David Behan's Web Design Ireland Blog

From the Meath Chronicle this week:

What it actually says:

TWO Navan companies last week saw off competition from a number of major national companies and organisations to win an Eircom Golden Spider Irish Internet Award 2006.

Auctioneers and estate agents website raymondpotterton.com and its designer David Behan of David Behan web services received the awards at the 10th annual Golden Spiders Awards at the Burlington Hotel in Dublin on Thursday night last.

Website raymondpotterton.com won the award in the best professional service category, sponsored by cashcollector.com. Other nominees for the category included Collier Jackson Stops, solicitors Mason Hayes and Curran and the Digital Hub. Winners on the night also included AIB, RTE, Car Buyers Guide, Trocaire, myhome.ie, gohop.ie and TG4.

The awards were presented by comedian Jason Byrne and model Glenda Gilson at a black-tie event.

Pottertons and David Behan combined forces to produce the website. “We had various ideas about how a site should be,” said Loman Dempsey of Raymond Potterton and Company. “We wanted to keep it simple and user-friendly, yet show off all our properties and services to their best effect.”

He paid tribute to the Potterton team of Lorraine Carroll, Rosemary Ward and Ian Farrelly who worked with David Behan on the site.

David has been working as a web designer for the past six years, and two years ago took the plunge and set up his own company, www.davidbehan.com. The Dubliner moved to Navan about four years ago, having earlier studied accountancy and finance at Dundalk IT.

“The degree had a web design module and I always had an interest in computers and technology, so I progressed and developed this over the years,” he said.

Prior to setting up his own company, he worked with a company which looked after the design of a number of company websites around Navan, and also worked on a lot of large sites such as loadzajobs.ie, Irish Ferries, and International Investment.

His development team includes Dara O’Sullivan, web and database developer. David is delighted that their work for Raymond Potterton and Company has been recognised with this prestigious award.

He also builds applications for particular clients’ needs, such as a website invoice system, where invoices can be checked and paid for online, or a booking system such as a ticket support system. A web-based time management system that can be accessed from anywhere in the world is also a speciality.

“A recent project was a wedding booklet for gettingmarried.ie, where a pdf-based booklet can be designed by anybody on the site and printed off. Already, 1,600 have been printed off,” he said.

Content management systems, database driven websites, search engine optimisation and marketing, e-commerce systems and credit card processing and domain registration and website hosting are also services which David Behan provides.

Ok, I love Christmas and with it, I love going ice skating up in Dublin at one of the seasonal ice rinks: either Smithfield on Ice or 7up Christmas on Ice. I’m in no way good at it and I’m quite proud of myself when I make it around the rink without falling!!! Anyway, this year I took it upon myself to organise a group of us to go up especially for it. So, I got 20 friends together and went online today to book the tickets. For the past 3 years, I’ve always gone to Smithfield on Ice. I actually did their website back in 2003 and had made it my rink of choice since then. However, this year… I’m going to change and give the business (around 320 euro for this trip but maybe more before the event finishes) to the 7up rink over in the RDS. Why? Well, here it is…

Smithfield on Ice

The Smithfield on Ice website is crap… worse still… their booking system is absolutely terrible. First off, last week, I tried to do the booking but the booking system was down so I didn’t bother and came back to it today to do the booking. Once I got into it, I wish I hadn’t. It has a terrible layout, is not user friendly and I couldn’t find the time that I wanted to book for. Also, the bookings only go up to 12 people at a time. They say you get a discount for 20 people but I couldn’t book that amount of people. It annoyed me so much!!! I decided to give them another chance and rang their booking line, only to be welcomed by a very fast speaking individual telling me about a couple of events and then saying that I could book tickets for Smithfield on Ice on their “advanced booking system” and gave me the address (yes, you guessed it back to the website above). Here’s what their booking system looks like:

After all that, I decided to check out the 7up website and possibly book there.

7up Christmas on Ice

To tell you the truth, it wasn’t much better over there either. Although, it was a better experience. Their booking system has also got a number of flaws (one notable one is the use of nbsp; spacing - the developer keeps leaving out the trailing ; and it is appearing as &nbsp in the actual text all over the place) but in comparison to Smithfield’s: it is laid out better, easier to select dates/time/tickets required, and make payment. I didn’t feel compelled to ring them, I felt satisfied that their site could handle my booking… but I am in no way impressed with it. Here’s what their booking system looks like:

Conclusion

So, to conclude, Smithfield on Ice would have gotten my business this year if they had a decent booking system in place and 7up on Ice only got it because there was no other alternative that I know of. I really would like to go back to Smithfield but if they can’t put a decent ticketing system in place, what’s the point? Ticket Master is out there ya know!!! The company that provides the bookings must be doing it at extremely low costs to Dublin City Council because who in their right mind would put the Central Ticket Bureau in charge of it. How much money are these businesses/projects making that they can’t install a decent system for bookings??? You never know… I might get contacted to do their booking system for next year!!!

So, if you are going to have a big marketing campaign and spend loads on a great idea and event (actually… if you’re going to put up any kind of booking or e-commerce system)… please, please, please employ a company/developer that will be able to build a user friendly and working booking system so that you can accept orders/payments and not drive customers away (even loyal ones like me). Otherwise, what’s the point!!! This actually reminds me of a similar blog entry by Red Cardinal about when you get exposure, leverage it. What is it about big Irish businesses (or entities if you like) that they can’t get the basics right?!?!?

