped than traditional desktop computers (http://vrge.co/yUpdDJ)! In other words that means that the little smartphone has now become more popular than the long-established personal computer.

That’s not the say that the traditional computer is dead, in fact shipments grew at around 15 percent (that’s around 414.6 million units.), compared to the previous year, however research group Canalys estimates that 487.7 million smartphones were shipped in 2011, which is an increase of over 60 percent from the 2010 shipping figures. Personally, here at Love Creative UK, we don’t believe that smartphones are going to be replacing computers, but they are quickly becoming the mobile device of choice, compared to more traditional mobile phones.

So what does this mean to website design? Well, accessing the internet is a lot easier on a smartphone than on older types of mobile devices, so somewhat unsurprisingly the number of people visiting websites via their mobiles has increased at an incredible rate. Now if you already have a website then there’s no reason to panic as most smartphones have a way of shrinking an existing website to display on a smaller screen. However if you’ve been thinking about getting your website redesigned then it’s definitely worth considering a ‘Responsive Web Design’.

Responsive Web Design (RWD) essentially means that a web site is crafted to use CSS3 media queries to adapt the layout to the environment that it is being viewed in. As a result, mobile (smartphone/tablet) users will have a similar experience and see similar content to Desktop users — but the content will be laid out in such a way to ensure that the content is readable without having to zoom or do any kind of resizing.

Here at Love Creative UK, we’ve already designed and built several responsive websites for our clients, including timsmotorhomes.co.uk and onlinepaydayloans.co.uk, so feel free to use our simple contact form, or why not give us a call on 01761 452042, to discuss how we can go about making you a website that’s prepared for the mobile revolution.

With the well-documented trend of smartphone growth, you’ll be glad that you did!

However a problem that I often have is being able to find the right choice of type for a project, so when I discovered this wonderful little resource that collects together a large selection of ampersands (207, to be exact) that are available through Typekit, I was a rather happy chap! It also includes a lovely little feature that lets you click on each one to go directly to the relevant typeface on typekit. www.jampersand.com/ampersands.html.

What this means is that a website should now work just as brilliantly for a mobile device as they do for a desktop, and that’s something that Tim’s Motor Homes took seriously. So when we redesigned their website we made sure it was designed to be fully scalable and responsive by using a fluid grid and harnessing the power of CSS3 media queries to ensure that the layout adapts to fit whatever size screen it’s being viewed on.

Tim's Motor Homes website on different sized displays

Knowing that people viewing the website using a small screen could easily have more trouble finding crucial information than those with larger screens, we kept the design clean and simple for everyone to understand. It’s straight to the point with a clear contrasting menu, obvious pricing structure, followed by who and how to contact for a booking.

The other main technical aspect besides making the build responsive was incorporating a calendar and booking form that interacted with each other enabling visitors to the site to click on a week of their choosing and make a booking for that period and disabling weeks that are already fully booked. This was achieved by harnessing the power of WordPress with a few additional plugins and a few snippets of custom jQuery code to make the site play nicely with some of the older versions of Internet Explorer.

View the website here – www.timsmotorhomes.co.uk

Are your audience on the move? Do you need a responsive website? Well give us a call on 01761 452042 and we’ll make sure your website looks as good on a mobile as it does on a desktop.

This is a belated blog post and as the event was so epic it seems a shame not to blog about it. Back in May Love Creative UK took part in a cycling event – The Tour of Wessex, with partners Step Success (we’re delivering their web development program).

The event was held over 3 days comprising of three routes covering 329 miles. Yes it was a huge challenge, that involved copious amounts of training, pasta, energy gels and jelly babies!

On the last day part of the route took us up Dunkery Beacon (the highest and steepest point/climb in Somerset).

I have to say the sense of achievement after was overwhelming and is something we will definitely be taking part in next year. Oh and we raised over £700 for the Dorset & Somerset Air Ambulance.

