Working with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) and Microsoft, we helped build functionality for a new, customisable ‘ClickCEOP’ browser developed for Internet Explorer 9.

Specifically, Cubeworks:

• Added functionality to the CEOP and ThinkUKnow sites for the IE9 browser. This enables users to pin the websites directly to their task bar in Windows 7 for easy access.
• Developed a browser module that receives CEOP feeds on a user’s Facebook, YouTube and Twitter accounts, notifying users of any new items that have been posted, and of any new News or Most Wanted postings on the CEOP website.

In the following Sky News report Martin Stanford talks to Ian Moulster about the new browser we helped develop:

So, to help unravel the myriad of information, my aim here is to be as direct as possible, and give you the key facts you need to know:

• A Cookie is a file that is downloaded to your browser whenever you visit a website.  It is often used to capture information about you (for example your internet/IP address), or detect settings on your computer so that the content of the website you’re visiting is displayed in a particular way. It can also track every click you make on a page.
• Analytics; embedded YouTube videos; Slideshare presentations; any kind of widget; social log-in buttons and many other items, all use Cookies.
• This law does not apply to just Cookies, however, but to all forms of online tracking devices used to gather information on the user.
• Cookies used for essential functions are excluded from the new legislation, for example: when used to remember the contents of a ‘shopping basket’ or personal preferences set by a user themselves.
• Where tracking is non-essential, the user must be asked to give their consent on your website – this is only required the first time the user visits your website. This is potentially a very big change for most websites, as it means interrupting the user on your website and asking them to ‘opt-in’.
• In addition, remembering & storing users’ preferences which they have not selected themselves manually, or collecting statistical info also needs consent.
•  You have to explain within your website what all those Cookies are for, and what each one/type does.

Current industry opinion is there will be an exception made for Web Analytics (Google Analytics being the most widely used) as data is anonymous and ‘non-intrusive’, so it’s unlikely the Information Commissioner (ICO) would take any formal action in these cases.

However, this isn’t the official line yet.  Worryingly there is startling evidence that when you explicitly advise the user that you are using Cookie-based analytics software and then give them an ‘opt in,’ this significantly impacts your stats.  As we noted on the Cubeworks blog, when the ICO implemented ‘optin’ themselves, they showed a drop of up to 90% of tracked visitors.

Cubeworks are currently looking at ways of making Cookie ‘opt-in’ as unobtrusive and easy as possible, the important thing being to tailor a solution to your site that is best suited to your users.

In the meantime we can suggest a 4-point action plan to help you become compliant.

The Cubeworks 4-point Cookie Action Plan:

1. Conduct a Cookie audit (this includes other forms of gathering user data).

2. Detail what type of Cookies are used by your website and what they do.

3. Document remedial action & technical solution for each type of tracking – having a plan is going to be essential if the ICO come knocking, even if it is not implemented.

4. If you choose, implement the remedial action recommended.

It’s ultimately up to you whether you implement the changes or not to adhere to the rules, but there could be heavy penalties if you don’t – up to a maximum of £500,000. If you would like Cubeworks to assist, I suggest getting your plan in place in earlier rather than later as there will be a rush in the lead up to May. Things may change again between now and then around legislation, so keep an eye on comments of this post and our Blog for any updates.

Today it is 10 years since I migrated along the South coast to Brighton and founded Cubeworks, and what a journey it has been. Inevitably, there have been ups and, of course, there have been downs, but one thing’s for certain, there’s never been a dull moment.

The Cubeworks gang have been asking me today how I feel about it all, 10 years on. Well, in a nutshell, I can honestly say I feel proud; proud to still be going strong in a rapidly-changing global economy, proud to be a good employer in Brighton, proud to have built a great team around me and, most importantly, proud of the work that we do.

