Leeds based digital agency Creode, are pleased to announce the opening of a new office in Central London. The second site will be headed up by founding partners James Hannaford and Luke Harrison, to help service the increasing demands of their clients in the South of England.

The full service agency, started in 2008, make the move to Soho on the back of the launch of the new Opera North website, a project which saw them beat off over 90 competitors to secure.

Speaking about the move, Harrison said: “Following a strong 2011 with expanded staff and client numbers, we want to be able to fully service all of our clients regardless of their location.

We look forward to 2012 being a great year for us, and believe the new location will be a key factor in this.”

The site simplifies the process of booking tickets for its 250 public performances nationwide each year, integrating with a range of different booking systems. The inclusion of social media throughout the site expands Opera North’s digital reach, and optimised versions for tablet and mobile devices means the organisation can now be accessed by visitors wherever they are.

Opera North’s digital manager, Ashley Mann, said: “I am extremely excited about the launch of the new website, which consolidates all the digital work we have been planning and slowly implementing over the past year. It is part of a raft of new initiatives to be rolled out during 2012, which include the capture of performances for subsequent broadcast and download online.

We have taken a big step towards strengthening our digital activity and providing the ideal space for the new digital output we are generating. We will further our activity by exploring digital technology as a means by which to help create future stage-sets and enhanced visual experiences to live audiences.”

Opera North will continue their work with Creode throughout 2012, introducing a number of new digital campaigns and advertising opportunities, as well as further enhancing the user experience offered on the new website.

Creode’s Managing Director; James Hannaford, commented that: “This new website showcases some of the outstanding work we have produced at Creode in 2011. This is the start of a really exciting year for the company”.

View the work on our portfolio

Opera North’s digital manager, Ashley Mann, said: “I am extremely excited about the launch of the new website, which consolidates all the digital work we have been planning and slowly implementing over the past year. It is part of a raft of new initiatives to be rolled out during 2012, which include the capture of performances for subsequent broadcast and download online.

We have taken a big step towards strengthening our digital activity and providing the ideal space for the new digital output we are generating. We will further our activity by exploring digital technology as a means by which to help create future stage-sets and enhanced visual experiences to live audiences.”

1. Establish your budget

Whether you have £500 or £500,000 to spend on your next digital project, there will be some sort of solution out there for you. By establishing your budget early, and informing your chosen agency of this, you can ensure that you are not expecting an Aston Martin when you can only really afford a Fiesta.

2. Establish your requirements

It is surprising the number of companies that aren’t really sure what they want from a new website or digital campaign. This can add a huge amount of time into the Research & Development / Exploration phases of the process, costing you more money. Work out a list of needs, wants and possibles and run through these with your agency (they may add things you have forgotten). For each item, question whether it is in the correct category and what it will add to the project and/or your business if it is included. Some features may be better suited to after launch.

3. Do some leg work

Even for the biggest digital novices, there is a lot of work that can be done by you; the client, that can reduce agency time/cost and help guide the project to a more successful outcome. Finding out details such as demographic of primary audience(s), current analytics/web traffic, making a list of websites/apps you like or dislike, highlighting examples of successful companies in your industry, providing your agency with a company background etc will all be invaluable information in curating the project. Not only that, but it may actually help you establish what your (realistic) goals are for 6, 12 or 24 months after project launch.

4. Establish responsibility

Be honest about exactly who the project stakeholders are, who the decision makers are and who the trouble makers are. Make this clear to your agency. If the MD is the only person that can sign off on each stage of the project and he/she is overseas for 2/3 weeks a month then this will inevitably impact on the project and potentially increase the cost due to overruns. Likewise, there will likely be a number of people in your organisation that love nothing more than voicing their opinion. Whilst some of their comments may be valid, always ensure that any suggestions are for the best of the project outcome and not just to make sure everyone gets their way (Camel – Committee springs to mind).

5. Stick to timelines

Put simply, time is money. The longer a project goes on, the later it is that your product can be used and the more time your company is without a potentially valuable resource. Your agency will no doubt provide a timeline for the project, allowing time at various stages to gather feedback from you. If the agreement is that this is carried out in 48 hours and it takes you 72 to get back to the agency, then an extra day has been added to the project and therefore in most cases the product could be delivered a day later. If you feel there are occasions where you cannot stick to turnaround times like this then be honest upfront and let your agency know. You could be charged extra penalty fees for allowing the project to overrun if you don’t.