Here’s some data from the Tour…
Day 1 Garmin data
Day 2 Garmin data
Day 3 Garmin data

Catch Rod and Liam (first two riders in blue) right at the start of this video.

Now there has been a quite a few write-ups of the talks and how the day went already, so instead of simply adding to that noise we’re going to focus on some of the reasons why we think it’s good to attend the odd web design or web development conference.

One of the best things you (or your employees) will get out of a design conference is a huge amount of fresh ideas and inspiration. Even if you browse the web every day for inspiration you most-likely go about it using the same methods, end up on the same sites, and collect the same types of design. With a big design conference there’s no filter. You’re in a huge room completely saturated with professional design ideas.

In the case of the WDC2011, we were in the Bristol Odeon cinema. The room was full of developers, designers and students from across the UK, sat around chatting (or staring at their phones/laptops) until Alex Older, the event organiser, introduced himself and acted as our host for a series of excellent speakers and talks.

One of the criticisms of some developer conferences in the past has been that they often focused on discussing almost nothing but coding, which can be completely alienating if you haven’t written it yourself (or if you’re not primarily a full-on coder). However the Bristol WDC2011 was different! Hardly a line of code in site, instead simply an informal atmosphere, focusing on a lot of practical information, some design theory and just a touch of tomorrows web to get the audience excited!

We’re not going to write about all the talks, but you may like to look up the speakers, so the line-up for the WDC2011 was as follows:

Neil Dennis from Strawberry Soup
Rob Hawkes (@RobHawkes)
Ben Bodien (@bbodien) from Neutron Creations
Elliott Kember (@ElliottKember) from Riot
Paul Annett (@nicePaul)
John O’Nolan (john.onolan.org/ – @johnonolan)
Paul Boag (BoagWorld – @BoagWorld)

Bristol Web Developers Conference 2011 Speakers

One of the potential problems with a full days of of talks, is that it can actually lead to a bit of an inspiration overload if you try to take in and mentally note everything you see. Some good advice is to not exhaust yourself by thinking too hard about the inspiration you’re seeing. Why not take a quick photo of anything you like or at the very least bring a sketchpad (remember those old paper thing that were used before smart phones and laptops?) and quickly jot down and/or sketch anything you see that you think will come in handy later. Otherwise just have fun and let your brain catalogue what it will on autopilot. When you’re sitting at your desk the following week thinking about new design ideas, the things you saw at the conference will start resurfacing in your memory. Another good point is to find out what the conferences twitter tag is (Predictably the WDC was #WDC2001) and follow along with the tweet stream, as a lot of people will highlight a lot of the key points for you, and normally the speakers will tweet links to the slides of their talks a day of so after.

Another reason to attend a web design conference, apart from keeping an eye on what’s currently happening in the design community, is that design conferences are one of the best places to learn about where the industry is heading and what the next big thing might be. Years ago, speeches were being given regularly at design conferences about how social media would rule the world one day. Some enterprising individuals obviously paid close attention and obtained the coveted first mover advantage in what would become a huge market.

Finally, and whether you like it or not, you’ve chosen a career that demands constant evolution and education. You have two options: keep up or be left behind! Conference workshops, discussions and speeches will help educate you in the various subjects on your list of things you keep telling yourself you’ll take the time to learn but probably never will. As a designer and/or developer, every new marketable talent you pick up increases your knowledge, skillset and competitive advantage.

To sum up…
All in all a fantastic day of listening and learning in Bristol, and one we hope to attend again in future!

For the past couple of years we have resided happily in a compact office in Chew Stoke, but as we have grown, so has our need for more space, so finding a bigger working space was inevitable. Luckily our new studio is not too far from our previous one (about 7 miles), but it happens to be set in the picturesque location of Farrington Gurney over looking the golf course. It’s definitely a step up in terms of the view and hopefully it will help to inspire even more great design and web development work from us!

