Internet World has been going for years (20 this year in fact) and is advertised as the UK’s longest running, best attended and biggest annual event for digital marketing. It ran from 24th-26th April and I went up yesterday (Weds 25th) with a dual mission this year. As well as my usual agenda, I also had the pleasure of attending with my better half (the lovely Philippa) who is an Art Director/Graphic Designer with a background in print design but an interest in learning about all things digital, with the aim of furthering her knowledge in this area.

(Let me be clear: dragging a loved one through the rain to a trade show containing iPad waving geeks and buying them a cold panini for lunch, eaten whilst sitting on a concrete floor owing to lack of seating (sort it out Earls Court!) is a big no-no in terms of date ideas. This was purely educational!)

For those who haven’t been before, Internet World is the usual sort of thing. A number of stands where companies are tauting their wares, with varying degrees of ability, guile and vigour, along side a number of seminar spaces where speakers try and both impart useful knowledge (so you’ll turn up) and flog their services (to the captive audience). Despite my cynicism I actually do find these seminars a useful indicator, along with the show as a whole, to determine what is being pushed, and what is being pulled.

My expectations before the event were validated, with Mobile, Social and Cloud all high up on the agenda, with the overall theme being very much about delivering your messages across a full range of media, in an integrated way with as much tracking as possible (though interestingly the EU Cookie Law was being ignored rather than solutions to it being actively marketed – it appears the waiting game there is still en vogue).

Delivery to multiple devices was high on the agenda, with a number of systems being promoted which ‘solve this for you’ in one way or another. Two seminars we managed to attend (“Mastering customer journeys in the multi-device connected world” in the Mobile Theatre and “Using responsive design to build a new generation of mobile-friendly web sites” in the Content Management Theatre) had this at the core of their message, which is very much in line with my own thinking (see Responsive web design: the way forward?).

This evolution of digital design was also of key interest to Philippa, as the need to design for a fluid environment is very much one that all designers working in the digital will need to get used to. Also the decision process around when to use Responsive Design (i.e. effectively delivering the same content/message to multiple devices with different screen sizes) and having separate (forked or otherwise) sites for different devices (e.g. delivering alternative, maybe more situation specific content to mobile devices) needs consideration. One things for sure, marketeers and designers need to now include devices as an additional matrix when looking at user cases.

A couple of stats we both took away with us:

Smartphone use is predicated to take over from Desktop use for internet browsing by 2014.
(i.e. more people will use a phone to view a website than a computer within 2 years)

70% of businesses don’t yet have a mobile friendly website.

If you’re one of those companies that don’t yet have a mobile strategy then you need to be taking action now to ensure you don’t get left behind. Get in touch to find out more.

What does this mean?
Well that’s where the confusion is. In brief it appears that laws will require that websites ask visitors for consent to use ‘most’ web cookies. Most websites use cookies in some way or another and these are often integral to the workings of the site as they remember information between web pages (for login status, preferences, shopping cart items etc).

The new law is well intentioned, aimed at protecting privacy. For instance if you search Google for ‘holidays’ in the morning, you may well find that when visiting another website later in the day that there are banner adverts on there about holidays. This isn’t a coincidence. Google is using cookies to store information about what you’re interested in and then serving relevant adverts to you on other websites showing banner ads. Scary huh!?

What’s affected?
So cookie use in advertising is one of the targets of this law, but most users would say that changing this so that you have to opt in to have this sort of information stored about you isn’t a bad thing, but for site owners who finance their websites through advertising this could destroy their business model.

Same goes for the use of cookies in affiliate marketing. If you can’t use a cookie to validate affiliate links then all online affiliate marketing could be threatened.

The law does allow you to use “strictly necessary” cookies, for example those used to remember when you add an item to your shopping cart. Users want you to remember that information, so it’s not really a privacy issue. Other cookies use, such as remembering login, is also supposedly okay.

The issue is mainly with site owners or third parties storing information about what a user looks at on a website, so the biggest immediate concern for most people is quite probably analytics. Pretty much all tracking system that uses cookies, Google Analytics included, so by the letter of the law it’s likely that you’ll need to get users to agree to cookie use in order to be able to continue to use these systems.

Also in order for someone to ‘like’ your article in Facebook, or indeed via any social media site, cookies are generally needed. So does this law scupper social networking too??!

