Give 4 BETH is the non-profit fundraising campaign that Rich has started to help young people achieve life-changing dreams. Give 4 BETH was initially set up to help a local 4 year-old girl called Bethany Chiddle to achieve her dream of being able to walk unaided.

Beth was diagnosed with quadriplegic cerebral palsy at a very young age and the aim was to raise enough money so that, along with her mum Kerry, she could fly to the USA to undergo selective dorsal rhizotomy (SDR) surgery. The cost of the operation and the physiotherapy that Beth requires on her return is an incredible £40,000.

By December 2012, enough funds had been raised in order for Beth and her mum to fly to the USA. The operation was a huge success and Beth is now currently undergoing intense physiotherapy in order to build her muscle strength. The progress she has made to date has been truly astonishing and she is well on the way to fulfilling her dream.

As well as continuing to support Beth through her final stages of physiotherapy, the Give 4 BETH campaign will look to fundraise for other young people who have a life-changing dream to fulfil.

The idea behind the campaign is to encourage people to give their belief, encouragement, time and happiness through a variety of events to help those that really deserve a chance at fulfilling their dreams.

Having battled the elements for the last six months, the time has now almost arrived for Rich to put all his training and hard work into practice and to take on the 26.2 mile challenge of the Virgin London Marathon. He’ll be the one wearing 37370.

As well as trying to run the quickest time he possibly can, Rich also has his heart set on raising as much money as possible. If you would like to support Rich, you can donate through his fundraising page.

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Take for example the Harlem Shake, the latest dance craze to explode across the internet (remember Gangnam Style way back in December last year? Yesterday’s news). The dance went viral in early February and, in under a month, thousands and thousands of versions have been uploaded to YouTube, attracting billions of views. You can track how it has been searched for in Google Search using Google Trends.

Now, of course, the latest dance craze isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but Google Trends can be used to search for any type of trend and to find out how people are searching for particular topics, events, products, services and more. Google Trends gives a timeline of interest, a list of the most popular search terms and a breakdown of interest by region, town and city.

It also features Hot Searches and Hot Topic tools, which measure the fastest-rising searches and trending terms in news and social media feeds. In short, Google Trends allows users to pinpoint what’s happening, how it’s happening and where it’s happening.

Google Trends and business insights

Hence, the kind of information that Google Trends provides makes it a very powerful business tool. Run a chain of gastropubs and want to know what foods are on trend? Own a wedding venue and want to know when is the most popular time people are searching online for places to tie the knot? Google Trends can provide a very important insight.

To find out more about Chichester Design’s web design and development services, including Google Trends, contact Rich on +44 (0)1243 787542 or info@chichesterdesign.co.uk.

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It’s easy to forget that the internet is a big place and that navigating it can be a bit confusing. It’s our business to know how it works and what can be achieved, but for the less tech savvy, we’ve organised some learning resources that shed some light on what the internet is all about.

A good resource for the basics is TeachParentsTech.org. This website features a host of videos that show you how to do everything from checking your spelling and making phone calls from your computer to creating an email signature and checking email on your phone.

Google.co.uk/GoodToKnow covers much the same ground but also includes information on web publishing, social media use, YouTube and blogging, which is useful for private users and businesses alike.

20thingsiLearned.com goes a bit further and offers easy-to-understand, plain English explanations of the likes of cloud computing, web apps, HTML, JavaScript, browser cookies, security, IP addresses and more. So, wherever you are on the tech savvy scale, these websites have videos to help to improve your understanding and use of the internet.

The power of web videos and YouTube

Videos (or web videos) have become one of the most important and most popular learning tools on the internet, and YouTube (www.YouTube.com) is leading website for viewing these videos. Everyone knows how big Google is but YouTube is the world’s second most popular search engine and there’s not much you can’t share or learn how to do on YouTube. Just look at the figures: over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month, over which time over 4 billion hours of video are watched on the website.

As a result, YouTube is a powerful business tool – over a million advertisers use Google advertising platforms with YouTube, the majority of which are small businesses. This use goes some way to accounting for the 72 hours of video that are uploaded to YouTube every minute!

To find out more about Chichester Design’s web design and development services, contact Rich on +44 (0)1243 787542 or info@chichesterdesign.co.uk.

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The candidate should have PHP/MySQL skills with a web design and development background and the ability to code designs using HTML5 and CSS mark-up. An excellent understanding of modern web design and development methods is essential.

The candidate should have a sound knowledge of current web master guidelines and best practices set out by the major search engines. They should also have good literacy, numeracy and communication skills.