The 10th Annual Golden Spiders Awards were held last night in the Burlington Hotel, Dublin. We are very proud to announce that RaymondPotterton.com (developed by us) won the Best Professional Services Website. Some of the other winners on the night include AIB, Hostel World, RTE, Trocaire, MyHome.ie, TG4 and Monster.ie. It is an absolute honor and real sense of achievement to know that RaymondPotterton.com is up along side these websites.

The night itself was very exciting, with over 700 attendants from Ireland’s Internet Industry. The night was hosted by stand up comedian Jason Byrne (who was hilarious) and model/TV presenter Glenda Gilson. The actual lead up to our award category was quite nerve wracking but the excitement and joy to follow was just amazing. I think everyone from Raymond Potterton and David Behan - Web Services on the night, had a fantastic time. We made some new friends and kept up relations with old ones. I’d just like to say thank you to the people on the night that made it so good. Until next year, here’s a couple of pictures from the night.

For a while now, I’ve been trying to find a good map that covers Ireland in more detail outside of the major town and cities. Google Maps has always been my favourite mapping service but when it came to looking up any areas outside Dublin, Limerick, Cork, etc, the coverage hasn’t been the best. So, recently I came across two other sites offering similar features to but better coverage than Google Maps. These two sites are Map24 and Yahoo Maps. All 3 mapping websites offer a user friendly AJAX/Flash interaction tool to easily get around their maps. So, let me review each of the mapping sites and include a review of the coverage as well. Here we go…

Google Maps
While Google Maps has always been my choice for looking up maps or integrating into client websites, it really doesn’t have the coverage I’d like for Ireland. It’s just too out of date. It’s a suprise that it is because I don’t think it would take them much to do the update. They’ve announced the creation of an extra 500 jobs in their European Head Office in Dublin recently and they also use Ireland as the home for their patents company to avoid paying millions in taxes each year, and so on… so, why can’t they be nice and update the maps of Ireland? Enough said on that but aside from the lack of coverage, Google Maps is a great interface. I’m sure most people have used it. It’s fast, not too resource heavy and is fun/easy to use. Google offer an API to allow you to embed the mapping service into your own website. To show you the coverage from Google Maps, here’s a map of Navan taken from their site (click for a larger view):

and here’s the link too.

Map24
I came across Map24 last week and immediately liked the interface. It uses much of the same features that Google Maps does but it has some neat little extras, such as it’s a flash application, it shows map information icons (e.g. parking, hospitals, etc), has route planning and route flight (which is really cool… you put in your start and end points and it will fly you over the route to take… class) and you can also do a 3D view (where you can rotate the map view to get away from the traditional satelite view). There are two things that got at me about this site though… it seemed to take up extra resources and crashed my browser when I first used it but it’s been running smooth since. The other little thing is a user feature: if you leave your mouse over the map for a second it pops up a little window with information. It’s a good idea but it kept popping up when I didn’t want it to. There’s surely a way to turn this off so I’ll look for it. The mouse controls are a little different to Google but once you get used to it, it’s quite easy to use. They have a beta API at the moment so you can embed the mapping into your own site just like Google. There is also the ability to save your maps and routes, which is also quite neat. Their coverage of Ireland is much better than Google. Here’s a map of Navan from their system (click for a larger view):

and here’s the link as well.

Yahoo Maps
Yahoo Maps is very similar to Google Maps. However, it uses flash as the frontend for this application as opposed to AJAX with Google Maps. The interface works in the pretty much the same way as Google Maps. It includes a route planning feature but it doesn’t seem to have GeoCoding for Ireland, much like Google Maps. Map24 seemed to be the only service that knew my current address and my folks address when planning a route. However, in saying that, I think that Yahoo Maps is that little bit better than Google Maps since it’s coverage of Ireland is much better. There is also an API offered in both AJAX and Flash so you can embed this mapping service into your own website. Here’s the coverage of Navan from Yahoo Maps (click for larger view):

and here’s the link to the map on their site.

Conclusion
All 3 are great services but if you’re looking for detailed maps outside the major towns/cities, use either Yahoo Maps or Map24. If you are looking to plan a route in Ireland, Map24 is your choice. You could always use the AA Route Planning service but it doesn’t show you a map. I like all 3 mapping services and will have to play around with the API’s and embed them into my clients websites. At the moment, Google Maps just isn’t good enough and they really need to get the finger out and update their coverage. In the meantime, I’m going to use Map24 as my mapping service of choice until Google puts Ireland into the 21st Century (mapping wise) but heh, by then, I might just love Map24 too much and just not go back!!!

Map24 - My Thumbs Up!!!

I am pleased to announce that the Raymond Potterton Website, developed here at David Behan - Web Services, has been short listed for the Golden Spider Awards 2006 under the Best Professional Services Website category. The Golden Spider Awards have been described as the Oscars of the Irish Internet Awards. The Awards are run by Business & Finance Magazine and once again sponsored by Eircom.

We are very proud and grateful that RaymondPotterton.com has been short listed for an award this year. It is an honour to have one of the websites developed by us, be associated with the Golden Spider Awards. The award ceremony takes place in the Burlington Hotel on the 23rd November, 2006 and we’ll be letting you know how we get on.

Other websites in our category include: Colliers JS, CPA Ireland, Digino Marketing, Europa Academy, HHM Architects, MHC, and The Digital Hub. It seems like we’ve got some tough competition but with a bit of luck, we might see RaymondPotterton.com take home the award!

Best of luck to all the websites in our category, but especially to RaymondPotterton.com.

For more information on the awards, you can visit www.goldenspiders.ie.