David Behan's Web Design Ireland Blog

Golden Spider Awards Finalist

Well, it’s Golden Spider time of year again (this coming Thursday, 20th November actually) and this year we’ve got one of our websites up for an award - MurtaghBros.ie has been shortlisted in the Best Property Website category. Following the success we had in 2006 and 2007, we’re hoping to make it a hat trick of wins. The competition is tougher this year I believe and some big names are in the same category so it’s hard to tell whether we’ll win it again. The other websites up for the award are:

• www.belmayne.com
• www.chesterfieldblackrock.ie
• www.lisney.com
• www.osberstown.com
• www.owenreilly.ie
• www.privateseller.ie
• www.sherryfitz.ie

Best of luck to all the above - looking forward to meeting some of you on the night too.

We’ve built on previous years experience and added new functionality to the Murtagh Brothers website that will hopefully make us stand out from the crowd. With this property website launched earlier this year, we added some AJAX functionality to enhance the user experience, especially in property listing browsing. We’ve been able to speed up the navigation and browsing of properties by loading the most important part only - the actual listings - without having to reload the entire page. The result is a smooth transition between pages, making browsing the website a much better user experience. You can check out this feature on the Murtagh Brothers website by viewing one of their listing pages and clicking through the paging (next/previous buttons that are top right of the properties). Fingers crossed, with features like this, we’ll be coming home with our third Golden Spider on Thursday.

I’ll be attending the event as well as Dillon Murtagh so if you’re going, keep an eye out for us and say hello if you get the chance. I’m looking forward to meeting lots of new people and saying hello to people I met in previous years. Best of luck to all nominations too.

Oh, if you haven’t voted for the publicly voted category yet, you shoud do so by the end of the day.

BarCamp Cork

BarCamp is coming to Cork for the second time and it’s being held in the Webworks building on Eglinton Street, on November 1st. If you haven’t been to a BarCamp before, they are really good for learning new things, getting advice and meeting people in the industry. I’ve been to a couple so far and it’s always a good event. It’s definitely a great networking event and from the talk I’ve seen on twitter and around a number of the blogs and forums, it looks like there should be a really good turnout. Oh, there’s no cost to attend the event.

I Might Be Giving a Talk

Yes, I’ve put my name down to give a talk on how to sell websites (well, sell anything really). Basically, I’m just going to share my experience and give advice on drumming up business, sales calls, sales meetings (incl. body language basics), proposals, contracts, closing the deal, etc. It’s my first talk on such a subject but I’m looking forward to it. Now that we’ve moved into a recession, it looks like most industries will need to get back to basics when it comes to selling. I hope to see a good turnout of new and familiar faces.

Pre BarCamp Dinner & Drinks

A number of us have been talking about the possiblity of dinner and drinks the night before the event and it looks like it’s going ahead. Pat Phelan is organising a dinner the night before, so if you’re interested in coming, get your name down quick. The guys from the Irish Webmaster Forum are also meeting up for drinks so we’ll all probably end up together the night before.

Accommodation

We did some research on the hotels in the area and here’s a couple of links with pricing. I’ll probably be staying in Jury’s Inn as it close to the venue:

• Jury’s Inn - €129
• Jury’s Cork Hotel - €129
• Clarion Hotel - €140
• Cork Int’l Airport - €150

Carpooling

If anyone is interested in a lift down on the Friday afternoon from Dublin, I’ll probably be heading down with Michele and I’ll be driving back on the Sunday. I’ve space for 2 more so let me know if you want to join us.

Well, that’s it. Hope to see you at the event. If you see me wandering around, don’t hesitate to stop me for a chat.

It’s no secret that we’re now in a recession and most industries across the country and the world are feeling the effects. In talking to a number of other web professionals and from my own experiences, I believe that the Interent is good for consumers and businesses alike, thus being good for our industry. Let me explain a bit more and maybe make more sense.