The successful front end candidate will be responsible for UX and GUI coding, and back end candidates will be responsible for CMS, database and custom web app coding.

Reporting to the Projects Manager, this position is a great opportunity for the successful candidate to make a major contribution to the development of the company and to develop their role as part of a dynamic team.

An immediate start is possible.

The successful candidate will need to be talented in the following skill sets:

Essential:

• Used to working in a Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP environment
• HTML & CSS
• Experience in responsive layout + semantic mark-up

Desirable:

• JavaScript
• Information architecture
• Content strategy implementation
• Mobile App design and development

This is a freelance position working in our offices in central Chichester weekdays 9-6pm we hope this will become a permanent position for the right candidate.

Please use the work with us page to get in touch.

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eBay has unveiled PayPal Access, a new web payment service that could replace all the others on the market. The growth of ecommerce business websites has been notable, and their number continues to rise, and PayPal is part of this picture (but not all of it).

It is important, as an online retailer, to offer secure online shopping, and what eBay is proposing with PayPal Access is a payment service that can be used universally, removing the need for consumers to use multiple services when shopping online. Consumers will not need to repeatedly register accounts and credit or debit cards.

The prospect of making the process from browsing to buying easier should appeal to online retailers, as shopping cart abandonment remains an issue in the ecommerce world. In addition, I think the single service should appeal on security grounds for retailers and consumers – surely the logic goes: the fewer times you enter or store card data on the web, the more secure your details are.

Of course, persuading online retailers with existing ecommerce systems that do not involve PayPal to change to PayPal Access will certainly be a challenge. However, perhaps it will just be a matter of time. eBay will no doubt be hoping that newcomers to the ecommerce website format pick up their product and that existing online retailers choose to change when upgrading
their business websites. We shall see.

To find out more about Chichester Design’s web design and development services, including ecommerce websites, contact Michelle on +44 (0) 1243 787542 or info@chichesterdesign.co.uk.

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The change that has got everyone talking is that the new Google Shopping, which is due to be launched in the US in the autumn and is expected in the UK next year, will comprise only paid placements: currently Product Search provides a mix of paid and unpaid placements. In addition, on standard search engine result pages, Google Shopping results will feature above leading organic results (they currently feature in the middle of the page). AdWords text ads will remain at the top.

The switch will certainly have an impact on ecommerce retailers that employ online advertising strategies, including AdWords. Google has said that the new system will improve the e-commerce shopping experience for consumers, a comment that suggests that businesses using this paid service will generate greater return on investment and sales. Google Shopping should also provide online retailers will better protection against price erosion and unreliable sellers – the sort that promise fantastically low prices in the search result text only for a click through to reveal a very different story.

Taking a step back, Google’s decision to make a u-turn in its attitude to paid inclusion underlines a growing trend in online advertising. It seems that the marketplace is growing more sophisticated, which it appears will mean more paid services and, from the point of view of businesses, a greater focus on quality content.

This focus can only be a good thing. However an online retail business approaches its digital marketing and online advertising, it seems to me that the way Google is evolving means that there is growing necessity for high-quality, search-friendly content behind the advertising and marketing, which means those businesses willing to put more in should get more out.

To find out more about Chichester Design’s web design services, contact us on +44 (0) 1243 787542 or info@chichesterdesign.co.uk.

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Perhaps the largest change for small businesses that have been using Google Places is that Google+ Local means that they have to embrace the social element that surrounds this marketing technology, by which we mean social media. Google+ Local is a step into the world of Twitter and Facebook, at a local level at least: it allows online business owners to accumulate followers and talk to them.

Of course, that’s not the only change. Google+ Local allows small businesses to make a much better presentation of what they do. For starters, there is room for a wider visual display and a wider range of information. In addition, Google has changed the ranking system attached to local searches. The gold stars are gone, replaced with Zagat, which, despite the name, is an improvement. This review system is more detailed, which should allow consumers to get a much better feel for the business. So, if the small business is very good then the owners have more scope to show it.

Taking a step back, with the launch of Google+ Local, the need for quality content grows ever more important. In a very competitive market, being visible via Google+ Local is very important, but so is presenting an excellent profile through it. Take the new restaurants in Chichester for example (already a busy marketplace) – when the likes of Brasserie Blanc, Carluccio’s and Amelie and Friends think about online marketing, SEO and the related web design in Chichester, they know that they have to raise the bar high as competition is so intense.

