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If you have a LinkedIn profile for your business then you may well have created tabs for certain products and services you offer. Due to recent changes to the platform, if you haven’t checked on or updated these recently then they might have stopped working for you.

This is because LinkedIn has started offering Showcase Pages for businesses’ products and services, replacing the older system of tabs for this content. The idea behind these is to encourage companies to target their content at specific audiences – matching potential clients with particular services and products, rather than just the whole company.

This means that the time and effort you put into creating content for LinkedIn is more likely to pay off and reach a receptive audience. LinkedIn users can search for your Showcase Pages and follow them to get all the updates, so you will really build a relationship between your products and clients.

The older LinkedIn Products and Services tabLinkedin Services Tab Web Design

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If you’ve created a Facebook page for your business then you’ve probably been a dab hand at managing it for a while now. It is a great way to increase engagement with customers (and potentials) and to build your brand’s visibility. You can encourage conversation about your products by providing your followers with all sorts of multimedia content, news and updates.

You might also have created tabs (separate pages) for certain products and services you offer, giving users more detailed information without overloading your main Facebook page.

Having done all this, it is important to keep checking how everything is looking to users. Things are updated and changed on Facebook from time to time, and this affects how your information is displayed.

For example, in March 2014 Facebook announced a streamlining of the timeline, reorganizing content and providing a website-like navigation bar to access different bits of company information.

Facebook Timeline Change Microsoft Office

The Old: The Facebook page for Microsoft Office

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As a day nursery provider with 20 years’ experience, Fennies wanted a website that would play to their strengths while offering a welcoming and easy to use resource for parents, ensuring maximum conversion.

Fennies Responsive Website Design

Answering Parents’ Questions:

Accommodating parents with busy lifestyles and commitments on their time, we developed a fully responsive site that any device will be able to navigate and access all of the information provided.

The most important question parents need answering is whether Fennies nurseries are a viable option for them in terms of time and distance, so we included a ‘find your local Fennies’ button to take visitors to dedicated pages for each nursery.

We created these pages to showcase what each Fennies site has to offer. An illustrated text box introduces the unique features and feel of each premises. This is followed by a checklist of facilities specific to each nursery. We embedded image galleries that really show off each location, and included customer feedback (quotes) and detailed contact information.

These pages have been developed to accept more entries as the number of Fennies nurseries grows, and eventually we will develop a ‘nursery locator’ application for the site.

Fennies Responsive Website Design Nursery Page

The General Design:

For the overall look we developed a slick site with a simple layout – we included the Fennies logo and another noting the firm’s reassuring 20-year history, a bold colour scheme, and a good use of space to draw the eye to the information. The colourful navigation bar grabs peoples’ attention with illustrated and animated links to the other pages. We didn’t overload the homepage with content, being careful to include just what Fennies needed to say, laid out simply and with one very effective photo.

The design really lends itself to the bright and modern nursery facilities that Fennies provide. It is also perfect for a responsive site, looking just as great on any device. It’s all about designing a site that will look sharp and professional, while still knowing when to step back and allow the key features to fulfill the site’s main objective as simply and effectively as they can. There’s a big old telephone number at the top of every page – we want to get people engaged and signing up as quickly as possible. The phone number dominates even when the site condenses for a smartphone screen.

Fennies iPhone Responsive Website DesignThe information pages are all about getting the information to parents as clearly and quickly as possible. The text is broken up into bullet point lists and short paragraphs, and we were careful to subdivide the information on certain pages using tabs. This kept down the number of main categories on the navigation bar so they would make more distinct signposts to the information.

It is best to ensure there are multiple routes to the content across the site, allowing for the different orders in which users view the pages. The pages all have a form for making contact, and we provided prominent calls to action for people to request a call back or register a child.

Parents can now discover Fennies nurseries for themselves, quickly answering all of their questions and signing up with ease.

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Providing cloud computing solutions to businesses, Commensus wanted a website that would showcase all of their services and answer every existing or potential client’s question as quickly,  easily and effectively as possible – maximising conversion, and look great while doing so, too.