Yesterday, I was reflecting on the past decade, and thought to myself: “What’s the main thing I take away from the journey?”. Well, I’d say it’s how little I knew about running a business back in 2002! But on the flip side, it is also the realisation of how much I’ve needed to be open to listening, to learning, and to change, in order to be an effective leader.

10 things I’ve learned along the way

This led me onto thinking it would perhaps be worthwhile noting the top 10 things I’ve learned over those 10 years, so here goes:

1. Get peer support - I can’t stress how crucial this has been to my personal growth. By peers, I mean, in particular, fellow business owners. Whilst industry networking is important of course, until you have run a business, you can never fully appreciate what it feels like to have it spinning around your mind all day long. Nattering with your peers is wonderful therapy: you get to see problems from new angles and even just knowing people have to deal with similar problems to you can be very calming. A big hat tip must go to the MDHub in Brighton, which connected me to other MDs and contributed greatly to the MD I am today. Nowadays, I work with a couple of great consultants, who’ve “been there and done it”, who challenge our strategy and, critically, who give me deadlines to hit. I am quite lazy at heart and I can’t imagine not having someone telling me when to do stuff – I’d never get anything done.

2. Sales, sales, sales – To survive as a business, you need to sell. It’s as simple as that. Particularly in a service-based business like Cubeworks, a visible MD is key to its success. You need to be closely involved in sales, you need to network, you need to talk at events, you need to be known in your industry. Quite simply, people want to deal with the MD, people want to hear your passion. So I make sure I’m out and about several times a week.

3. Your team is everything – As a young buck just starting out, I guess I probably didn’t value this one enough in the early days, but I certainly do now. Making sure you build a team of people that can work really well and effectively together is crucial. Sure, skills are important, but even if someone is maybe lacking experience in certain areas,  if they’re bright, you can teach them anything. So, rather than focus exclusively on experience, instead, now we recruit primarily on attitude and personality. For the past few years or example, amongst other things, we’ve been using Belbin personality profiling when recruiting any new candidates, and which has proved invaluable in building the right balance of people.

4. Your team are constantly analysing you – As a leader, I’ve found that the team might analyse things in detail that you’ve said or done (or not said or not done) that you thought were innocuous. I remember, for example, 5 or 6 years ago when we were a team of about 7 people, I bought an office toy, which I thought would be a fun thing for everyone to enjoy. Months later however, it transpired that someone thought the team should have had a higher bonus than the company ’squandering’ money on toys (it was about £30!). So, something done with all the best intentions had pissed someone right off. A tough lesson but, to this day, I regularly recall this story as a note to self.

5. Grow people within – I am a massive fan of recruiting junior staff and nurturing them within the business – they are keen, willing to learn (and are less likely to have picked up bad habits along the way!). We try to follow this policy whenever we can and we’ve had some notable successes on this front in the past few years.

6. Recruit better people than you – It’s an old adage, but a great one. Stick to your strengths – mainly being the face of the business & leader in my case – and grow a management team of experienced specialists around you. I have grown a fantastic management team around me now who add ideas, give me different angles, challenge my constant stream of crazy ideas, tell me to shut up and who are just there to support me when the chips are down. If anything, I just wish I’d grown our management team sooner.

7. Partnerships are crucial to growth – Sales are critical, so take full advantage of every opportunity where others can do it all for you. Another approach I wish I’d exploited more rapidly, but one which is critical to our continuing growth.

8. Be prepared - If you were a boy scout, then this won’t be news to you but, preparation is crucial.  Whether it’s before a pitch, a team meeting, an event – whatever – time to review and practice is never time wasted. In particular, I try never to leave anything until the morning before to finish off, as people always need more time than they think… and if it’s all done and dusted I can sleep more soundly too.

9. Learn to switch off – I say “learn”, as it can be hard. I am constantly thinking about how I can tweak and improve the business, but even I need a holiday sometimes. Personally I find I can’t switch off immediately, it takes me 2-3 days to wind down, so I tend to phase out the email checking at the beginning of a holiday and gradually I find I can properly relax. I think knowing what works for you is key. I know several MDs who have had their “most stressful holiday ever” purely because they had tried to switch off immediately, which had stressed them out even more. I have to say, I can sympathise.