The Internet for Consumers in the Recession

With everyone needing to become a lot more conscious of their spending habits and how much they are spending, more and more people with be researching and even making their purchases online, looking for better deals. Hence, I believe that although we are in a recession, there may be a shift of spending from traditional sales channels over to the online sales channel. During the boom times in Ireland, we didn’t really care what we were spending on items because there was always more cash coming our way (I’m generalising here but not always the case). I’m constantly reminded that I don’t know what it is like to live in Ireland during a recession and it’s a different mind set. The last recession in Ireland was in the 80’s and I was too young then to notice. With the Internet available to all in this ecomonic cycle, I wonder how much it will influence people in their buying habits. Spending figures may go down but I think the percentage of spending online will go up.

The Internet for Businesses in the Recession

So, it’s no longer the spending frenzy that as it has been in years gone by and I’ve found that a lot of businesses that previously didn’t need to do much marketing for the business to sustain their size and also grow, are now looking at new ways of bringing in the business. A recession pushes businesses to get back to basics and focus on sales and marketing to keep their businesses alive. This is where the Internet comes in to play. Utilising a business website to help market your business and generate sales leads or indeed direct sales can be a cost effective approach compared to traditional sales and marketing methods. Take a one day full page ad in one of the national papers that can easily cost upwards of €10,000 but it only lasts a day. By putting €10,000 towards your website, you’re looking at a sales and marketing tool that can last at least 2 years. Any subsequent traditional advertising can be directed to your website to pick up where they leave off, and generate those must needed sales leads. If you haven’t embraced a website for your business or your current site is looking a bit dated, now is definitely the time to look at how a strong web presence can benefit your business in these difficult times.

The Effect on the Industry

Both of the above lead to one thing for our industry, we are definitely getting busier. I’ve talked to a number of other professionals in the industry and nobody seems to be feeling the effects of the recession just yet. Everyone is saying the same thing - they are busier than ever. Will this last? I’m not sure but if businesses all come to realise the strengths a good website can have for their business during a recession, our industry will continue to grow. We’re working with lots of new clients on their new approach to online business as well as upgrading existing clients with new techniques to improve their presence. We would definitely recommend companies that need a new sales and marketing strategy in this unsure time to look into this further and contact one of the many companies out there that can provide a good service. Finding the right company can be difficult though so in addition to ourselves, I’d like to recommend a few web companies and individuals off the top of my head, that I know in the industry and believe they can do a great job:

• Ken Stanley - Standards guru with a good team around him for some exceptional work
• Contrast - They mainly build web apps but also design some very unique websites
• Sabrina Dent - Designs some great looking websites that have also achieved some great success
• Spoilt Child - Probably one of the best design companies in the country with an excellent portfolio
• Click Stream - Have a wide array of clients and producing some very good work
• Red Fly Marketing - For when you need to market your website in the online world

Do you need some advice?

We love talking to businesses and offering any advice we possibly can. Feel free to call me directly on 046 - 9072998 for a chat or email me at info [at] davidbehan.com.

One of our own projects that we launched earlier this year, OurMemoryOf.com, is up for an Irish Web Award. In case you didn’t know, OurMemoryOf allows users to create a memorial website for their deceased loved ones with photos, stories and online book of condolence.

It’s the first year of the awards set up by Damien Mulley, following the success of the Irish Blog Awards. We’ve made the long list in the Best New Web Application / Service category and we’ve got some tough competition:

Irish Web Awards

• Pix.ie
• PutPlace
• Locle
• Mortgages and Loans
• Nooked
• BookMeetingRoom.com
• Next Action
• Url.ie
• LouderVoice
• Twitterfone
• Zignals
• eWrite
• Album Shopper
• Edenbee
• PropertySwap.ie
• Poll Daddy
• Decisions For Heroes

There really are some great web apps and services in that list. I think it will be difficult to make the short list with such a competitive category. We’ll just have to wait and see.

I felt a little cheated that I wouldn’t get a chance to judge any of the categories in this years awards as we had a nomination. However, I just read on the awards.ie blog that Damien is doing something quite unique with our category. He’s getting us to judge all the other nominees in our category, which will then be added to the other judges scores before the final short list is announced. A great idea Damien.

Well, I just want to wish everyone the best of luck and looking forward to meeting familiar faces and new ones on the night.

Penina Apartments

We’ve been working hard on a new site for an apartment complex in the Algarve, Portugal that has had a great appeal to me personally. As many of my friends, work colleagues and clients know - I’m a golf fanatic! I’ll play as often as I can, weather permitting and I’m constantly trying to get my handicap down.

