Great websites have a strong design and are content-driven; they should provide parents, pupils, staff, OFSTED and governors with all the information they need – after all, the school website is it’s 24 hour window.

There are several key elements to consider when getting a school website designed. 7 of the most important are:

1. Visual

The visual impact of your site is very important. It gives an overall impression of your school in the first few seconds and if it doesn’t look good you can instantly put people off.

2. Content

Good content is essential to give the right impression. After the visual signals, the next thing that visitors will take on board is the wording. It needs to be informative, engaging and obviously have the correct spelling and grammar – after all a school is the place that children go to learn how to write!

3. USP

Your website needs to show your unique selling points. If you are well known for sport or specialise in I.T. this needs to be clear. It helps set you apart from other schools in your area.

4. Branding

Your look and message needs to be consistent across all channels, from letter heads to adverts. Your website needs to look like it belongs to your brand identity.

5. Navigation

Pupils, parents and other visitors want to find content quickly and so your site needs to make this easy.

6. Social media presence

Schools today need to interact with pupils and parents on platforms of their choice and this includes social media. Consider setting up a Twitter and Facebook profile.

7. Freshness

No-one wants to see out of date content.  Schools need to be able to make quick and easy updates to flag up such things such as school closures and give  information about school trips. By using a CMS (Content Management System), you will be able to make simple text changes and upload pictures, keeping your website fresh and up to date. This can be done without the need for specialist I.T. knowledge and can be done at any time of the day or night without the need for a third party (and the costs associated with that).

Giant Peach can help you attract new pupils, give you a professional online look and help with the job of keeping current pupils and parents informed.

See what we did for The Stonehenge School www.stonehenge.wilts.sch.uk

For those who do work in the web industry, HTML5 means a lot of different things. Hopefully like me, HTML5 is seen as a positive. As a designer it fundamentally means a new set of HTML tags such as <section>, <nav>, <article>, etc. It means studying boilerplate’s and help-guides like the excellent html5doctor to learn how to implement these new tags correctly.

So why bother moving from the perfectly acceptable XHTML to HTML5 if its not finished? A fair question. The main reason we at Giant Peach have started using the new standard is because we are fully behind this long overdue overhaul of the web. We believe that the more developers, designers, big Corporations such as Microsoft and Google, and everyday web users that get behind the standard, the quicker it will be finalised and the better the WWW will be for everyone.

The likes of terrible browsers (you know who you are IE 6 and 7…) have held back progress for years. Nearly everyone used to use Internet Explorer and so every website was built (often painstakingly) to work nicely with it. Nowadays the market share of web browsers is much more split and browsers in general continue to improve at a faster rate than before.

Browser usage statistics

Test how well your browser supports HTML5

Is it ready?

I’m not gonna lie, there were a few issues creating my first HTML5 site, but overall it went pretty smoothly. It just feels right coding ‘Sections’ and ‘Articles’ rather than ‘Divs’ all over the place. One thing to note though is that Divs still do have a place. For example Divs should still be used for generic wrappers. Viewing the site in Firefox and Chrome, I didn’t have any problems at all. One of the first things you will learn from looking at boilerplate’s – is that older versions of IE require some extra attention, in the form of a shiv. But I also found that IE didn’t want to print nicely, even with the shiv. Luckily I found this additional fix called IE-Print-Protector.

But even with the shivs (which will eventually die out as IE users move to version 9+), HTML5 code is cleaner and there are even some suggestions that it will become favoured by Google for SEO.

Who else is using HMTL5?

HTML5 sites are springing up all over the place. Personally I think Apple’s lack of support for Flash has helped the situation. The amount of people viewing sites on theirs phones and iPads has gone through the roof and people are looking towards HTML5 and CSS3 for the answers to dynamic websites.

Checkout http://www.awwwards.com/ – most of the sites featured here are built to the new standard.

I know I’ve not even touched on many of the other benefits like Geolocation and Canvas, which are the real progressive features but that can follow! Feel free to brag about these below.

Branding: Make sure that your page looks professional and that you have filled in all relevant fields such as bio, website URL and user icon. People want to know who you are and how to find out more about you. No-one follows eggs.

Identify those you want to connect with: Who do you want to have as your followers? Find out what sort of things these people are talking about and what hashtags (#keyword) they use. You will need to provide content that interests them.

Identify competitors: Look up your competitors and see how they are connecting with and influencing people. You will need to do at least as good a job as them.

Join the conversation: Look up and follow current clients, those that could become potential clients, and industry authorities and start interacting with them – either replying to their tweets, re-tweeting them or suggesting them for a Follow Friday (#FF).

Twitter offers and incentives: Special Twitter-only offers can encourage people to follow you. You can have promotional codes for discounts, or you can run competitions.

