Where does that leave companies like ours? Can we survive by doing what we were doing 6 or even 2 years ago? In our opinion no, and we have to move with the times and support our clients by offering them the best solution that will allow them to get the most out of their online channel. That might be through advising them on which CMS to use, or creating a robust and flexible email template.

A while back we used to do a lot of work with email design and production. We would design and code the emails for marketing teams. Things have changed now and more often than not these teams now manage their own campaigns and work from predefined templates that we create for them. You still need a good design and well constructed HTML emails that have been tested but we are not needed to actually add in copy or links, or an image.

We consider ourselves as WordPress experts and we use this system because it has fantastic tools and is so easy to use. Its also very well supported by the web design and development community.

BUT, websites do not write their own copy or blog by themselves. They do not automatically engage with customers and write comments on other sites or update themselves. All this must be handled properly and managed with a clear set of objectives that are achievable and realistic. We can design and build a website that looks fantastic but we can’t make old copy look new or magic up new visits if nothing has changed on a website.

Fortunately our customers are pretty good at doing this and have really embraced the features that come with our websites.

Let’s take one example Pippa Jameson Interiors.

www.pippajamesoninteriors.co.uk

This critically acclaimed WordPress blog has developed over the past 5 years into a trusted source for interiors trends in the UK and abroad. The website attracts on average 15,000 unique visitors a month. What’s her secret? Bloody hard work and great content regularly updated. It didn’t come easily at the start but over the years the site and Pippa have won numerous prizes.

The trick is to continue to evolve with your audience. Don’t be scared to try something new. Work on your tone of voice, practise writing, take photos and video. Connect with your customers and ask them to contribute and tell you what they are doing.

With the success of websites like this and continued development of systems like WordPress we hope to be able to continue offering our services and support to help setup many other SME’s or individuals with great ideas with their own websites for years to come.

If you would like to discuss your website and see how we can help then get in touch. Contact Stuart Edwards at getit@bythescruff.com

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Clicking the upgrade button isn’t hard and 90% of the time, everything will be fine, however it’s still a pretty big risk to take on a live, client facing site as due to the fact that most WordPress websites use 3rd party plugins, unless you’re 100% sure that the new version won’t break anything on the site, you really don’t know what to expect with the upgrade.

You risk functionality issues, downtime and data loss so regardless of who developed your web site, if it’s important to you, you should definitely consider a maintenance contract with a professional development agency such as By the Scruff.

Our approach to upgrading is a little more involved, we upgrade all the plugins we run on live sites on a dev server beforehand to make sure that we are aware of all potential compatibility issues. Then before upgrading we prepare the site and fix all the compatibility issues before they even happen, clone the site with the fixes to our dev area, upgrade the site, make sure that there are no issues and then do the same thing on the live site.

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The Wonderlab desktop WordPress website view

The responsive website allows customers to see whats happening in this beautiful award winning salon with up-to-date news, images, services and online booking system.

Katie May, co-owner, says “We have a specific target market where the visual impact of the salon speaks volumes about our work, it was imperative that the look and feel of the website translated our high end concept through to our guests when finding us, especially if this is their first impression of the salon.

Many of our guests lead busy, modern lifestyles and the ability to access our information, service guides and booking whilst on the go will increase our reach and ensure they can find what they are looking for 24 hours a day.  It was also very important that we were able to have a site that could be easily updated so that we can keep the content fresh and interesting for guests.”

The Wonderlabs responsive website on an iPhone

Go to the website for more information thewonderlab.co.uk

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I think given the time we’ve had the table it held its value very well and has stayed in great condition which is testament to the quality craftsmanship in these kind of tables. Still, it will be sad when you are hauled out of the office onto the back of some fixed wheeled hipster keeno. They will never know the times we’ve had in between our hard work. Many a score has been settled and tense moments dissolved over a quality doubles match.Lee, it all changed when you buggered off to Mexico. On your head be it!

Adiós amigo!

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You’re not a developer, so the technical aspects really shouldn’t concern you, what should concern you is the ease of use, reliability and cost of maintenance. These three are the most important factors and millions of companies have already made this choice. When it comes WordPress powers over 17.4% of all websites in the world. The second most popular CMS is Joomla at 2.7% and Drupal at 2.3%. (Stats taken from W3Techs and are correct as of 28th Feb 2013.)

What these stats mean for your business is the fact that you will have the largest developer resource available at the most competitive prices and you will always be able to easily find some help with WordPress either as tips, videos or live support within a few minutes of googling.