6. Establish Resources

Starting a new digital project is not a simple task, and is certainly not something that can just be handed over to an agency and left until completion date. Prepare yourself that as key contact, you will be expected to put a lot of time into the project. Establish early on what your jobs will be throughout the duration and allocate yourself time accordingly. Pencil in meetings with the agency, stakeholders and other members of the company for review meetings and updates. Additionally there will be a lot of resources that your agency will ask for ranging from things like copy/imagery to bodies for research and possibly information from 3rd parties. Ensure you can access these resources as required, and if you need to set the ball rolling early to make sure you receive information on time, then highlight this as a key risk to the project and resolve quickly.

7. Establish Licenses

By reducing the number of commercial licenses your new project uses, you may not only cut the project cost but also your ongoing annual cost. Question the use of commercial software over open-source (it may suit needs better anyway), stock imagery/graphics, font licenses etc. Do you need all of these things or would your project be just as good if you weren’t paying for the commercial products.

8. Sign off means Signed Off

During a project there will be a number of occasions where your agency will ask you to sign off on particular elements. Normally these are documents, designs and the final developed product. By doing so, you are agreeing that everything presented is correct. Once signed off, any further amends to these items is likely to be chargeable at the agencies standard hourly/daily rate. Ensure that when an item requires sign off, it has been seen by all stakeholders and everyone is in agreement that the item is as expected.

Please feel free to add anymore top tips below for stopping excessive spending on a digital project.

The gifts I have picked out range from free to £150 so whether a designer, developer or otherwise there is plenty of gift ideas to choose from.

Please note that all prices are correct at time of writing and may not be the cheapest price available.

	Karotz – from £50 Formerly known as the Nabaztag, Karotz is your intelligent household friend. Out-the-box you can make calls via Skype, listen to music, read-aloud Facebook / Twitter updates, be notified of emails, keep updated on RSS feeds through both voice and light sequences, and more. It doesn’t stop there either, Karotz has a fully accessible API that allows you to process and send commands to it, allowing you to control its ears, light up its tummy and make your Karotz speak.
	Humble Bundle 3 – from £free The Humble Bundle is an amazing concept that offers a collection of challenging and fun games created by Indie developers that work across Mac, PC and Linux. The beautiful thing about this bundle is that you can choose your own price and also select how that full amount is split across the game developers, select charities and the owners of the site.
	Wireframe Pad – from £14.10 For the designers amongst us, this variation on the sketch pad provides 960 Grid Indicators, pixel measurements and minimalistic designs to create an invaluable tool for rapidly and effectively sketching website designs and prototypes. By emulating the browser it gives a better representation of the design and has note fields for client and date to help keep organized.
	M-Cube – from £20 The M-Cube may look like this generations rubix cube but it isn’t a puzzle as much as a challenge; a challenge to create a variety of impressive shapes that can be quickly converted to another shape. The balls are connected by a magnetic force and can snap into a range of 2D and 3D shapes. Check out < http://www.firebox.com/video/2459>this video</> to see it in action.
	iCade – from £79.99 The iCade turns your iPad into a retro 80s games arcade unit, allowing you to play over 200 old time classics such as PONG, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Defender and many more! By just slotting your iPad into the sturdy and quality frame, the arcade style controls connect via Bluetooth to create a truly authentic, if not a little smaller, arcade experience. You get a couple of games for free with the iCade but it only costs an additional $14.99 for a pack of 100 games from the App Store. This works with both iPad 1 and 2.
	Boxee – from £149.99 For that special geek, who deserves that little bit extra, the Boxee is a home entertainment solution that really ticks all the boxes. It reads media information from both the internet and your computer network to allow you to stream shows, movies or images to a connected television. Not only does it do that, but also find cover art, as well as other information such as similar suggestions, for your shows and movies, show you what your friends are watching and source and stream from a number of online websites (though many currently only available in the US).
	Self Stirring Tea Mug – from £9.59 Everyone in the industry loves tea. No ifs. Not maybes. Loves it. A great mug is the corner stone of designers and developers alike so getting a good one is of the utmost importance and you can’t go far wrong with the self stirring mug. Not only does it look awesome whilst doing it, it also prevents settling and has a nice metallic design.
	Scratch Map – from £13.99 For the modern day geek-on-the-go, the scratch map is a creative and elegant way to track the countries you have visited. Working similar to a large scratch card, the map can be hung on a wall and when a country has been visited that country can be scratched off to reveal not a “Better luck next time” but instead a bright and exuberant colour to show that you have visited that location.

We’re looking for a talented, well organised individual to plan and manage digital marketing campaigns including SEO, PPC, Affiliate and Social Media.

You will be working on a number of digital projects, varying in size, with the opportunity to stamp your mark and work with some great clients.

If this sounds like you then download our job spec above to find out more.

To apply for this role please email James Hannaford at james@creode.co.uk with your CV, covering letter and salary expectation.

*Recruitment Agencies We are NOT currently offering this role to recruitment agencies. Candidates sent will not be considered under any circumstance. Please do not call us. Seriously (no really, don’t).