What makes Penina Apartments different is that they have a special golfing offer available to anyone who stays with them. Up to 6 people can stay in each apartment and of those, up to 4 residents can enjoy a free daily round of golf at the Henry Cotton designed Penina Championship Golf Course. Prices vary between each apartment and the week you book but taking one of the weeks in November, a 3 bedroom apartment can work out at GBP 700 (approx. EUR 860). Dividing that in to 4 golfers, it works out at €215 per person for their accommodation and their golf for the week. As many golfers will recognise, that’s a great offer.

I welcome my readers to check out the website and see what you think. If any of you are interested in a round of golf sometime, do give me a shout or leave a comment - I’m always up for a game.

Google Chrome

Google have just launched a new browser called Google Chrome. It’s aim is to be a faster, simplier and safer browser than what is currently available. Reading about speed tests of the new browser, it seems to be very impressive. I’ve already downloaded it and given it a whirl and I’m quite impressed myself with it’s speed. Flicking through Gmail on FireFox can take a couple of seconds but it flies along in Chrome.

Address Bar

They’ve added some neat features too, like Incognito Mode, where everything you do in this mode is done privately and won’t appear in your web history. I also like the way they highlight the domain you are currently on in the address bar. I’m guessing this to help with phishing websites - a simple but nice feature. They’ve also included crash control so if a web page causes a crash, it will only crash the current tab as all tabs are kept independent of each other. I also like their new tab window that shows most visited sites with thumbnails and a history search box. A bit like the speed dial on Opera but nice all the same.

I quickly ran the Acid2 test to see how compliant it is with web standards and it passed with smiley faces (FF3 also passes but IE7 fails miserably). As long as this does not become a headache to test in, I’m all for it. I’ve tried a few sites I’ve designed and all looks ok and they load exceptionally fast. When I first saw the browser, I thought… oh great, another browser to test in. But so far, it’s been a good experience so maybe not too much to worry about after all.

Well, there’s a quick review and I suggest you give it a try. What do you think of it? Will you give up FireFox or run it parallel?

FeedMyInbox

Yesterday, I was browsing a cool application directory called feedmyapp.com, which has lists of some really cutting edge web applications. I’ve found some really neat stuff over there. One that I found yesterday and I thought I’d share was, feedmyinbox.com. FeedMyInbox allows you to add a website url and your own email address. Once you verify your email address, it will keep an eye on the RSS feed of the website to see if anything is new and when it finds new content, it make an email out of it, and sends it to you.

If the site you visit uses FeedBurner to manage it’s rss feeds (for stats and sharing), there is an option to put in your email address there too. However, as far as I know, the site needs to have been previously set up with feedburner. I just thought this was a nice, quick and simple approach for those that don’t use rss readers or maybe prefer not to have someone’s rss feed in their rss reader that’s not updated often. I added my own website to the app and my own email address, and this morning I had my most recent post in my inbox (and before feedburner had delivered it too).

I think they could expand the application to include some new features, maybe a control panel, a widget for websites to submit to their database, etc. For now anyway, it’s a nice, simple web app that’s worth checking out: FeedMyInbox.com.

Amazon.com

I was talking to a client this morning about mobile phones and he directed me to the amazon.com website to check out some prices. I’m not usually a visitor to their site. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever bought from them in the past. The first thing that jumped off the screen at me was an Irish flag and a message: “Shopping from Ireland? Visit Amazon.co.uk”. I really found this strange from such a large organisation. They have amazon.ie, they have it redirecting to the .co.uk store, why not just put amazon.ie in the message?

Ok, it’s probably a branding thing and they don’t have a .ie store, but it still looks strange to me from such a big company. A lot of smaller companies trading in Ireland and the UK try to secure both .ie and .co.uk domains (or get a .com to cover both) and target their sites towards each country. This has just got me thinking about how perception might effect the purchasing decision of a customer in country A, buying from a website with a domain extension from country B. The .com seems to cover all countries but should you have the different country extensions for your online business when you are targetting them in particular? This probably doesn’t effect Amazon due to their size but smaller online businesses, are they losing revenue on a global scale if they only advertise through their .ie (for example) website?