Taking a WordPress based approach to the site construction, Codastar made sure that providing a lot of information for people was a plus for Commensus. It was important to include everything in a way that wouldn’t slow down the user experience. We carefully categorized the content and designed a website that is very simple and easy for people to navigate and find exactly what they are looking for. They can speedily find detail on all the services available, meet the team, read the feedback – everything they need to trust their business with Commensus.

Commensus Website Design Home Page


Being flexible:

As their virtualisation services allow clients to access their data from any location or device, it was only right that the Commensus website itself should be be fully responsive. We made sure that, whatever the device, the navigation menu is always there to take users to the information they need as quickly as possible, with all the appropriate page content neatly laid out below as the they scroll down. There’s also links to the firm’s social media accounts to ensure engagement and, in terms of rapid response, the support number tops every page, making sure Commensus can look after existing clients who are encountering problems or emergencies.

Commensus Website Design iPhone

Looking great:

The banner on the Commensus home page is a carousel that combines shifting professional imagery with text summarising what the firm’s services can offer a business. We provided illustrated and animated calls to action for this page to quickly get people checking out the various services on offer. The other pages have different banner images to help users locate themselves. We colour coded the information so that the headings and text boxes on a page help signpost the different topics/services. This looks great on a desktop, but it really comes into its own where users are navigating from a mobile device – new colour, new page! We also added some nice parallax scrolling to the pages (looks like the site’s moving about in separate layers – it’s just pleasing to experience, really).

Commensus Website Design Testimonials

Hitting the target:

We provided a form for people to get in contact on every page – whatever it is that convinces a client, and wherever they are on the site, as soon as they make that decision they will be able to sign up. And clients who can inform themselves about the firm first are not going wasting their own or Commensus’s time. With the sleek, informative website we have built, Commensus can see genuine, follow-through results for new business – a real return on the time and detail work invested in developing the site.

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Citypoint Golf Studio Website Design

Citypoint Golf Studio is a golf performance studio offering coaching and custom club fitting in the heart of the City. Offering rigorous and high tech coaching services for golfers, they wanted Codastar to create a slick and professional looking website that would appeal to City workers – and quickly give people all the information they need to convert them into new clients.

Putting everything in instant view and easy reach on every page is the key to this. We topped the website with a banner that could give old and new clients everything they needed quickly, whatever page they landed on. The site is responsive, and if people are having a brief look at the firm from a mobile device, or whatever device, that banner’s going to be the first thing they see – and it’ll be right there with everything they want.

Backed by smart imagery of the firm that subtly changes from page to page, we included everything to get users speedily informed and on board: company logo (consistent brand identity), a toolbar to take users to the different services on offer and customer testimonials, calls to action to book a slot and links to the social media channels (engagement, and, if you’re a potential customer scooting around on your phone, a Facebook page full of photos and customer sharing can be the quickest validation of a firm).

Change is also good – users viewing a site like to know that the company is ‘there.’ So we made sure that visitors can see Citypoint’s latest news on the right of every page.

Citypoint Golf Studio Website Design Coaching

We also ensured that there is a good mix of content on each page, so the information can reach people with different priorities or amounts of concentration/time available to them. Take a look – you can read the detailed text, or skip it and view the captioned slideshow or embedded video. The multimedia also serves to introduce the staff and showcase their skills and excellent customer service (and frankly, content keeps it interesting). Calls to action accompany all of this content, so it doesn’t matter what it is that ticks the ‘yes’ box for a customer – as soon as it does, there’ll be a sign up button right there for them.

The most valuable asset a business has, in the real world and online, is its uniqueness as a firm – what it does or how it does it, or maybe even who it is. Citypoint put a lot of research and work into their services, and we were able to show this off by including slideshows that quickly illustrate the detailed processes of coaching and finding the perfect club for clients. The behind the scenes research, technology and time that Citypoint dedicates to clients is what makes the studio stand out from its competitors, so it’s absolutely essential to showcase it.

