Ideas for business and general life thoughts, as I trawl through the digital space.
Simon Surtees is Business Development Manager @i-KOS, a marketing agency, and is responsible for overseeing strategy in the digital sector.
He can be usually found reading articles about user benefit & experience, doing the Times crossword or trying to cure his eternal golf slice.
Specialist knowledge: Analytics, Adwords, Wireframes, Affiliation, Web design & coding, Prototypes, Ecommerce, Customer Acquisition Models, Conversion, Drupal, Javascript & different types of CMS.
He can be reached via email at simon@i-kos.com or on social hubs like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Delicious. Alternatively, give him a call at the office : 01322 277255.
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NB: Everything posted on this site is his personal opinion. It does not represent the views of i-KOS or its clients, but hopefully it's pretty similar!
The Birth of Inbound Marketing: Infographic
Filed under //
infographic
Posted by Simon Surtees
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Screen size & the Myth of below the fold
A somewhat misleading graphic, and something that I must admit; in the past, I paid too much attention to.
Scrolling (vertically) is not a disease to be avoided at all costs. In fact recent evidence suggests that conversion rates are BETTER when a page requires scrolling, because, derrr, well there's more content. More content = better visitor engagement = better conversion. So while I like infographics to tell a story, just be careful what it's actually saying. There is merit in using a tool like this from Google, as it does demonstrate at-a-glance, some obvious omissions in design (such as scrolling horizontally!), just don't let it affect all your thinking. From http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/
Posted by Simon Surtees
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10 techie things I liked : 2009
Tis the season and all that...
Posterous
Tweetdeck
Dropbox
Spotify
Omniplan
Skitch
Google St View
Jquery
Drupal
Prezi
Posted by Simon Surtees
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Issuu Goes Mobile
Issuu is a great app for the web, so I'm pleased to see this has been adapted for Mobile. If you're unaware of Issuu.com, and you like the 'magazine style' of reading content, then you're definitely missing out.
Issuu creates fantastic interactive page-turners without the high cost; flash functionality, and all you need to is to upload a PDF. Brilliant.
Posted by Simon Surtees
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Sprize - would you credit it?
A nifty little idea from mysprize.com. As you can see from the graphic, they credit the difference to your account if you make a purchase and the price drops in the next 45 days. The sceptic in me (I strive not to meander into cynicism) says this can be completely automated so it never happens, but from a customer's perspective, fantastic added value!
Only currently available in Gap stores in the Vancouver area, I can see this idea catching on.
Posted by Simon Surtees
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Using Drupal with your ERP (MRP)
First, some numbers
Over the course of the last year, we have worked on 34 Drupal projects: some in development, some completed. What surprises me is not the number; a web development company with a growing portfolio of clients has to have a healthy number of projects. No, what surprises me is how we are beginning to extend the power of the Drupal platform.
When we made the decision to move from our proprietary platform, Sitesolved, last year, our rationale was to embrace a system which did the cool stuff we wanted to do: interactive blogs, media handling, dynamic forums, twitter & facebook integration etc. The groundswell of the 'tech' crowd using geeky systems is evaporating - as interfaces and software becomes user-friendly, the barriers to entry for non-tech users also disappears. I see it everywhere, and it's truly a great thing. As such, we knew we pull our socks up, provide a platform that our business users would appreciate, and ultimately, create something which brings real operational value.
Where's the value?
Real operational value. Ah, now that is where the lines have blurred. Moving our CMS was not a decision we took lightly, and we deliberately only used simple sites as our learning ground. Pages, media, forms. A bit of a lightbox effect here and there thrown in. Nothing particularly complex, but enough to show that Drupal was our particular way forward (I intend to blog more about this process to assist other developers & agencies separately). After doing a few projects however, things noticeably changed. Blogs, check. Funky Jquery integration, check. Useful catalogues, check. As we've gathered steam, we've hit all of our intended goals much earlier than planned: which is testament to the team & Drupal. We've fulfilled our brief. Or have we?
Website vs web application
I digress. Websites are our 'bread and butter', but we've always had a healthy crop of web applications in our portfolio. Due to NDAs we can't always talk about them, but after a quick SWOT analysis, I can see that they contribute to almost half of our web turnover. HALF! But, here's the point. All of these have been done with JAVA, PHP, FLEX, and a range of other technologies. Until now.
Extending to drupal to MRP
I recently came across the attached PDF from The Orchestra Team http://www.orchestrateam.com/blogs/were-presenting-pacific-northwest-drupal-summit as it's fair to say it's struck a chord. It's exactly what we've been doing for the last few months.
(download)
Our clients want business solutions, and these are now extending to full end integration with their chosen Inventory management system. I'm really interested to see how others are approaching this, and the Orchestra team seem to have nailed it. Strangely, we've only implemented this with Microsoft so far (via the XML / RPC protocol), but I've had 4 such requests within the last 6 weeks alone.
Maybe 'websites' won't be our bread and butter after all for 2010.
I'd love to hear from anyone else who's working on similar projects.
Posted by Simon Surtees
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Short of an idea for your next million?
via pentagram.com
Questionable patents! If you're on the hunt for what's gonna be big in 2010, then you need to review some selected patents from the last 12 months. As it's been said 'Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it' (sic), then this is an obvious starting place to decide on your next entrepreneurial venture.
I've gotta get me a bacon comb (for research purposes, obviously).
Posted by Simon Surtees
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