Dreaming Berries

Google - Your Accessible Web Design Girlfriend

2009-12-02T16:53:00.003Z

Owning a website and trying to get it to rank with Google is an awful lot like being a teenage boy trying to lose his cherry.

Google have got something you want and to get it you're either going to have to be very charming or you’re going to have to stump up a lot of cash.

One way is going to get guaranteed results but fill you with a sense of shame; the other is altogether more rewarding and free (sort of). In the world of search, this is the distinction between paid search marketing and natural search optimization: paying Google directly or working on having content Google deem worthy of recognition.

Assuming he wants to go the natural route, our teenage boy needs two things to get the girl: an attractive package and lots of other people telling her he’s got an attractive package.

But there’s a secret which is often overlooked (you may want to put on Lionel Richie’s "Hello" at this point) -the girl of your dreams is blind.

Which means that fancy clothes and £l00 haircuts just won't wash with her. So how do you convince her? Firstly, get lots of other people to send her in your direction (inbound links) and secondly, you need to let her know that what's on the inside is more important than the packaging (content over style).

How does this translate into action for your website?

1. Make sure all your text is readable

Blind people access the internet by using screen readers. These are pieces of software that scan the text on the page and create synthesized speech, which is read to the user.

Google access your site using "spiders" who crawl over your pages looking for content.

The temptation of many designers - especially those with a print background - is to corral important textual elements such as headings, menus and slogans, into looking exactly how they want. This is usually achieved by using Adobe Flash or by putting the text inside an image.

Googlina, like all blind users, struggles with Adobe Flash and can't see what's in your images at all.

The lesson? Deliver textual content as text not images.

2. Organise your pages

HTML (the "language" used to describe a web page to your browser) was intended as a means to exchange documents over the internet. Over the years we've extended the capabilities of the web beyond recognition, but a web page is still at heart a document and as such requires structure: clear, meaningful headings, a logical order and semantic organisation.

This helps both blind and sighted users discern the structure of your content and gives Google plenty of hints as to what your content is all about.

3. Make your link text meaningful

Those screen readers mentioned earlier often have a function to run through the content of a page and pick out links within it. These are then read out before anything else to allow the user to choose to follow them. Imagine how frustrating it would be to be read something like this "home, about us, our services, testimonials, contact us, click here, click here, click here, click here, follow this link, find out more, click here, click here".

Links need to be meaningful even when stripped of their visual context. And guess who else likes to be told what’s behind a link? Googlina! And in fact, having meaningful keywords in both your internal and external links is one of the most important factors in getting your site up the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

So there you have three tips for getting jiggy with Googlina. There are many more benefits to designing your site to meet accessibility standards:

compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act (which all websites should have been doing since 1996)

the rosy glow of having done something worthy

reaching all your potential market (there are approximately 10 million UK residents registered as disabled)

studies have shown that a website designed with accessibility in mind is likely to retain 30% more customers than one that isn't

If we design a website to be accessible, we've automatically designed a search optimized website.

If you'd like to discuss how Dreamberry Design can help you pull Googlina (we can also dress you in those fancy clothes and get you that £100 haircut for those who are able to see your site), please get in touch.

One of Oldham's top businessmen walks on fire

2009-10-27T10:09:00.004Z

I went to a Chamber of Commerce networking lunch last week with our local MEP, Arlene McCarthy. She spoke at length about her work with the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (of which she is chair) and her new role as vice chair of the powerful Economic and Monetary Affairs Select Committee. Despite being the wrong colour for me politically, she was erudite and eloquent and fielded most questions fully and honestly rather than the usual politician's dodge. The lasagne wasn't up to much though.

A group of us were taken outside and shot. I was one of those featured. You can view the results in this article - Oldham Chronicle article - which appears to state that I'm one of Oldham's top business people!

Later on I went to Leigh to do a firewalk for MedEquip4Kids, a local charity providing Manchester hospitals with extra equipment to supplement what the NHS can't quite afford. I almost feel guilty asking for sponsorship as it was such an amazing experience, but ask for sponsorship I will! You can make a contribution here - sponsorship page - and if you want to see the proof that I did it, try my Facebook fan page. There's also a live action blurry photo sequence.

Web Designers

2009-09-07T09:52:00.008+01:00

You need a website. You've realised that it's a job for professionals. Step one overcome. But now comes the difficult part: choosing your web designer. Far be it from me to try and influence your decision, but here are some essential qualities to look for in your web designer.

First off, height is important. Your web designer should not be too tall or else they're likely to be too far away from the screen to be able to work effectively. Similarly they shouldn't be too small as they won't see over the desk. An ideal height for a web designer is about 5 feet 10 inches.

An often overlooked aspect of the design process is the designer's sporting allegiances. For instance, a Manchester United fan might be in such a cloud of smug superiority that (s)he expects the project to get to number one on Google every year and is slightly disappointed if for instance they only get to number one on Ask Jeeves and come second in Google. They probably just sit back and wait for it all to happen. A Torquay United fan on the other hand may be so resigned to failure that they daren't invest any energy in trying to produce a result. Bona fide empirical studies have conclusively shown that, due to their ideal combination of impassioned optimism and diligent pessimism, Manchester City fans make the best web designers.

