By Jordan Hall 17th December 2014
Security warnings in modern web browsers are weird. When you browse to your favourite online shopping checkout or your online bank account, you get a happy lock icon. That's great. It reminds users they are on a secure webpage, that...
By Mark Jones 10th December 2014
In this first article of the series, we will look at some very simple ways to refactor your code. So what is Refactoring? Refactoring is simply a set of techniques, procedures and steps to keep your source code as clean as possible. Below describes some of the easier code smells to detect and how you can go about refactoring them. Duplicated Code (Extract Method Refactoring) This is probably the easiest code smell to detect, and also refactor. ...
By Tim Lees 28th November 2014
Within Google Analytics, Goals are designed for you to quantify how well your website is performing in terms of specific objectives. You can set up individual Goals to track an action on your website. These actions are defined as an activity that has a completion. Commonly known as conversions, examples of these activities include the following: A customer on an e-commerce website that completes the checkout process resulting in a purchase A u...
By Kirsty Gasston 19th November 2014
A couple of weeks ago Google added a new report within Webmaster Tools - the Mobile Usability report. This new report is automatically available within your Google Webmaster Tools account (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-usability). This new tool highlights usability issues for your site on mobile devices so that you can aim to improve the mobile experience for your website users. The errors that the report monitors and reports on...
By Matt Fennell 30th October 2014
In the last 2 years one of the biggest changes in web design is how and what fonts are being used. Long-gone are the days where the only choices were Arial, Times New Roman or Comic Sans. With the arrival of the ‘@font-face’ HTML rule, and with big name players such as Google launching services to make applying new fonts easier, the web has truly benefited. Below we look at multiple sections of where and what fonts are good, along with our ...
By Peter Chiu 23rd October 2014
Responsive design is a widely accepted strategy for those looking to maximise their website’s exposure to users across multiple browsers and devices. On the surface of things this sounds great but as a technical exercise this can be challenging, especially if the design and navigation of the website was not initially designed to be viewed on mobiles. Adapting a desktop driven design to fit on mobiles can be, at times, an extremely challenging ...
By Jordan Hall 17th October 2014
With all Turing complete programming languages, there are many different ways of performing the same task. Be it sorting, searching, looping through a list, outputting content to the screen or to a file - they can all be accomplished by a variety of differnet methods. PHP is no different, therefore it is worth looking at the different ways in which tasks can be performed, and benchmarking their performance. This allows us, as developers, to id...
By Kirsty Gasston 10th October 2014
Rich snippets are a great way of enhancing your website's search engine listings, making them more informative, helping them stand out more and ultimately increasing your click-through rate. So what are rich snippets? Essentially, they are the additional lines of information that you see with a Google search engine result that are designed to give users a better sense of what the webpage may contain and therefore aid their decision as to whether...
By Tim Lees 30th September 2014
In this second part of a series designed to examine the basics of Google Analytics, we look at Custom Alerts (the first article was on Understanding Audience Overview). Custom Alerts in Google Analytics allow you to keep track of extensive fluctuations in your analytics data so if something unexpected happens then you can act upon it sooner rather than later. This could be amongst others a rise or dip in visitor numbers, bounce rate or if you h...
By Matt Fennell 18th September 2014
With online shopping growing, and Britons spending a combined £23.1bn in the first quarter of 2014, there has never been a better time for companies to trick us into paying for what we don’t want or need via dark patterns. Fortunately for us consumers a new EU law has just been passed (June 2014) stopping companies from pre-populating checkboxes which add undeclared subscriptions, additional downloads, shipping charges or extra items into our...
By Kirsty Gasston 12th September 2014
Setting up your business with an ecommerce system is a great way to get setup with an online shop, therefore expanding your potential market and sales dramatically. Choosing the right ecommerce system for your business can be tricky though - you need a system that offers all of the features that you need to make the process simple and straightforward to add and administer products and effectively and efficiently monitor orders. But at the same ti...
By Peter Chiu 10th September 2014
Ecommerce is the fastest growing retail market in Europe and with online sales in 2014 expected to hit £45 billion in the UK alone (16% growth from 2013), this highlights the importance of having a firm foothold in the web for any merchant. Whether you are a new merchant making your first foray into the digital world or you are an existing retailer looking to streamline your website, choosing the right solution for your needs, which also fits w...