10. Have a clear vision – Arguably, I’ve saved the most important thing until last. If you know what you want to achieve both personally and as a business, then all your strategies and goals flow from that big fat objective. As Lewis Carroll once said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there”. I wish I’d realised sooner how critical this is to long term success, but at least I do now, and it’s reaping dividends.

So, once again, Happy Birthday Cubeworks!

Here’s to the next 10 years of success and hopefully 10 more important things I will learn to do better.

I’d love to hear what things other leaders have learned!

An austerity squeeze

2011 has been a shocker for the economy. There’s less money going round, and clients are being rightfully cautious about appointing new suppliers and approving web projects. What money there is has to really demonstrate a return. If things look to be tight for years to come, how might this affect the web design industry?

Big web agencies will continue to win work due to their size and ‘all under one roof’ promise, but the higher internal collaboration costs mean some hard questions might be asked in 2012, like “what percentage of my big web budget will actually be spent on the final product?” Could it have been delivered sooner and for less without affecting the quality?

Small companies with capable teams offering specialised services will fare well this year because they are lean, efficient and fit a niche. They will be pulled in to add the greatest value to specific parts of a larger web project.

I think the squeeze will mostly be felt by the many medium-sized ‘full-service’ agencies who can’t bring something specific to market, and who offer mediocre or outmoded web design services. It’s a process of natural selection which can’t be resisted.

Big bangs & little pops

In this economic climate, the traditional big-bang redesign mentality needs to change radically or die out. By ‘big bang’ I mean the assumption that every three years you need to spend a chunk of money to reinvent your website which gets launched amid a fanfare of marketing effort. It’ll turn heads for the first few months, look good for another year, then become a bit stale and outdated the following year while budget is gathered and arguments against a redesign become less and less tenable.

It’s a bizarre cycle. Why spend a lot of money to guess upfront what the market needs three years down the line? It’s risky, and always requires more upfront exploratory work (and therefore cost) to have the conviction to proceed based on this (more-or-less) educated guesswork.

So what’s the opposite of a ‘big bang’ approach to design? It’s an ongoing sequence of ‘little pops’ that don’t expend all the resources in one meticulously planned and designed final execution, but rather an ongoing process of trying things out, watching how well they work, and periodic pruning into a better shape.

A key ingredient in the ‘little pops’ approach is trust between client and supplier. Such projects need to start quickly and lightly; the exact conditions of project completion are not exhaustively documented; it’s an iterative approach. For these reasons, it suits either a healthy existing relationship, or a new relationship based on extensive getting to know one another and clarity around responsibility and approach.

Simplicity & focus

Back in November 2009, Luke Wroblewski was already proposing an approach to web design called ‘Mobile First’ in which he argued that the challenge of designing mobile experiences should benefit all users’ web experiences by demanding simplicity and focus.

This ruffled a lot of peoples’ feathers, because it calls for a rethink of what a web design actually is. Are all those signposts really needed? Are those secondary and tertiary calls-to-action improving the user experience? What about all those cross-marketing links that are so handy for filling in that awkward white space? In short, why shouldn’t the ‘desktop’ version of a website benefit from this simplicity and focus too?

Supporting this is a trend for the lean or ‘just enough’ design approach that has found favour among startups and the many independent web-based products and services that have sprung up recently.

Starting simply is easy for a startup, but what about the rest of you? Well, to shift toward a ‘little pops’ approach, some serious pruning is the order of the day. It’s time to challenge every bit of your business to be as lean, mean and keen as possible, and this includes your large and complex website.