It’s quite a bit larger than our previous studio, (we still have one empty room, ear-marked for the table football) so we have lots of space to expand into. We still have a little bit of feng shui to be doing, so some of the desks will be being rearranged and we have yet to paint one of the walls our trademark shade of green, and pictures to hang, but for now check out some of the photos of the new Love Creative UK studio below:

Glass table with the word Love wrote in many languages!

The Love Creative tools of the trade

The new Love Creative office view

The Love Creative developers huge desk

Okay, to start with is….

A NEW WEBSITE FOR MARKETING CONSULTANCY UK

Marketing Consultancy are a brand new marketing company offering quality, cost effective, outsourced marketing services for small to medium sized businesses.

After a quick meeting (over lunch) and with brief in hand I hastily made my way back to brief the project in to our developer/designer – Liam. The requirement was a professional, friendly looking site that would gain the trust of business owners who are in need of 1. Good, sound business advice, and 2. Hardworking marketing material (online and off) to drive their businesses forward.

With this in mind we created and presented several different designs for the website and brand. The feedback was positive and after a few tweaks here and there we got the go ahead to start development.

The whole website is developed on WordPress (at client request to enable in-house updates) and benefits from a lightbox/jQuery powered portfolio section, dynamically updated content scripts and social network integration.

The finished result is a bright, friendly, functional website that provides the user with an informative, easy to navigate web experience (oh, and a very happy client).

Project also included:
The set up and branding of social network accounts on Facebook and Twitter

www.marketingconsultancy.co.uk

O.K., I am going to admit that the reason I encourage the design studio to join StumbleUpon was part of a strategy that the “SEO [Search Engine Optimization] Gurus” recommend to create backlinks to your blog content from social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit. Sites like google seem to value the more links you have from other sites, the higher your SEO will be and Stumbelupon is a easy way of doing it. Now I can see why some people may say that, but I disagree that it would work for all websites because just by thumbing up your own blog posts you are not gaining any significant additional traffic to your website unless something about the design or the content is genuinely unique or the content has some interest to the viewer.

Below is snapshots of google analytics site visit numbers for 3 different websites.

Total PFS Website Stats

Vale Hallow Website Stats

Villa Petalutha Website Stats

The first is for Total PFS, which is a supplier of print finishing equipment (a very specialised industry).

The second is for Vale Hallow Farm Livery which is based in Somerset (probably only of interest to people in that area).

The third is for Villa Petalutha which is a luxury holiday villa in Corfu, Greece (has a wide appeal, as anyone who is thinking about taking a holiday could be interested in booking it).

From my own analysis, after stumbling several different websites that we have designed and coded here in the Love Creative UK design studio, it is clear that the sites that have a wider appeal to the general public gain more popularity among the Stumbleupon user base.

So Yes, Using StumbleUpon Will Lead to More Traffic to Your Website…Organically but it helps to keep in mind what kind of website will get the best responses after being stumbled!
At the end of the day, similar to a Twitter ReTweet, as you stumble more content and hopefully start discovering a lot of new content that has yet to be stumbled, you will gain new subscribers who will see more and more of your content. But should you have the right content, have created the right relationships on StumbleUpon, and have shared thousands of websites and thus have become a “StumbleUpon Channel” for others, the potential rewards for traffic back to your own website could be huge.
I have only been using SU in a business way over the last few months, so I am still discovering new ways of using it. Heavy users, I am sure, have longer lists of benefits. But hopefully the above will convince you to stop sitting on the sidelines and start stumbling!

How have your experiences been? Do you prefer another social bookmarking site to it?
And please feel free to subscribe to our content on StumbleUpon by clicking the link! stumbler/LoveCreativeUK

The recently constructed villa now has a recently constructed website. A minimalist approach was taken so as not take attention away from the villa itself. Portrayed beautifully by the stunning photography of Paul Lund & Indira Flack. In fact so good is the photography that is wasn’t that difficult for us to design and build a nice looking site. The site features jQuery image sliders and Typekit, which allows us to use custom fonts which are not traditionally websafe.

We’ve booked our holiday already – check it out www.villapetalutha.com while there are still some weeks available…