The advert was for 1&1 My Website, a new branch of 1&1 Web Hosting which aims to target small businesses and offer them a cheap, easy way to get up and running on the web. However, by offering this at such a ridiculously low price, I think they’re just targeting people who either seriously undervalue or don’t care about their business.

Businesses are happy to spend a lot of money on certain things, but something that gets constantly overlooked is the necessity of a strong website for many people. With the declining popularity of the Yellow Pages, it’s important that small businesses invest in their websites so that they can be found and start to flourish.

These things take time, and money to get right. Now 1&1 MyWebsite says you can be up and running for just £9.99 per month, and in return you get a fully hosted, “professionally designed, individual website”. Now, as a designer, that sentence sounds wonderfully contradictive. A professionally designed, truly individual website should not cost £9.99 per month.

It’s time for an analogy. Let’s say you’re buying a new car, and you walk into the dealership and they only have two cars left. One’s a shiny new Mercedes sports car, and the other is a banged-up old Lada. You would obviously want the new Mercedes because heads will turn when you’re driving it. Now I know that not everybody could afford the Mercedes, but when you consider just how embarrassing and detrimental it would be to have the old Lada, the Mercedes starts to make a real sense.

It’s not just 1&1 that are doing something like this; Yell.com also have their Yellsites product which is extremely similar. And whilst the Yellsites templates do look a little bit better than the 1&1 MyWebsites, it’s a bit like saying I’d rather eat sand than eat mud; both don’t whet my appetite whatsoever.

I know that it’s currently not the best of times economically, however I would argue that means that it’s more essential than ever to invest in a proper, tailor-made website by experts in the field. It takes a lot of effort to make a website successful, and I think 1&1 and Yellsites are offering customers a solution that doesn’t address their problem at all. Sure, the small business gets a website, but if it’s an ugly, awkward design that’s similar to thousands of other business websites who’ve gone through 1&1, and with very little in the way of SEO, is there any point in that business signing up with them at all?

There is a time and a place for a person to be able to create a 5-minute website, but that person was a goth kid, that place was MySpace and that time was 2005. With all the fantastic things happening to the web in the present day, I find this idea of templated, soulless, brand-less web design is a huge step in the wrong direction.

Let me introduce this post by stating that I love interacting with digital media, be it owning the devices themselves or by walking around digital conventions and electronic high street stores. I’ve owned some great products and some not so great; from an iPad, Android and iPhone’s, handheld consoles, Xbox Kinect and Playstation Move to name a few.

When I was younger my first memory of an interface was watching Minority Report. I watched Tom Cruise use his hands to literally control time, angles, zooms, move windows, search databases and other complex operations at blistering speed and accuracy. I remember looking at my PC and wondering if only. My other main memory was visiting arcades and playing on the varied games available. I’ve played maracas, rowed a dingy through white water, sliced fruit, shot zombies with every gun imaginable and even danced in time to the Vengaboys.

What I expected to see as a kid

So, if you were to ask me back then, is the iPad or any other tablet for instance, an interface fit for our future? My answer would be: “no”, however it is getting there.

My problem is that this vision, from an interaction perspective, isn’t fully implemented. All too often it can feel like a small improvement from when I was a young teenager struggling through a touch screen interface to order some train tickets.

Therefore how do we improve what we currently have? Firstly lets start with the positive and then discuss the potential problems and how to avoid them becoming issues for the user.

In terms of the navigation and gestures, using your fingers to interact with a device, helps create a natural, responsive and enjoyable experience. The ability to turn pages, zoom into images and scroll through content for example, helps the user feel more involved and adds an element of intrigue as the user interacts with the content. Everyday we manipulate objects in a vast array of different ways, therefore new and creative ways to use natural gestures, will ultimately allow us to easily complete more complicate tasks with ease.

Sorting photos into albums is now a breeze

Therefore with gestures, responsive touch screen technology and creative designers, why can’t a slick, complex Minority Report style interface be designed?

Well it can, however it wouldn’t be useable in the slightest. The reason why can be summed up in two key points.

Firstly and most importantly is the lack of standards throughout the user experience. If you access the App store or Android Market, the wealth of different developers can be overwhelming. The issue is that each of these has a different vision and visual style of how we should interact with our devices. For example I can swipe through stories on BBC News however this isn’t possible on Sky Sports News. What looks like a button in one application, isn’t in the other and built in functionality differs greatly.

Secondly is the visual clash of styles between an app and the Internet. A web page is designed to be rich and commonly an ‘over-stuffed’ experience compared to iPad’s sparse and regulated environment. Therefore the difference in content means that navigation in one instance, is fit for purpose, however in the other is found to be completely lacking.