Citypoint Golf Studio Website Design Fitting

The final ingredient (taking the user’s perspective): the bottom of each page has all the details like opening hours, street address and contact details (a big thing for users – if you don’t make this information clearly available on your website they won’t trust you). There is an all important Google Maps location, because that’s somewhere the firm wants to turn up in if it wants a decent place in search engine results.

Brief completed, visitors to Citypoint’s site can now quickly learn everything they need to about the golf studio. They can find information and navigate the site very easily. They can see how friendly and professional the staff are. Most importantly they are able to sign up as quickly as they are able to make their decision on the firm.

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Character at Work is a London consulting, education and coaching business offering new insights into individual and organizational performance. They have a real thirst for engaging with people in innovative ways to improve approaches to work and the workplace.

The firm came to Codastar to develop one sure-fire call to interact – a questionnaire.

Character at Work wanted to give users a Work Potential Index score – the percentage of human qualities a person is using in their workplace. We designed a questionnaire that could calculate this for every user. The questions all link to a database, and we created algorithms that convert each answer into a component of the score for the main categories of human powers/qualities Character at Work use (things like mind, body, connectedness and craftsmanship).

On completion a detailed results page is produced. Users can see their overall score (Work Potential Index) alongside individual percentages for the four powers and six qualities – and also the effect of the workplace on the score. At the bottom of the page we provided a bold call to action to order a report offering professional advice on the results.

Character at Work Questionnaire Survey Design

Presentation

If you’re going to ask people to do something it’s vital to establish ‘what’s in it for me?’ for the user – and convince people quickly before they click away from you. This is why we designed landing pages for the questionnaire that could be ‘read’ in seconds. Succinct text is broken up with an easily readable checklist and short paragraphs – all with clear calls to action.

Character at Work Questionnaire Survey Design

For the questionnaire itself we provided option buttons for multiple choice questions and text boxes for users’ written answers. We made sure the text was laid out properly, with differently coloured headings to show users how they were progressing through the questionnaire (“how much more of this is there?” is another user question you should anticipate).

With all of this set up we have put Character at Work in the best position to increase their engagement with users, fulfilling their goal to transform the workplace by simultaneously producing research and encouraging people to think about their work.

Character at Work Questionnaire Survey Design Character at Work Questionnaire Survey Design

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Cavalier Matters eBay King Charles Spaniel

eBay is increasingly advertising itself as a kind of online shopping mall that shoppers can explore, and selling itself (like a shopping mall) as somewhere where people can do all of their shopping in one place. In this context it is important for online retailers to have an eBay ‘storefront’ in addition their own commercial website, and existing eBay sellers need to look more like shops than individuals. Both need to think about a distinctive image for their eBay storefront as much as a shop in a physical mall might.

Cavalier Matters is a charitable organization offering advice and support for Cavalier King Charles Spaniel owners. They asked Codastar to design an eBay store for them that would stand out and firmly establish the charitable nature of the shop.

Cavalier Matters eBay storefront design

We created a storefront that preserved the smooth design and colour scheme of the Cavalier Matters website. To this we added some of their imagery to give the eBay store some character (if people are looking for gift ideas in the store, somehow a little cartoon spaniel wearing a crown seems to say ‘you’ve come to the right place.’) Brand identity intact; eBay customer base tapped: check!

Arriving on the store’s homepage, shoppers see a bold and well positioned introductory message establishing that all proceeds go to charity. We provided a sidebar to appear throughout the store that includes bold calls to action to view customer feedback, visit the shop and donate to the charity through PayPal.

In designing the eBay store we made sure that all the categories of information were created and completed properly – from the types of items the shop sells to information about Cavalier Matters and making a purchase. Buttons across the top of the storefront take users to shop pages with information on payment, shipping, returns…

Setting these up makes this information far easier to find than on a normal eBay seller page – where it is fragmented and split between individual item listings and the seller’s profile. Here all the information a buyer needs is easily accessible, no matter the customer’s point of entry or their different requirements for more information.