Here at By the Scruff, we focus on WordPress web development and use it in 99% of the websites that we build, this website is also built and managed through WordPress. Find out more about our WordPress design service

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Believe it or not this used to be a tram-generator building way back before we had fixed wheel bikes to get around the ditch. After several different uses over the years this now revamped location is an impressive new setting in the middle of a busy centre area of Shoreditch. Its sheer scale and centre piece artwork by Damien Hurst are enough to make your eyebrow judder upwards for a few seconds in appreciation on your first visit.

The menu is simple: meat, hence the significance of the formaldehyde-encased cow and cock set on a pedestal in the middle of the room. On our lunch we opted for the Spring Chicken for one each. The chicken comes standing upright proudly on a plate. A little weird but funny at the same time. This place has humour which makes for an enjoyable and relaxed meal. The food was also very good.

The scores

Speed of service: Good quick service but it was fairly quite when we visited – 7
Quality: Very tasty chicken, well cooked. Chips were a little French but still ok– 6
Quantity: Just right – 8
Location: About 2 minutes from the office – 9
Value: £15.50 so not an express value mean – 6

Total score: 36/55

Not a high score but this is out of the normal £5 lunch area but we would say this is worth a visit day or night if you want to pretend to be fully or arty knowledge and food that stands up on plates. Also they lost out as there was no fish and chips on offer this time. Come on Hix, get your fish out!

More info www.chickenandsteak.co.uk

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This is where the Advanced Custom Fields plugin comes in super handy, it enables us as the web developers to create a very user friendly backend interface for our users to manage the content and provides us with a very simple API to retrieve the content in the themes we build. This approach is a lot faster than the standard “build your own backend UI” and as a result has a very positive impact on the cost of the project.

Here at By the Scruff, we’ve been building advanced WordPress websites using ACF for almost 2 years and have had only positive feedback about it from our clients.

Here are some screenshots showcasing how we use the Advanced Custom fields plugin:

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With these sorts of statistics you can see why optimising emails for mobile devices is crucial for email marketing. In this article I will take you through some of the aspects we consider when we produce email campaigns for both desktop and mobile; we call this responsive email design.

Email for mobile and desktop
When putting together an email you have to consider how it is going to appear on both the desktop and the mobile, how it is going to render across different email clients, and which elements and call-to-actions you wish to capture the audience. If an email does not display correctly 69.7% will delete it immediately. (Source: BlueHornet ‘Consumer Views of Email Marketing’ (2012))

Below is an example of one of our responsive emails for the London Review of Books. It shows how the email appears on the desktop in comparison to the iPhone. When designing for the smaller screen it is best practice to eliminate horizontal scrolling. We develop the email to rearrange different elements into an easy to scroll format, in addition we are able to change the text size and spacing so that it is easier to read on smaller screens.

There are also other things we need to take into consideration, such as the size of the call-to-action buttons and linked text. It is very difficult to select small buttons and links with your fingers accurately when compared to using a cursor, therefore we ensure the spacing and positioning of elements are ideal for both desktop and mobile.

Hiding Items / Navigation

We are also able to remove elements from the mobile version that may make it too cluttered and/or force the user to scroll unnecessarily and consequently distracting your audience from the main call to action. In the example above we remove the ribbon pattern in the mobile version to keep the size and quality of the logo. In the example below we remove the navigation and change the layout of the headline to remove any need to scroll horizontally.

Retina Devices

Another new development in technology is retina display. If your email is not designed with retina display in mind, your customers with the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5 and any future Apple devices will see your images displayed at a low resolution. We take this in mind and code in higher resolution images that appear crystal clear on your retina device.
When compared to other forms of digital marketing email is more lucrative. Email outperforms social-media advertising three to one, according to the Direct Marketing Association (source: Business Week Article), and with mobile use growing at its current rate marketers should not ignore the potential for responsive email campaigns.

To find out more about how we can get your email marketing campaign off the ground, call us on 020 7033 4269 or use our contact form

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This website was built using a custom designed responsive template so the website works across all computers, tablets and mobile devices. The technique allows easy management of the website through the Wordpress CMS and means that the increasing number of mobile users get a website that is truely mobile friendly.

Go to  womenswalking.co.uk

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If you are interested in talking to us about how we can create effective mobile email camapigns for your business then contact Stuart on 0207 033 4269.

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