Anyway, food for thought. I didn’t buy anything in the end.

iFoods.tv

Last night saw a new episode of Dragon’s Den on BBC2, this time featuring the guys behind iFoods.tv, who were looking for £100k investment in their cooking video social network website. Unfortunately, they were not successful in taiming one of the dragons and getting them to invest but at the same time, I think they did extremely well in what they did achieve. They had a great pitch, came across very well, and achieved the respect of the dragons. However, their only fault was that there is a similar type website with a very similar name, and the dragons felt they could loose a number of visitors if users accidently found the rival site instead of their own.

I’ve known of iFoods.tv for awhile but I must admit, I’m not one for cooking too much at all so it hasn’t been a website I would visit often. I have just had the opportunity to have a closer look through their site and watch a couple of their cooking videos. Ignoring the fact that I’m now craving a BBQ’d T-Bone Steak, the site is very well done… nice design, great content, and quite unique. This post is really to help boost some sort of link love for iFoods.tv and give them a little more exposure than they have already gotten. I’m sure by appearing on Dragon’s Den, they’ve gotten their name out to so many potential visitors. I’d love to know how many visitors they have gotten to their site over the past 24 hours.

I just want to add a well done to the guys for going on Dragon’s Den. It must have been a nerve wracking experience but they seemed to handle themselves very well. If I ever aim for that stage, I may knock on their door for some advice.

All the best in the future!

Well, it’s that time of year again… awards season for the Irish web industry. This year sees a new awards being launched, making it 3 awards ceremonies for us webbies to go to.

Irish Web Awards 2008

Irish Web Awards 2008 - October 11th
The Irish Web Awards is the new awards to launch this year. Following the success of the Irish Blog Awards over the past couple of years, Damien Mulley has launched the Irish Web Awards 2008. Categories for the awards include News & Media, Entertainment, Technology, Government &Community, Education & Science, Commerce, Speciality, Technical Awards and an overall Grand Prix. There’s something for everyone in there. Damien is promoting full transparency with these awards and has released the scorecard that will be used to judge nominations. Also, sponsors of the awards cannot have a nomination. These awards will be a bit more casual (as you won’t need a penguin suit) but Damien promises it will be more fun. If the Blog Awards are anything to go by, I’d well believe it. Very nice logo I might add… by Spoilt Child I do believe.

IIA Net Visionary

IIA Net Visionary - October 30th
The Net Visionaries are run by the Irish Internet Association, and according to the IIA, are unique in that they are run and voted on by the Irish web industry. They may not be unique anymore with the launch of the Irish Web Awards this year. A large range of categories are available to get nominated in, including Best Business Blogger, Innovation Award, Internet Entrepreneur, Internet Marketer, Student Project Award, Web Designer Excellence, and Web Developer Excellence. There is something new with these awards this year in that if you (or someone from your company) have won an award in a particular category over the past 2 years, you cannot be nominated in that category. Not a bad idea to allow a rotation of winners. The awards night is a black tie affair and having attended these events a couple of years ago, I must say, it’s a great night.

Golden Spiders

Golden Spider Awards - November 20th
The Golden Spiders are run by Business & Finance magazine and always raise debate about the validity of the awards. So far I haven’t seen anything this year but I’m sure it’s on it’s way! Regardless, I stick to the opinion that the Golden Spiders are a business awards and it is seen as this. We’ve won a Golden Spider award twice in the past for clients and it really does help our business and our clients in promoting their website. The difference with Golden Spider Awards and the other 2 above is that they charge for you to enter and you might not get short listed. The cost of entry is €150. There’s a whole host of categories ranging the business community from finance to professional services, property to recruitment, and many more. There’s a new award this year for Young Designer of the Year. It’ll be interesting to see who gets nominated for and wins this one. This year, the Golden Spiders have published their judging criteria on the website and have added additional information about web standards. The Spiders are a black tie affair as well and having attended the past 2 years, I found it to be a great night for networking with a lot of the larger companies in the web industry. I’ve made a number of contacts from these nights.

Well, I’ll hopefully be putting a couple of sites forward to each of the awards this year and in turn, I should be attending each of them. Hopefully I’ll see you there.