Therefore an interface that encompasses a ‘one size fits all’ mentality, with unusual functions and interaction à la Minority Report simply isn’t feasible. With so many developers and the contrast between content, flexibility within the interface is crucial, along with simplicity. The key is to ultimately design for different platforms and to utilise existing standards that everyone accepts and knows. To quote Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert; “Future advances have to be built upon the existing foundations, even if they aren’t perfect”.

To allow us to do this we must become fully immersed in their business operations, and work together to formulate a strategy that is going to be most effective for them. One tool that can help with this is Experience Mapping

What is an Experience Map?

An Experience Map is a diagramatic overview of all the touchpoints a customer may have with the brand during their User Journey. These touchpoints could be physical tasks, emotions, preconceptions, social interactions etc; and are displayed over a period of time that directly correlates with a user’s experiences with the brand.

Why draw an Experience Map?

The intention of an Experience Map is to represent the UX from the view of the customer; and not the brand. We use this to observe and record the following information, from first contact to end goal:

• The experience from the eye of the customer
• The frequency and duration of each interaction with a touchpoint
• Positive/negative experiences with particular touchpoints
• Experience(s) over time
• Point(s) of failure
• Opportunities to improve or innovate
• Missing touchpoints
• Identify touchpoints that cross channels

How do I get started?

As this blog post is an introduction into why we should be Experience Mapping and not how, I am going to direct you to the following article at (the excellent) UX Mag for how to get started on your own map. I have borrowed the diagram from James Torio (the author) to demonstrate an example of an Experience Map for this post. All credits go to him.

We can see how much easier it is to understand a User Journey by mapping it. Viewing particular touchpoints, and the level of customer satisfaction along the journey allows the author to examine opportunities and weaknesses, so that the brand can identify where to focus resources for the highest impact.

If you would like to start with your own basic Experience Map then think of a journey you commonly make such as purchasing your lunch. Think of all the touchpoints you encounter (you may need to go over the journey a few times as you think of more), and make a note of what you see/do/think at each touchpoint. Try to make it as real as possible, extra UX tools such as personas and storytelling may help with this.

For an alternative, slightly more detailed Experience Map example please see the following for Starbucks Coffee from Little Springs Design.

What are we hoping to achieve?

The end goal is to analyse the current UX during a customers journey to identify weaknesses in the operations, opportunities for cross selling, UX improvements and cross channel interactions.

We are able to record if the customers are happy, confused or frustrated at any point. We can identify areas where the brand can support their customers across touchpoints at the right time. And most importantly we can put the brand in the customer’s shoes so that it is the customer that is receiving the very best User Experience.

1. Full featured

Magento is one of the most full featured ecommerce systems available in both the proprietary and open source markets. It provides everything you need to manage an entire online business, including promotions and inventory management.

2. Multiple Payment Gateways & Delivery Options

Magento has the ability to be integrated with any payment gateway or fulfillment system. It comes with a set of defaults, but can be easily extended to provide a custom integration to match any stores needs.

3. International Support

Magento has built in support for multiple languages and currencies, which will allow your store to sell internationally. Magento comes with around 60 predefined languages but custom language packs can be created. It includes the ability to set different tax zones and payment systems on a per country basis.

4. Modular Framework

Magento is built on top of the Zend Framework, the industry standard PHP framework. This allows the application to be extended upon at a code level to ensure it can meet any custom requirements a store may need; for example selling custom canvas prints.

5. Scalable

Magento places no limits upon the number of products you can have in your catalog or the number of orders you can process. It has been built in such a way that it can scale easily to many hundreds of thousands of products and customers. Magento has an advanced caching mechanism to ensure your website will be responsive without requiring expensive hosting infrastructure.

6. Enterprise level

Many enterprise clients, selling many thousands of products a day, use Magento. Examples of this are:

• Toms
• The North Face
• Harvey Nichols

7. PCI DSS Compliance

Magento has been developed to be PCI DSS compliant and goes along way to ensuring your business can become certified as PCI compliant without needing any expensive alterations to the software.

8. SEO Friendly

Magento is designed to allow you to customize URLs and Meta Data to gain any level of search engine optimization you require. It also provides html sitemaps for users and Google specific XML sitemaps. This ensures Google can easily find all of your content and products.

9. Data Backups

Magento comes with a powerful set of import/export tools that allows you to move data between different systems. This provides you with the flexible functionality you will need to move from a previous ecommerce system to Magento. You can also produce a full site and product catalog export so critical data can be backed up for secure storage.

10. Continued investment and development

eBay has recently acquired Magento and has invested heavily in developing the software further in order to produce the next generation of ecommerce systems. This investment is reassuring and removes a lot of the risk factors usually found when using open source software packages.