Don’t run before you can walk: You won’t have a massive Twitter following on day one. The key is to build it up slowly. Don’t follow thousands of people in your first week in the hope that some will follow back. It doesn’t look good if you are following 2000 people but only 10 follow back.

Do not buy followers – there’s no point because they will not be interested in what you have to say.

Responsibility: Who is in charge of tweeting for your company and what guidelines are you setting down for them?

Time allocation: What time will you be devoting to Twitter? This will depend on how much a lead is worth to you. Whatever time you set aside you will always need a return on investment.

Measuring success: Work out how you define success. Is it Twitter follower count, @mentions, direct messages, number of clicked links, re-tweets? Once you have defined your metrics, make sure you measure them.

Twitter clients: Look at using apps such as Hootsuite and Twitter for iPhone to make tweeting easier. There are plenty of Twitter clients out there – find the best ones for you.

Track links: Use a URL shortening service such as Bitly to shorten and track links. This highlights what content is popular and can help improve your tweets.

Evolve: Change your Twitter strategy as appropriate. The way people use Twitter changes so you need a flexible approach to get the best out of it.

Connect with us on Twitter @GiantPeach

At Giant Peach it’s our people that make us, and thanks to our passionate team we’re continuing to grow – developing and improving every day. It’s an ongoing journey, and we’re always looking to invite bright new talent on board.

We are currently seeking an experienced PHP developer to join our dynamic and friendly team. You will have the opportunity to further your skills and work on some exciting and challenging projects.

Previous hands-on development experience is essential, with an in-depth knowledge of PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. An understanding of the OOP paradigm as well as MVC architecture is expected, as is a proven ability to build bespoke applications from start to finish.

You will be writing well structured, re-usable, modular, annotated code. Projects will be carried out to a high specification with consideration given to security and performance. Experience in developing mobile applications would be beneficial.

You will be responsible for managing your own workload and supporting clients alongside your main development projects. You will be able to work within a team as well as individually, and be an excellent communicator who can explain technical concepts to both technical and non-technical clients alike.

You will be based at Peach HQ in Wylye (here) in our beautiful converted barn with inspirational views, a top-of-the-range PC or Mac, pool table, and a talented team to work alongside.

Essential experience:
OO PHP, (H)MVC frameworks, MySQL, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, building bespoke web applications

Beneficial experience:
jQuery, HTML5, Kohana or Code Igniter frameworks, mobile application development, LAMP server management, SVN

To apply send your CV, including links to your portfolio, blog or twitter account along with a covering letter that answers the question, “who would win in a fight, a polar bear or a gorilla?” to join@giantpeachdesign.com

How you respond to people by email affects how others perceive you and your company. By following a few simple points you can ensure that your emails provide the information needed and portray you in the way that you want to be seen.

Answer quickly

Always reply to an email within 24 hours (better still, do it on the same day). Even if you only say when you will get back to them about their query, some sort of quick response is needed.

This shows that you are taking the person seriously and, in the case of a more in-depth answer being needed, that you are taking the time to answer correctly.

Outcome: people are normally a lot more patient.

Use the Reply facility – don’t start a fresh subject

If somebody has emailed you about a specific issue, having their email beneath yours ensures that you can both reference where the conversation has got to.

Outcome: no hunting around the mail box for the previous email, allowing simple follow-up.

Relevant subject field

The subject should be as specific as possible to the email body. If for example you are emailing Giant Peach about getting a website designed by us, “Beautiful design” isn’t very specific. Try adding your company name and what type of design you are after.

Outcome: the email is easily referenced and filed and takes you a step away from the spam box.

Answer the question

Make sure that you have answered the question and given links to any resources that might back up what you have talked about (FAQ’s or Informational blog posts). If you feel that the email might naturally move to another question, try to offer a complete answer that pre-empts further query.

Outcome: recipient feels that you are taking that extra step to ensure that they are happy. It also avoids the frustration of them having to come back to you because their question hasn’t been anwered fully.

Be clear and concise

Don’t beat around the bush – answer the question clearly and concisely. If you can use bullet points, all the better.

Outcome: easily digested by recipient and easily checked by you to see that you have covered all of the points.

Attachments

If your attachment is more than 10mb in size, or you have a large number of files, I would recommend either using a free online tool like www.dropbox.com or www.dropsend.com where you can upload the file and the receiver can quickly download it or send the files in separate email batches.

Outcome: this will ensure that the recipient’s email client doesn’t get bunged up with your mahoosive file and that you don’t instantly get added to their nuisance file.

Make it personal

Auto replies are okay if you are on holiday, but for the day-to-day, ensure that your responses are personally addressed with an indication that you are dealing with the topic specifically mentioned in their email. Templates are fine if you are responding to the same question again and again but only if you remember to tailor them to each individual recipient.

Avoid being misunderstood.

