New Design for Artlines Website

Published | 10.53, 27th of January 2010, by Jay Vincent | Design

We decided to give our own website a fresh new make-over for the new decade! We've opted for a functional, minimalist and light design, to highlight the content and improve navigation.

The new site makes use of a couple of neat little tricks to improve performance and general user interaction, including sIFR flash replacement on the page's main titles and image spriting on the navigation menu.

We now feel we have a website which, not only presents valuable information to potential clients, but showcases our own abilities, technically and creatively.

Comments and feedback are of course welcome!

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Beauty and the brief

Published | 13.10, 22nd of January 2010, by Chris van Aurich | Design

Beauty is that creative masterpiece that every designer strives for, the thing that makes them smile with artistic glee. But that as a designer is not our job, the job we undertake should - yes - be creative but our objective should always be the client's desired end product, hence the brief.

Designing isn't a secret activity we carry out behind closed doors, magically emerging with a sparkling new creative masterpiece. It starts when decisions about 'why', 'how' and 'when to go ahead with a project' are being taken.

Design work begins with a brief setting out the aims and objectives of a project and outlining certain targets and parameters for its completion. But, ideally, designers need to be involved before the brief is even written for two reasons - first, its members will understand the brief better if they've had a hand in composing it and, secondly, the customer-focused, creative skills that designers possess can help decide the direction the project should take.

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Website Statistics | Analytics

Published | 13.17, 6th of January 2010, by Paul Butler | Marketing

Some website hosting companies provide valuable statistical information as part of their hosting service. Yet many website owners lack a curtain understanding of just how this important data can really benefit those in the know. Statistics providing important data on website visitor traffic allows owners and marketers direct feedback on both on-line and off-line sales and marketing activity. Measurement is the key to marketing spend so if you can monitor who is looking at what and when, there is more chance of success now as well as for the future.

Some website owners have absolutely no idea how visitors discover their on-line presence. Whereas others understand the importance of such technology and benefit greatly over their competition. Obtaining information on one or a number of factors is of course very useful however we need to look at the bigger picture. Data produced from several areas can give us this. For instance it is handy to know that 75% of your visitors land on your website from a search engine but it is even more valuable if you can see what keywords they used, what landing pages are your most popular and what other pages of your website then catch their eyes once they are on board. There may be one product or service that is considerably more popular than the others. So if you can identify this and replicate that model elsewhere, increased sales in other products or services will increase overall company revenue.

Some systems, but not all, provide IP Addresses that contain a company name. This is reliant on the visitor publishing their company name as part of their IP Address obviously but again it does allow a pro-active website owner the opportunity to target a specific prospect if that is what is required. The next question is "Do you have access to your own website statistics and if so, what can it tell you about your own visitor traffic?"

Artlines Media uses Google Analytics. If you would like to know how website statistics or analytics can help you, contact the Artlines Media team on 01494 614 600 today.

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