In changing the design from the eBay standard, the most important thing we could do for Cavalier Matters was to ensure their identity and the nature of their organization was clear for eBay customers.

Cavalier Matters eBay storefront design

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As a global financial services firm advising business and institutional investors, it is essential that bfinance maintain client trust and loyalty. Their social media presence has to make clients old and new feel valued by the firm while clearly demonstrating their professionalism, skills and expertise.

Bfinance produce a lot of content to this end, and by having several social media accounts set up they can ensure it achieves maximum reach and is seen by clients and prospective clients.

bfinance Google+ page design

bfinance UK Google+ Page Design

Codastar designed a set of Google+ profile pages, a LinkedIn page and a Twitter profile for the firm. As people are accessing bfinance globally, it was important to set them up with Google+ pages that would be relevant to overseas visitors. Thus we have bfinance (general), bfinance UK and bfinance France. The main profile gives contact details for UK, European and American offices, while the dedicated France and UK profiles have detailed contact information with the office locations tagged in Google Maps (another way clients will find them in a search).

We created stylish and professional banner images to head each profile and the LinkedIn page. These include a succinct yet full description of the business and some sleek imagery to set the right tone. They also incorporate the firm’s distinctive logo, respecting bfinance’s tight branding consistently (an absolute must, as now everything is so unified that all the reports bfinance publish match the design and imagery of the pages).

bifinance Google+ Profile Page Design

bfinance LinkedIn Page Design

Those regular reports and bfinance’s professional YouTube videos are posted on the Google+ profiles and LinkedIn page, ensuring the image the firm presents of itself is not static but constantly updating and producing new insights and advice for clients.

Once we’d set up the accounts and tailored bfinance’s branding to suit each page, the firm could show clients and visitors the great pride and care they take in their message and appearance – and that they constantly build on this by providing fresh and professional information through all their social media channels.

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Museum Makers Facebook app designEncouraging engagement is a very real objective for Museum Makers – they are not looking to build a fanbase so much as to attract people who can devote their free time and abilities to help run Luton’s Wardown Park Museum. They needed a social media presence that would highlight this and give users something to respond to.

With this in mind we created two apps (Facebook tabs or pages) chock-full of eye-catching and welcoming calls to action for converting fans to volunteers. We tailored the pages so that everything kept the branding of the main website, too – with all the right imagery, colour scheme and fonts. It’s all accessed from the Facebook timeline using the buttons we created:

Museum Makers Codastar Facebook App TabTakes you to an informative page that collates some of the beautifully designed content from the Museum Makers website, colourfully detailing the campaign and showing the team. Around this we provided calls to action to get people signing up and looking for more information.

Museum Makers Codastar Facebook App Tab

Here users can easily choose activities that will suit them and click through to the right landing pages on the Museum Makers site.The graphics match the link destination, and our design allows for the inclusion of all the information needed to encourage and inform Facebook users.

Museum Makers Bespoke Facebook PageMuseum Makers Bespoke Facebook Tab

Alongside the apps we provided banner images for Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – everything made to match and keep the branding consistent, of course. What with all the events and activities Museum Makers are trying to encourage, having as many outlets for their content and updates as possible is a must – they are also conspicuous ways in for new fans and volunteers.

Having a Twitter feed consolidates on the work the page Facebook does by keeping Museum Makers in people’s consciousness, helping fans stay engaged and seek out further volunteering opportunities. Take a look – Museum Makers are reminding people about their upcoming world record attempt and the preparations for a summer event.

Museum Makers Twitter Profile Design

Museum Makers YouTube Profile Design

And if you can produce it, content is powerful – a Museum Makers t-shirt-bedecked ‘#happyday’ video re-imagining Pharrell’s ‘Happy’ has managed 188,000 views and 200 comments for their YouTube profile. And of course that account links back to all the other social media pages and the Museum Makers website.

Everything works to show just how different the Museum Makers community is – and how many activities and volunteering ideas they can offer fans of their pages and their campaign.