Don’t assume people will understand an abbreviation – offer the full phrase with the abbreviation in brackets, then use the abbreviation only after that. Also, don’t capitalise wording as this is deemed as SHOUTING in the world of email etiquette.

Outcome: people don’t misunderstand you and the happy relationship cogs keep on turning.

Don’t forward on emails that might be deemed to be offensive, you never know who will get to see them.

Outcome: Avoids offence to the recipient or anyone they forward it to and keeps a professional image for your business.

Spell check

Use spell check to ensure that people can understand what you have written, and check your punctuation so that the meaning of a sentence is clear and that emphasis is in the right place.

Outcome: gives a professional impression of your company and helps ensure that you are understood first time.

Check and Send

Check your email again before sending. Don’t carbon copy (cc) in the world as this can become quite confusing for the cc receiver. In general, don’t ask for a read receipt as most people say no to sending one anyway. Make sure attachments are attached. When you are definitely good to go, press send.

Outcome: message goes to the correct person(s) with the correct information!

And my last point….

If you accidentally send out an email to the wrong person, call the unintended receiver telling them of your mistake.

Outcome: You will look a little silly anyway having sent the email to the wrong person but mistakes happen. A phone call is better than an automated email request for an email to be deleted and it will usually be appreciated. Deletion requests only arouse interest in the incorrect email anyway, so you may as well own up on the phone.

With the frequency emails are sent out from a business and the importance that this mode of communication now has, following simple email etiquette tips will help ensure a happy relationship for you and your business contacts.

We are pleased to announce that Ian has joined the team to work in business development. He will be growing our client base and exploring new markets – oh, and brushing up on his pool skills if he wants to take on James!

The Peaches are very happy with their new home. Why wouldn’t you be when you get views like this? These sheep were photographed yesterday morning. The sun breaking through the mist made us all appreciate our lovely rural setting.

However, it was a particular quote by Theo Paphitis that grabbed my attention.

“When people ask me if you had limited cash and had to start a business what would you do? I always say I would do ecommerce – that’s how I’d grow my business.”

- Theo Paphitis

Surprisingly the multimillionaire is right. Go figure.

Without a doubt, ecommerce is the most cost effective way to start and grow a business. Your overheads are low, you’re not restricted to the footfall of a geographical area and you’re always collecting your customer details which you can use for upselling at a later date (as we all know, it’s cheaper to sell to an existing customer than to acquire a new one).

Businesses exist to make money, and your online shop should be built with this at the forefront of your mind. If you harness it correctly, ecommerce can open up a stream of income that can generate revenue for you 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

This is our most recent ecommerce website. Our client Car Skin, who sell a range of quality car care products, approached us to create… well, everything really!

Car Skin Logo

This is the logo we designed.

A screenshot of the homepage.

We also designed the bottle labels and produced the product photography for the site.

You can check out their website here car care products

Giant Peach’s online shop system Peach-E-commerce is simple, fully featured, and it will change the way you sell online. Its flexibility allows us to create you a website that not only fulfils your needs and creative vision today, but will grow and scale as your business expands and your requirements change.

For more information on how our ecommerce websites drive traffic, drive sales and drive growth call James on 0844 880 0370.

You can listen to  Theo’s quote on Dragons Den here – It was recorded on my iPhone from my TV, so the quality could be better!

We ran the competition because we wanted people to come up with a new name for our ecommerce system – a fantastic way for any business to sell their products online.  The shop we have developed is an excellent product – it’s flexible, affordable, and can be tailored to meet your requirements. But perhaps most importantly, it’s easy-to-use and gets the job done!

Before the competition, our product was called GP Commerce but it wasn’t a name that we really liked. We needed to do something about it and we thought that an iPod Touch as a prize for the best answer would get your creative juices flowing!

We had lots of great ideas come in but there could only be one winner.

When we reviewed the entries, one stood out and it was so simple we couldn’t believe we didn’t think of it ourselves!

Peach E-commerce.

This name actually came up twice but our rules stipulated that in the event of more than one person suggesting the winning name, we would take the first entry as our overall winner.

And the winner is…… Paul Baker from Basingstoke College of Technology. Congratulations.

Over the past 2 weeks I have really enjoyed myself here at Giant Peach.

I may have not arrived on my first day because of an exam but it has been really fun. I got a few chances to lose at pool but I have had some lucky wins due to my opponents’ mistakes.

I have managed to contribute to buying an iPad for Giant Peach by selling some Macs on eBay. I have also done some office based work – research etc. (Abby’s idea…)

I have also managed to get the chance to develop the Peach eCommerce site (front-end) and I have had fun doing it.

The people here are nice and friendly and I’m sad that I had to leave but I would come back if I could and I would.

highly recommend this place for IT work experience (even if the barn is in the middle of nowhere…)

Freddie saying goodbye.