So you see, whilst the intention of the law is well intentioned, the results of it’s wording are potentially far reaching for all Internet users.

What are people saying?
Now you would have thought that companies such as Google might have responded by now and come up with a plan to solve this problem, but the general response from all those companies is pretty much “go talk to your own legal people”. Now the reason for this it appears is that most observers feel that the everyone is taking a “wait and see” mentality, with the attitude that 92% of websites use cookies, so how exactly is this law going to be enforced?

All I know is that the recommended route of getting your users to approve use of cookies on your website is to pop up a box to ask their approval. Of course, you’ll need to use cookies to remember their response, which is fine if they say “Yes”, but if they say “No” then you obviously can’t remember that, so you’d have to ask that question again on every page they visit!! Methinks that might get a little annoying

What should you do?
I’m no lawyer, so the only professional advice I can give at this time is indeed to consult your own legal people. If asked off-the-record I might recommend taking the same wait-and-see attitude of everyone else, in the hope that someone might see some sense!

If you do decide you want to make amends to your website in reaction to the law then get in touch to discuss the options for adding cookie approval functionality to your site (as there are ways to make it less intrusive if so desired).

Details: Wessex Coin supplies gaming and amusement equipment across the world. Managing Director Chris Skelly got in touch to discuss how to start to implement  digital marketing in their business.

It was agreed that a WordPress CMS website would be at the core of their approach, to allow them to load and update their content and product stock, as well as sell selective products online via PayPal. The blog will be used for both news and technical updates, supported by Twitter and in an email newsletter, to help build stronger relationships with existing customers.

Details: The Night to Remember midnights walks have helped raise nearly £1 million for the hospices over the last few years. For 2012 the decision was made to upgrade the CMS system managing the website/s.

The hospices chose to integrate these microsites into the Eddie CMS provided by Article10 which runs their main websites. I was involved in the original development of the CMS so was happy to get involved.

I produced the new sites and set up the functionality so that event registrations have PayPal integration (with Instant Payment Notification to reduce administration time) and offer registrants the options of automatically creating a JustGiving fundraising page (which was achieved via the new JustGiving API). There is also Facebook and Twitter connectivity.

I’m sure both events will be great successes once again!

If you wanted to use a different font anywhere on the page then the main option was to turn that into a graphic. This technique was pretty much restricted to headings only, and whilst using graphical headings might have made the page look nice, its a poor option for SEO.

But times are changing. There have been attempts to rectify this situation over the last 10 years, and in that time I’ve tried the main methods such as: sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement), Typeface.js and Cufon, in the hope that one would really push on and gain widespread support.

However, it’s only in the last few years where there has been a real push to increase support of @font-face (a technology that has actually been around since the late nineties) across web browsers that has opened the door for Web Fonts and finally given us real font choice online.

Web Font services, with the best known being TypeKit, have been around for a while, but when Google jumped on board with Google Fonts API the world started to take note.

These services allow you to link your website to hosted fonts on their servers (either via subscription or currently in Google’s case for free) which means that you can use that font on your website in the knowledge that everyone viewing your site will see your choice of font, whether they have it on their computer or not.

You can also host your own Web Font (with conversion tools being available online to turn standard fonts into Web Fonts), one thing to watch out for here is font licencing (EULA or copyrights) as some fonts require separate licences for use as a Web Font. If you don’t have a copy of the licence to hand then check the foundry that produced the font for guidance before going down this route.

In the last few months, more and more Web Font services have opened up, indicating a real demand for Web Fonts, so with a bit of luck 2012 will be the year that cements @font-face and Web Fonts into the mainstream.

As different fonts start to appear online a complimentary trend has become apparent, which is for the use of a larger font-size for body copy. This has been inspired by legibility issues caused by a mix of font choice and (more notably) device size, and is another trend to watch out for in 2012.

For more information on this, or any of the points raised, please get in touch.

Do you use a desktop browser, or a netbook, maybe a smartphone, what about an iPad, or possibly via your TV? The web is more accessible than it has ever been via a wider range of devices than you might imagine. This is great, but at the same time how does that impact on what your website looks like to those viewing it?