At Cubeworks, we always aim to formalise a set of measurable goals for both your business and your users, and to run every existing assumption, process and system past these goals to see what might be pruned, automated or integrated. This activity doesn’t take very long, costs a fraction of a ‘big bang’ budget, and doesn’t lock you into one particular supplier. It’s what you need to to do to prepare your existing site to weather the economic storm ahead. If your website IS your business, then this should be top of your list when thinking about your web strategy for the next three to five years.

So what’s it all going to look like?

A big factor in 2012 will be the continuing rise in the variety of ways people can access the web. I’ve covered this before, but in a nutshell, it’s becoming impossible for a business to look at any single visual design and say “That’s what we look like on the web.” A page needs to let itself be carved up, resized, stretched and split into modular components so that it all rejigs perfectly into any one of the many possible web browser sizes it might find itself placed in.

So I think in 2012, page designs will become simpler and learn to fill up the available screen size appropriately instead of being, say, a minuscule, centre-aligned article in a 12 pixel font squinted at on an internet-ready TV from the comfort of your sofa.

If you really want a colour prediction, then I’ll support Pantone’s prediction that 2012 will be all about Tangerine Tango. Enjoy!

We’re delighted to announce the launch of the redesigned CIRAS website.  CIRAS is the Confidential Incident Reporting & Analysis System for the UK rail industry, which allows rail workers and the public to report safety issues, which can they be addressed by the rail companies, thus improving the overall safety of the network.

It was important to CIRAS that the new website:

• Helped to improve their image within the rail industry
• Encouraged the reporting of safety issues, and
• Increased their reach, proactively spreading CIRAS’ safety message

Highlights of the site include:

• Umbraco CMS powers a faceted search on hundreds of rail health and safety articles
• A responsive design which responds to the screen resolution of the visitor; so whether they are using a mobile, tablet or a large desktop monitor, the website will display content in the most appropriate format.

We’re very proud of the end result, and are looking forward to seeing how the site performs in 2012.

]]> http://www.cubeworks.co.uk/cubeworks-news/a-new-safety-website-for-the-uk-rail-industry/feed/ 1 http://www.cubeworks.co.uk/cubeworks-news/a-new-safety-website-for-the-uk-rail-industry/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CubeworksBlog/~3/EgXZZanNEuw/ http://www.cubeworks.co.uk/cubeworks-news/solving-santas-christmas-credit-crunch/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:50:13 +0000 Jesse Speak http://www.cubeworks.co.uk/?p=2891 So, the geese are getting fat while the flagging Eurozone is looking remarkably thin and hungry. The whole world is having to tighten belts and find ways to cut out waste, including one of our longest-standing clients Chrimbo Holdings Inc. Their CEO, Nick Claus, was a bit stuck for ideas, but he knew Cubeworks to be a hive of idea-ridden geniuses so he threw us the challenge of seeing how he could transform his organisation to beat the crunch.

Here, we present the results:

We’ve come a long way from those halcyon days of the 1990s where websites were a few content pages and a handful of forms; now, a business’s website is a gateway to all of its business systems with an ever increasing number of business processes automated.

Underneath the surface of a modern website, complex code and systems work in harmony to give the customer what they expect and make the business more efficient. And with increasing integration with IT systems, this underlying technology will keep getting more complex. This presents a real challenge for designers.

Usability is more critical than ever

With customer expectations and website complexity increasing ever more, it is all too easy for website interfaces to become cluttered and unusable. So it is more important than ever to make it easy for them; or, in web speak, to focus on the usability. In this day and age, I advise clients to keep remembering  this little mantra: usability sells.

When designing your website, there is one important thing to remember: it is not yours, it belongs to your users. They are the ones with the problems that you are trying to solve and they must find it a joy to use. The benefits of offering customers great usability can be far more reaching than you might have thought.

Some areas where you might get a better return on investment from focusing on website usability:

• Increased sales or member sign-ups – an example might be making a checkout process easier, with no distractions or blocks

• Satisfied customers are loyal customers – if they are happy with their experience, they will return

• Increased productivity (internal systems) – making tasks easier for staff saves time, can decrease training need and reduce customer service costs

How can I improve the usability of my website?

