theEword Academy: Designing a great website

Monday, July 13, 2009 by Stephen Dixon

Stephen Dixon, web designer at theEword, tells us how he goes about creating a perfect website

Creating a website requires experience and technical expertise. A design has to satisfy a client and attract a user and much like my copywriting colleagues, it is my responsibility to produce a product which serves two masters. There are a number of factors to consider when creating a website. Here are just four.

Stick to the brief

I rely on the brief to form the foundation of a design; it is the structure which I build a website around. As any good designer will tell you, a brief sparks the imagination. You create a vivid picture of how a website will look based on the desires of a client.

Have the experience

Having worked in web design for seven years, I am able to utilise my experience to create functional and stylish websites. As a designer, you learn what works and what does not. You can draw on previous briefs and commissions to create attractive and practical websites.

Experience is key in web design. This allows me to incorporate designs and ideas from similar projects; each brief is an opportunity for designers to develop a theme or motif into something more.

Be aware of current trends

It is important to stay ahead of current creative trends. Websites need to be fresh, engaging and innovative. Only by keeping abreast of the latest techniques can you hope to keep producing appealing designs – for both the user and the client.

Know your audience

Working for a full-service digital agency like theEword gives me the opportunity to understand the user. As a designer, it is vital I know as much about the audience as possible. Working with Mark Baker (Online marketing manager at theEword), I am able to understand exactly who I am designing for. This allows me to alter my designs in order to directly appeal to the intended individual.

theEweekly Wrap

Sunday, July 12, 2009 by Tom Mason

Chrome Collaboration

A number of laptop developers have agreed to produce netbooks which use the new Google Chrome operating system.

Acer, Asus, Freescale, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba are among companies that have signed up to design and build laptops capable of using the OS from the search engine.

A statement of the Google blog has also confirmed the search company are working closely with Adobe on the production of the system. Adobe are responsible for the popular online tool Flash.

Jackson memorial boosts web traffic

The memorial of pop singer Michael Jackson drew a 19 per cent rise in global web traffic. The televised tribute concert was streamed live on a number of different websites, including the BBC, CNN and Fox News. A statement from the BBC said the live coverage of the event was accessed over 410,000 times in the United Kingdom.

American news channel CNN partnered with social media site Facebook to cover the memorial. The collaboration gave users the opportunity to watch the live coverage while simultaneously updating their personal status. It is reported that the memorial service inspired over 6,000 status updates per minute.

Page-turner: US Department of Justice to investigate Google book deal

The Department Of Justice in the United States is to conduct an investigation into the proposed deal between Google and the US publishing industry.

The US Department of Justice has confirmed it is conducting a formal investigation to ascertain whether or not the arrangement could be considered anti-competitive. Millions of book titles would be digitised and available for search, purchase and download from Google if the scheme goes ahead.

Authors’ Guild Director Paul Aiken declared the project “the biggest book deal in US publishing history,” while Sergey Brin of Google called it a “great leap.”

Brin, co-founder of the search giant, expressed every confidence that the deal would go ahead.

Popularity contest

The social networking site Twitter has banned a social marketing campaign from appearing in the top ten ‘Trending Topics’.

The web design agency Moonfruit offered Twitter users the chance to win one of 10 MacBook Pros if they used a #Moonfruit tag in their updates. The campaign quickly made its way to the top of Twitter’s trend topic list after word of the competition spread through Twitter community.

The #Moonfruit tag has since been removed from Twitter’s trend topics list. Wendy Tan, marketing director of Moonfruit, said the campaign had been removed without notice.

She commented:

“If Twitter had come to us and said enough is enough, then we would have worked with it to limit the campaign, or complied with whatever it was demanding. However, they've pulled the trending without explanation or communication, which sets rather a different tone.”

Growth still good as theEword announces latest contract win

Monday, July 06, 2009 by Dan Nolan

From the very beginning, when we launched theEword with the mantra 'Growth Is Good', we have been a company that is dedicated to growing. Indeed, we are an agency that specialises in helping our clients to grow business, nurture their web presence and realise their full potential.

This commitment to growth doesn't end with our clients, though. Over the past 12 months, we've grown too, at a tremendous rate. Pivotal contract wins and staff expansion mean we're a burgeoning force in the SEO Manchester scene, something which hasn't gone unnoticed by the local press.

Our growth shows no sign of stopping, either, as we continue to pick up new contracts from around the region. The latest of these is a brief to develop a microsite and handle PPC marketing for Bolton-based property firm Miller Metcalfe.

We'll be working closely with the company - which is recognised as one of the most respected independent property companies in the North West - to digitally market their services, which include residential sales, lettings, conveyancing, mortgages, surveys and valuations.