Most websites are designed to a fixed width to ensure that it looks perfect and works well in a standard desktop browser (used by traditionally by far the largest audience). If done well then it will look good on most modern monitors, which are set to a resolution at least 1024 pixels wide. However, how does it look on an iPad 2, which might be 1024 pixels wide in landscape mode, but is only 768 pixels wide in portrait mode, or more importantly with the growth of the smartphone market, a mobile browser (e.g. on the iPhone) which is maybe 320 pixels wide… do your visitors have to zoom in and out and scroll around the page for the content they want?

It’s always worth checking your analytics (or statistics) to get an idea of what devices visitors are currently using to browse your site. My guess is that you’ll see a growing trend of usage of smaller screen sizes. For those of you who have been involved with websites over the last 15 years you may feel it’s a little like the old days when your website had to be less than 640 pixels wide to work on low resolution monitors. These days though it’s not the restriction of the technology that’s causing the issue, it’s the growth of new technology with smaller, more portable screens.

As a business you need to pro-actively think about all of your audience, including those using mobile (or non-desktop) devices who are viewing your website, to ensure they are able to effectively view the message you are trying to communicate to them. One approach is to focus just on mobile users and offer a mobile version of your website (ideally with the content adjusted and focused for mobile users). Another, cheaper and easier way, is to use Responsive Web Design.

Websites encompassing Responsive Web Design (a term coined in 2010 but now trending) adapt the layout of the page to the device (or more aptly the available screen size) that it is available. This means that mobile users on phones or tablets are presented with (more-or-less) the same content as desktop users but it is laid out differently so that it can all be read without having to zoom or re-size the page in their device.

If you’re on desktop browser, then to best understand what I mean you can re-size your browser window (width) now and see how this page re-organises the content. I think you’ll agree that it still looks pretty good and is much easier to read on the narrowest width (equivalent to being on a mobile phone) than if you had to zoom in-and-out all the time.

The technique in question utilises CSS Media Queries which, as the name suggests, allows you to query the media being used (e.g. looking at the available screen size) and then adjust the CSS used based on the result. And being client side CSS it means that these adjusts to the layout happen in real-time.

This website implements the technique via querying for 3 different screen sizes: 954px or wider (the standard website width), under 954px (with the result transitioning well for tablets), and under 640px (with the result working all the way down to mobile browser widths). I also hide certain content elements as the page narrows to ensure the page looks good on the smaller screen sizes, and I think this consideration is really important when considering Responsive Web Design usage for your website.

Generally I think Media Queries are a great solution, and we’ll see them increasingly being used in 2012 (including by me ) however, they aren’t the end of the road. Technically there are a number of other options that can be considered when looking at delivering websites to mobile device users to further optimise their experience.

If you think you’d benefit from having your a responsive website then get in touch today to discuss the options.

Details: It’s always good to keep in contact at Christmas and the traditional way is the good old Christmas Card. Over recent years an email Xmas greeting has become recognised as a far more environmentally friendly, and indeed cheaper, way of sending out your yuletide messages. I like to keep clients informed about my plans around the holidays so this years card doubled as an update on opening hours as well as the simple reminder about the services I offer moving into 2012.

The email design worked alongside a reskinning of the website to give a nice Xmas greeting to all visitors over the holiday period. Why not make plans now for the various holiday’s throughout the year to ensure your visitors know you’re thinking of them at those times?

Details: On the back of the new event websites I produced for ITF there was a requirement for a pair of event invite email templates. Working within the brand style previously developed I worked with Andrew Whiteman of Open Globe Marketing to design and develop the new email templates, which include layout options and social media links.

Adobe have ceased development of the Flash plugin for mobiles and instead are focusing on Adobe AIR applicatons for mobiles.

Whilst I’ve never been a fan of excessive Flash use it definitely has had it’s purpose, but now with the move to HTML5 and mobile apps to deliver online content this move does make sense in the long run as far as Adobe are concerned. This comes as especially bad news for Android developers who have cited the lack of Flash in Apple mobile products as one of the main advantages of that platform.

It also signals that the use of Flash for desktop browsing is also on borrowed time so it’ll be exciting to see how smooth the transition is to the newer web standards.

Synthetic Egg has sponsored forward Harry Swabey for 2011-2012, and he has already netted a few times this season.

Follow the teams progress at http://www.bracknelltownfc.com/