You probably already know what you are trying to achieve with your digital strategy, or what the internal process issues are in your business. If you don’t, take a step back and identify your business objectives and be totally clear on what you want the results to be. This will give you a clear starting point to identify which areas of your websites or systems to focus on first.

There are a number of techniques that are used to improve usability. Here are some suggestions as to how you can get the sorts of results I have mentioned above:

• Analytics analysis – your website stats will show you where users are dropping out of the sales funnel so you can focus on the right step

• Run focus groups – find out what users really want from your company and your website – you’re sure to discover a few gems which you can address via your website

• Test your existing site on your users – recruit a handful of your customers (maybe in our usability lab!), and record them browsing your site (we have clever software that records their session on video) and find out what users find easy and what not.

• Test your new ideas – if you are going to assume something, test it, you’ll find out soon enough if you are doing the right thing. If you listen, your users will trust you. Use a prototype of your site, with real content if possible, and see what they think. Are they getting the message? What confuses them? What’s stopping them from finishing your sales process?

Measuring the ROI

If you’re going to spend time improving usability, it is critical you track the right metrics so you can measure what you are trying to achieve. Analyse improvements against your budget spend, so then track the ROI accordingly.

1. Tracking conversions – Basic analytics (Google Analytics, say) is great, but a simple implementation will give you limited data for analysis. Spend some time implementing advanced tracking across the site that is aligned to your business objectives.
2. Customer loyalty – Follow up any usability improvements with customer surveys – aim to score higher satisfaction and loyalty.
3. Increased productivity – Set some benchmarks, such as the time needed to perform key tasks. Then translate this into cost savings.

For all of the above, re-test and review on a regular basis so you can continue to prove to your superiors how critical usability is to your success.

Focusing on usability makes sense

There’s nothing new about ensuring a website is easy to use. It’s just about good design. Focus groups and user testing have been present in other communication channels, such as television, for years, but they seem to be an after-thought for many digital initiatives. The irony is that digital is interactive, so website usability is paramount to success.

If you make it simple for your users, they will repay you with purchases and loyalty. Next time you think about what your business needs to achieve, start by thinking about what they would do.

And just remember: usability sells.

Personalisation tailors your website content to suit individual customers. Personalisation acknowledges who the customer is and what they want from their visit. It helps the customer find what they need… and see what you want them to see.

You might begin by locating them geographically and displaying content local to their region. As you get to know them better, you could greet them by name and make purchasing recommendations. At any level, personalisation can have a dramatic impact on conversion rates, campaign success and customer satisfaction. To realise the power of personalisation, let’s first consider it from the customer’s perspective.

The Personalisation Experience

Imagine you’re planning a romantic weekend getaway for you and your partner. You type ‘romantic weekend break’ into Google and follow a link to The Overlook Hotel.

Golf is not what you had in mind! You hit the Back button and the Hotel loses a potential customer. But imagine if the site were personalised: it recognises your keywords and displays a ‘romantic’ version of the content.

That looks more like it! You explore the site and book a spa weekend. You feel good about your choice… unaware of the mechanics that lead you to your decision.

So what is a TLD?

The top level domain is the dot-whatever on the end of your website domain name, for instance .com, .co.uk, .gov, .net etc. The most common existing TLD’s fall into the category of being either a country code TLD, such as .co.uk, or a generic TLD (GTLD), such as .com

So what does this mean?

This news means that any word could now potentially sit on the end of your website name. So instead of your website address being www.mycompany.com, it could be www.whateveryoulikehere.mycompany.

This could potentially revolutionise the way that people market their companies and the services offered by websites, not to mention change email addresses and everything else associated with a domain name.