Have you ever considered an ideal weight for your prospective web designer? No? Then you could be in danger of making a critical error. A web designer who is too slim has obviously spent far too much time away from their desk. Conversely, an obese web designer may be in danger of collapsing before your project is complete. Your web designer should ideally have a BMI of around 28. This is indicative of a web designer who has spent many hours in front of a web browser learning their craft.

Your web designer should have a pleasant sounding first name, something like Phil, which is Greek for "love" and a more austere surname of French origin, like Houghton, which indicates a level of seriousness not always present in his blog entries. Your designer should have around 6 years of programming experience working on a mission critical banking application with one of the big banks, for instance, HSBC. This would indicate they have a serious approach to coding in an efficient, thorough and robust manner. Finally they should own a company that has a name like Dreamberry as companies called Dreamberry have been proven by independently audited studies to be up to 5 times better than companies not called Dreamberry.

So that's "web designer Manchester City fan Dreamberry Phil Houghton BMI of around 28 5 feet 10 inches HSBC" then?

Fourth Plinth Superstar

2009-07-29T09:31:00.002+01:00

Well it's been a LONG time since I posted anything on my blog. There's a good reason for that and the reason is I've been choc-a-block with work of late. Which is a nice state to be in all things considered.

On the other hand, not updating my blog and not updating my home page has caused a slight dip in my search engine rankings, which is not great when you're trying to sell yourself as a search optimization specialist but on the other hand (that's three hands now if you're counting) it provides a bit of balance as I'm getting fewer queries from the website while I'm busy.

I've begun monitoring my rankings in the main search engines. I'm happy to report that I'm on the first page on Ask.com for web design Manchester, which is super but with 80+% of the UK market I'd rather be on page one of Google. I was fairly stable there at #11 for a couple of weeks but then fell away. I'm now crawling back up and this morning was just at the bottom of page 2. Which is still not too bad for a one man band.

Anyway, my main reason for writing this entry is to let everyone know how proud I am of my mum who at 6am this morning did her bit on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of Anthony Gormley's "One and Other" project. You can watch the video here -

http://www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Iris

She's a glass artist and for her hour on the plinth she'd made 60 glass coasters that she planned to throw down to the waiting crowds below. In the event, there weren't that many people around (the rain didn't help) so it was a mix of plan A which was throwing them down and plan B which was simply unwrapping them. You can view her work and find out how to buy her stuff (which is outstanding - I would say that anyway, but she's in several galleries and she got a distinction for her Masters degree in Glass) on her new glass art website, built by yours truly.

Dreamberry Design Ltd - as endorsed by fluffy cats

2009-04-20T10:57:00.004+01:00

One of the advantages of working for yourself is that if there's a rare sunny day in Manchester, you have the option to stay at home and set up your laptop in the garden.

I'm quite sure our cat Willow would like us to do this every day. If the weather was like this everyday, I surely would!

In the "news" department, we are now a Private Limited Company. Exciting times! (For my accountant at least.)

Have you been screwed over by your web designer?

2009-04-01T11:21:00.004+01:00

If you want to be a web designer, there's nothing stopping you. No training, no exams, no certification, no professional body, just fall out of bed and tell the world you're a web designer.

Indeed, it's what I did, only I did the training - and continue to improve my skills and knowledge every day, and I had serious programming experience before that, and I'm quite sure I'd pass any exam or certification process were one to exist. The closest thing we have to a professional body is the Guild of Accessible Web Designers, but even that has two routes to entry: one, which I took, which is to demonstrate knowledge of accessible web design; the other, to demonstrate advocacy of accessible web design. (If anyone doubts the case for accessible web design, please look at my SeeHearSurf site.)

All this creates a problem for conscientious designers and developers like myself. In a sea of sharks and snake oil salesmen how do you sail a true path to the Island of Good Web Design? I honestly don't know. Luck? Even relying on word of mouth "my designer did me this fantastic site for only this much" can be fraught with danger if the person making the claim has been hoodwinked themselves.

Long term, the only way is for a national body to be established to regulate the industry and Dreamberry are working with a number of reputable agencies to establish a de facto body to promote standards in design and transparency.

Short term, look at the designer's portfolio. Do you like the look of the sites there? If you search for them in Google, do they come near the top - if not why not (it may be for instance, they're in a very competitive market)? If you run the site through a standards validator like http://validator.w3.org/, are there any errors? Is the site unique? Can you get to the information you need quickly and easily? Can you read the text without any trouble? There are hundreds of factors that make up "good" web design, not all of which are immediately obvious to non-professionals.

The very easiest solution to finding a good, honest designer of course, is to get your website from Dreamberry Design!