I think Google has been very clever with Google+ Local. It should drive more use of its Google+ network, but at the same time, it also offers local businesses a great opportunity to take a stronger position in terms of online visibility, which, in the age of mobile browsing, is increasingly vital. If your restaurant presents the best results through a Google+ Local search when a group leaves the Festival of Speed or Glorious Goodwood, it’s your door they’ll walk though.

To find out more about Chichester Design’s web design services, contact us on +44 (0) 1243 787542 or info@chichesterdesign.co.uk.

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Why? Well, in a world where we are trying to cram more and more information into smaller and smaller spaces, infographics present businesses with a smart, attractive way of getting their message across in the time-restricted online environment. These infographics, explaining how a hybrid car works and how recruiters use social networks to screen candidates, caught my eye this
week.

As you can see, infographics communicate a lot of key information, using a limited amount of space, in a clear and accessible way, allowing you or me to get to the main points straight away. Of course, for infographics to work properly they have to be designed properly – there’s a great debate about the dos and don’ts of infographics design on smashingmagazine.com at the moment. Read this and then the reply.

While designers will discuss design and the merits of different styles until the cows come home, what is clear is the growing role
that infographics are playing in business digital marketing strategies. A well-designed infographic can have a major impact.

Talking of design with impact, I have to go back to car infographics. Chichester Design created this wireframe design for
Formaplex recently (we’re very proud of it). The company is a specialist manufacturer for a number of primary industries, including F1, and our wireframe graphic illustrates exactly what parts they make.

To find out more about Chichester Design’s web design and development services, contact Michelle on +44 (0) 1243 787542 or info@chichesterdesign.co.uk.

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First of all, it’s clear that Google+ hasn’t been the competitor for Facebook that Google originally intended. However, that isn’t to say that it won’t be – I think it has the features to become a popular business tool, especially for SMEs.

Let’s start with the Hangout I mentioned. For Hangout read video conference call. I needed a meeting with my web designer and copywriter to discuss a web design project in Chichester and both weren’t in the Chichester Design office on the day I scheduled. So, we had a video conference call. What was so good about this? Well, for a start it was a video call – Google+ lets you see who you’re talking to. As good as Skype is, it doesn’t have this function. Of course, there is more sophisticated videoconferencing software, but that comes at a price.

Now, add this to the Google+ Business Pages feature, which acts in a similar way to Facebook Business Pages, and you can see already why Google+ has considerable value for SMEs. There’s a link here between social media optimisation, web videos and digital marketing and similar efficiency and dynamism on the other side of the curtain.

That documents can be shared on video calls using Google Docs is another reason why Google+ should become increasingly popular with SMEs. Google+ certainly gives Google an advantage over Microsoft, an achievement that may prove very important.

Looking ahead, the battle between Google and Facebook, and others, shows few signs of slowing, but what this outlook does underline is the importance of SMO, SEO and indeed, mobile website optimisation, for SMEs when they have websites designed or developed.

To find out more about Chichester Design’s web design and development services, contact Michelle on +44 (0) 1243 787542 or info@chichesterdesign.co.uk.

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The costume was on loan for the Art of Chichester Festival Theatre – a Celebration exhibition at Pallant House Gallery. Guinness, best known, at least in the Chichester Design office, for his Star Wars role as Obi-Wan Kenobi, wore the costume when he played Shylock in a famous production of The Merchant of Venice at Chichester Festival Theatre in 1984.

The protective case in which the costume now resides was removed just long enough for us to carefully document it in its full glory. The purpose of the shoot was to show exactly how costume designer, Pamela Howard, who calls Selsey home and is now a familiar face in Chichester, intended the costume to be put together.

It was great to be able to make a contribution to the celebration of Chichester Festival Theatre through our photography. The exhibition, marking 50 years of the theatre and curated and designed by Howard, played on its status as the only theatre in the country purpose built in a park. Pallant House Gallery was carpeted in realistic-looking faux grass and adorned with models, costume drawings, costumes, memorabilia, films and videos.

For us, the most striking spectacle of the exhibition was a curious looking tree, which dripped with colourful reviews of performances at the theatre, and was carefully watched over by a wise-looking owl. Another favourite feature was a waste paper bin filled to the brim with theatre programmes from the last five decades for visitors to browse while sitting on a bench from one of the productions. I couldn’t help but think, “Has a Jedi sat here?”

To find out more about Chichester Design’s web design services, contact us on +44 (0) 1243 787542 or info@chichesterdesign.co.uk.

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