Additionally, it’s now possible to have a GTLD made of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Cyrillic and Arabic, meaning that domain names can be completely internationalized. Imagine for a moment that you don’t understand any language that uses a Latin character set, and you have to write the name of an English website. It would be like having to remember how to write a word in Chinese, without knowing how to write Chinese. With these changes a website can be made instantly more accessible by having internationalized domain names.

As we move forward into the new decade, the traditional TLD’s that we are so used to could become an aged thing of the past.

Really?

While this opens up the doors for new domain names, the problem is that people will have to acquire sole ownership of their GTLD, and this is not as straightforward a task as you might think, not to mention very expensive. The process of applying is rumoured to take you into the region of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the nature of the application will also require heavy technical involvement from specialists. This won’t stop at the application either, because someone will need to be managing the domains underneath this GTLD, for which you will also need money to market. In the event that more than one organization has applied for the same GTLD and neither will back down, it will go to auction, which will end up being a case of seeing how much money they are prepared to front in order to get it. To sum up, you’re going to need a lot of money to invest in this.

So who is doing this?

At the moment it’s not completely known who has applied for ownership of any new GTLD’s, although there are several unofficial lists lurking around on the internet. This information will be made publically known in April 2012 by ICANN once the first wave of GTLD applications has been reviewed.

Most of the known applications tend to be for either regional GTLD’s (e.g. .london or .nyc), or branded GTLD’s using a company name. However, there also seems to be several other generic categories that these GTLD’s fall into. Some of these include:

• Charity/NFP (.green, .eco)
• Sport (.ski, .surf, .bike)
• Commercial (.news, .shop, .bank)
• Technology (.web, .app, .site, .mail)
• Demographic (.kids, .gay)
• Entertainment (.radio, .film)

As you can see from the list, it will be possible to categorise your website under just about any GTLD you can think of. It’s not clear yet who exactly has been applying for these GTLD’s, and the same issue that effects normal domain names also exists for GTLD’s but on a greater scale. Just because somebody has bought up the .mycompany GTLD, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are from ‘mycompany’.

There will no doubt be many companies investing in GTLD’s just as they did with regular domain names back in the .com boom. Also, it’s not just those with the initial capital to purchase a GTLD that can benefit from this, but also those who are offering consultancy and provisional services that will make it easier for others to do so.

Do I need to do anything about this?

The short and most likely answer to this is no. If you own an SME then it’s simply not economically feasible to be investing in your own GTLD at this point. However, in a year or so it will be possible to buy domain names within a GTLD like some of the ones above, which will give SME’s and other organisations the means to market their website and online presence in this new way.

The ability to do this could differ depending on who owns the GTLD, so like with many of the existing GTLD’s there may be certain criteria needed to be met in order to acquire a certain domain name (for instance, you will probably need to be a banking related company to buy a domain ending in .bank).

Even if you’re not going to buy a GTLD or rebrand your site, you may still want to look at what new domain names become available.

On the other hand, if you are a global giant then this is something you should already really know about and at least be investigating, otherwise you could be left behind in the market or have a GTLD with your brand name bought up by a third party.

For companies who operate entirely online, it could be in their interest to keep the .com part of their domain name, as ultimately it’s this part of the name that identifies themselves within their market and highlights that their service is online. If the next era of the web see’s these new GTLD’s start to dominate then it will be interesting to see how these online service brand names react to these changes.

At this stage it’s too early to predict the buy-in and outcome of these developments, but it’s definitely something to keep watch of over the next few years.

With its open architecture, Umbraco is well-suited to being integrated with leading CRM and ERP systems such as Microsoft Dynamics  and Salesforce CRM, which Cubeworks specialises in integrating.

Jonathan Sewell is our first Umbraco certified developer, we aim to have all our development team certified by the first quarter of 2012. We already have 2 Umbraco projects in development and we foresee many more to come, due to its impressive flexibility and ease of use.

If you want to discuss how Umbraco might work for your project please call us on 01273 733373 or email hello@cubeworks.co.uk.