False economies and running marathons

2009-03-02T11:23:00.002Z

This weekend my girlfriend and I decided it was a while since we'd been into Manchester for a mindless shopping spree, so that's what we did, stopping off for a delicious lunch at the always excellent Chaophraya. We're off to Madrid to visit some friends in a couple of weeks and I need a new suitcase so we were in Kendals (still can't get used to calling it House of Fraser) and I was quite shocked at how expensive they were. I was considering down-sizing my brand expectations and getting something cheaper elsewhere when at that very moment a friend called and we got round to where I was and what I was doing and he - an experience traveller - counselled against my plan. "It's a false economy", he said. "It will just break sooner and then you'll have to buy a new one." Which triggered a painful memory of a previous luggage economy and I knew he was right. So what did I do? Did I fork out the £200+ they were asking for the one I wanted? NO! I went home and won a barely-used second hand version of the same on eBay for £25.

The point being, in a recession, customers are looking to spend less. They're looking to shop smarter. What's the answer to this? The answer is to market smarter.

Countless research supports the idea that increasing, or at least maintaining market spend during a recession is the way to go. This is for several reasons: if your competitors reduce their marketing spend, there's less "noise" for you to compete with, meaning your "share of voice" is relatively increased; all sales are harder to win in, so you need to work harder at them; finally, customers will forget you if you don't engage with them. Marketing is a marathon not a sprint and those who keep on running will open up a gap in the long term.

Okay, so here's the bit where I turn this on-topic and try and persuade you you need a new/better website!

Customers are looking for bargains. One of the main places they're looking for bargains is the internet. They're looking for half price this, special offer that, buy-one-get-one-free-the-other. Offers like our free £100 Google Adwords web marketing offer of the month.

With prices typically starting from around £400 for a small static website, combined with £100 worth of free marketing spend on Google, a Dreamberry website offers the potential for outstanding ROI in an age of uncertainty. And because we're members of the Guild of Accessible Web Designers, we can design your website to have maximum customer reach.

It's a lot easier than running a marathon.

Dreamberry on the TV

2009-02-03T10:20:00.005Z

A little late this, but my client recently got back in touch about doing more work on his site and it reminded me that his logo (designed by Dreamberry) had featured in a national TV advert. Ergo, Dreamberry is famous!

Following this link to YouTube you'll see an ad for People Compare. The logo for my client, C2 Recruitment is prominently - if briefly - displayed at about the 20 second mark. If you want to prime yourself so you know what you're looking for, visit the C2 Shrewsbury Recruitment site first.

Wow. Fame at last. One moment, I think that's Jennifer Aniston on the phone...

If you had a robotic servant, would he be able to fix your website?

2009-01-02T10:09:00.010Z

First off, I'd like to wish all my customers past, present and future a healthy, wealthy and happy New Year.

2009!!! It really is the future now, which leaves me wondering - where exactly are my solar-powered hovercraft and my robotic servant?

As I like to tell anyone who'll listen, bad design annoys me. Anyway, what with it being the future and all I was musing over how many websites there are out there that look like they're from 1994. I was already on the internet in those days, indeed I proudly created my first web "pages" whilst a student at Newcastle University. They were awful for two reasons: firstly, I didn't have a clue what I was doing back then and secondly, the internet was in its infancy and the tools, methods and protocols we use to create shinytastic sites today just weren't available.

But this is 2009 - also, where is the daily shuttle to our colony on Mars? - and there's no excuse to have a dodgy looking, unusable, inaccessible website in 2009. You've got me to design a good one for you! I've always maintained that it's better to have no website at all than a bad web site. You wouldn't have your shop window or your reception daubed in flaky paint; you wouldn't have your receptionist answer the phone with a curt "what?"; you wouldn't go to a meeting wearing the rags you do your DIY in. So why present such an ugly and unprofessional face to anyone who might find you on the internet?

If your site looks like it belongs on this archive of the "worst of the web" then you definitely need to be contacting a web designer post haste. Welcome to 2009 - it's the future you know!

Introducing SeeHearSurf accessibility audits and web design

2008-11-20T10:20:00.002Z

As this is my first ever venture into the world of blogging, I'd like to say a big "hello" to the blogging community - HELLO! Longer term, I intend to use this blog to offer my thoughts and opinions on all things web design and maybe some things from the larger world too. For this first blog though, forgive me if I get into a sales pitch - I'm just very excited about my new project!

Here at Dreamberry, we have some very exciting news: this week saw the launch of our new accessibility project, SeeHearSurf. Dreamberry have long been advocates of web accessibility. This project takes our advocacy one step further and sees us offering web accessibility consultancy and site audits as well as our own high standard of accessible web design.

With the ratification of the WAI's somewhat controversial WCAG-2.0 accessibility standards expected in December, web accessibility is likely to be in the news in the near future. Getting ahead of the curve can only be a good thing for your website: among the many benefits of accessible web design are increased usability for all, improved search ranking and reaching a potential 650 million extra customers worldwide.

There's more exciting news to come, but I'll tell you about that nearer the time...