Speaking about the latest contract win, theEword managing director Al Mackin said:

"We are delighted to have added yet another client to our ever-expanding list. theEword is a growing company and contracts such as this one prove that we are as dedicated to our own growth as we are to our clients'."

To learn more about the full range of SEO and online marketing services offered by theEword, please get in touch.

theEweekly Wrap

Friday, July 03, 2009 by Tom Mason

Bing it on

A third of search users prefer Bing - Microsoft's latest attempt at launching a successful search engine - to Google, according to research from the Catalyst Group.

The study, which saw 12 users compare the two websites, found that a third of participants favoured Microsoft's search engine. The research looked at various factors, including design, relevancy of results and filtering options.

The remaining participants said that they preferred Google’s search engine based on its usability and familiarity with the site.

Nick Gould, CEO of Catalyst, said the results were promising for Microsoft, although he added that the majority of participants were ‘not swayed’ by Bing.

Hunch about success

The co-founder of the latest search engine, Hunch, has revealed that he is relatively pleased with the site’s progress. Chris Dixon said the site was ‘going pretty well,’ but admitted that there was still some improvements to be made.

Two weeks ago, theEword reported on the launch of Hunch, a new search engine designed to answer users’ questions based on their previous searches. The site can answer questions such as ‘what do I want for dinner’ or ‘should I move in with my partner’, by collating personal data which users have previously enter into the system.

Dixon revealed that there were 63,000 user-submitted search results on the system at present. Over 20 million ‘Teach Hunch About Yourself’ questions had been answered by searchers.


Converting clips

Media-sharing site YouTube is allowing advertisers to display ‘call to action’ banners on video clips. The new scheme sees advertisers place a text promotion banner near the bottom of their own YouTube videos.

Advertisers will be hoping that the new scheme leads to a growth in conversions. Every banner will link through to the intended website and YouTube has promised that all clicks on this overlay will be tracked in its analytics programme, YouTube Insight.


Tweeting the truth

Evan Weaver, Twitter’s lead engineer, revealed some of the secrets behind the phenomenal success of the social networking site this week. Speaking at the QCon 2009, Weaver disclosed various titbits of information about Twitter and its users. He revealed the average user has 126 followers and that over 80 per cent of the site’s traffic comes from third-party software such as the Twitterific iPhone application.

theEword Academy: Trending Topics on Twitter

Wednesday, July 01, 2009 by Tom Mason

In theEword Academy, the SEO Manchester company offer a guide to the internet's most talked about topics.

Twitter has established itself as one of the leading social networking communities. A large part of its popularity comes from the ability of users to quickly share news and opinion among friends (followers).

Trending Topics are a crucial facet in this rapid proliferation of information. Featured at the right-hand side of the Twitter homepage, these are a collection of the ten most frequently used words or phrases by the majority of users at any one time.

Twitter creates this list by analysing the frequency of keywords in each message (called ‘tweets’) posted on the site. If a certain keyword is used by a proportion of different members in a set period of time, it is included on the Trending Topics list.

This list allows users to quickly discover, and contribute to, the most popular conversations taking place on Twitter at any one moment. Sometimes, users place a hash tag (#) in front of the keyword. This allows users to easily distinguish a topic.

Here is how the process works:

A single message (or tweet) is posted by user A. It includes a keyword or phrase (e.g. theEword),



Followers (user B and user C) of user A either repost this original tweet (called a re-tweet or RT) or individually respond to the topic being discussed. Users B and C both post the name, theEword.



Followers of user B and user C either repost the original tweet of user A or respond with their own thoughts. The same keyword (theEword) is used in the majority of these messages. As users B and C may have different followers, the topic is exposed to a large number of unique users.



This process continues until the topic gains a place on the Trending Topics tab. Depending on the circumstances – the popularity of other subjects and the time of day – it is estimated that around 2,000 tweets will result in a Trending Topic.



Some other things to take into consideration:

Trending Topics are not static – the list of the most common topics can frequently change during a 24 hour period. Topics can re-enter the trending list for a number of reasons. A news story may return to the Trending Topic list if a previously unrevealed detail comes to light and is discussed.

One subject can have many different trends. The recent death of pop star Michael Jackson featured on the Trending Topics page for a number of different terms, including ‘R.I.P Michael’, ‘MJ’,’ Michael Jackson’. The suspected manner of his death – ‘cardiac arrest’ – and location – ‘Los Angeles’ – also featured in the top ten Trending Topics.

Twitter has its fair share of memes – internet in-jokes shared between users of a specific community. These often feature in the Trending Topics. Some examples of recent Twitter memes include, #Music Monday (tweets about new bands users enjoy listening to) and #FollowFriday (encouraging users to post names of their friends others may like to follow).

Spam is a growing problem on Twitter. Spam comments occasionally make it onto the Trending Topics page. This is done when a user repeatedly tweets one specific keyword.