Merry Christmas & Happy New year

Merry Christmas & Happy New year

Merry Christmas & Happy New year from Chaplin Multimedia

Merry Christmas & Happy New year
Best wishes and a Merry Christmas from everyone at Chaplin Multimedia Ltd.

Hope you all have a relaxing holiday and come back all refreshed for 2018. Look out for our new website in January and a new admin system in early 2018.

We will also be publishing a monthly newsletter starting in January together with a new YouTube channel which will have lots of tips on keeping your website fresh and utilising social media to get more sales.

We will be closing the office at 1pm on the 20th December until 10am on Tuesday 2nd January 2018.

Any emergency problems can be emailed to Andrew@chaplinmultimedia.co.uk during the holidays.

Thank you once again for your support over the past year and I wish you all the best for 2018!

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Web design in Watford

Progressive web apps – The Future of the Web

google_seminar

In London a few weeks ago Google invited a group of developers to a seminar on the Progressive We Apps. The term progressive web apps is used to describe a website which gives an experience to the user as if it was an app on a phone.

Various speakers from Google show cased the latest developments in the web industry on the various techniques that could be used to give the user a better experience. There are alot of changes happening in web browsers at the moment and the pace of change this year is going to be happening at a much faster rate.

Below I have given a run down some of the changes I think will affect developers that were highlighted by Google. Most of the changes affect all browsers and are part of the W3C ratification of the various standards.

2016-03-17 19.17.50

Security (SSL)
This is a very important topic and was at the start of the seminar, this protects user data and the website owners. Using SSL (https) for everything encrypts the data between the user and the website to prevent snooping and data getting manipulated.

Progressive
It should work on any browser that the user chooses to use. Use web.p for image compression and only download what the user initially needs. One way is to split up the CSS into the most important elements so that this can be cached. This is could be the layout before the fold so that the user can see something when it is trying to connect or has a flaky connection. Also you could create a regioning style sheet.

Offline loading
When the user has a poor signal the website should at least show something to the user. Either by showing cached pages or a message. These things can be implemented in the latest browsers by some new meta data. This gives the user a better experience like they have when using an app.

Jake Archibald gave a demonstration of the ways on which developers could use the techniques. It certainly was a lively demo. He had created a web app where you can only talk with emoticons. it streamed the data from a cached data when it was last loaded.

Http2
This is another big development where data streams are greatly increased using the new standard. It saves time splitting headers and data.

Service Workers
This is the part where the user experience would be greatly enhanced as mentioned above. Service workers sits between the users browser and the ISP servers. Find out more on the link below.

Other development to look forward to in the next year or so…

  • Streaming
  • Background synch
  • Progressive css
  • Bluetooth
  • Css gridlayout
  • Geofencing
  • Css box alignment (big)
  • Javascript modules
  • Offscreen canvas
  • Payment push
  • Presentation api
  • Web animations

Its all looking good for the development of the web especially for developers, making life easier to develop for the so many devices that are around at the moment. And there will be even more in the future. If you want any of these implemented on your website use the contact us form on our website.

Links
https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps?hl=en

Seasons Greetings and a Happy New Year from Chaplin Multimedia

Seasons Greetings and a Happy New Year from Chaplin Multimedia.

Seasons greetings

Another year has flown by and the web has marched on to be one of the most successful marketing platforms in history. 2016 I think is going to be even bigger for social media and getting your message across to the right people.

There have been big steps in the way you can target your advertising to certain categories of people who are potentially your customers. Using analytics and getting ahead of your competitors will be very important in 2016.

Once again best wishes and many successes for 2016.

Another milestone 19 years and counting….

Chaplin Multimedia This week Chaplin Multimedia starts its 19th year. It seems a life time ago since we started when you had to explain the web to potential clients. Now everyone knows what the internet is. Over that time we have had over 200 clients with the services provided to them ranging from hosting to photography.

Looking towards the next 12 months, we will be utilising our Google Partner status giving more help to our clients on getting more out of the Google advertising platform. In November we will be spending 2 days at Google UK getting the latest updates.

Social Media Advertising
Getting a return on investment is important for all our clients and one way of doing this is using the various social media platforms more effectively. Most of them now have an advertising option we have been trialling these out to see which one has the biggest benefit. Though it is not for every company it depends on the sector you are in.

Photography
As the saying goes “a photograph is like a 1000 words” we can help you get your products / message across using photographs.

Contact us if you want know more and would like us to help you gain business online by filling in our contact form.

Questions on Change

questions_of_changeThinking about some further topics around business I thought that supply chains for a company whatever size of company or market was a key topic to touch this time.

Then just thinking this through it really clear that most if not all of us rely upon supply chains and where we fit in that supply. Then looking at it in a lateral way it seems everyone is involved in a supply chain, be it business or just being alive.

So in company terms there are many risks as well as support factors. It seems the key factors are knowing what supply chain we need to keep our business safe and what supply chains we feed up the line to make sure we have a product that will be needed, then immediately we come to the overall topic or where and how will our business stay stable by the demand for our supply keep active in terms of a market.

So in simple terms, we need to have a stable supply chain and we need our part in the supply to market chain stay valid. There are plenty of relatively current situations that indicate a great deal of awareness is necessary to keep our business safe where we fundamentally demand and depend on suppliers. So this raises a further major business topic, how much control should we have on or over the supplier? And in parallel, what companies or markets will continue to need our products in the future?

We could just hold it there and have a lot of topics to raise questions to ourselves or in wider terms for our company. This now raises further topics. What can we do to help those who supply us in the chain and what can we do to help or influence those who buy our products up the supply to market chain?

This all becomes a major subject. Some years back some companies demanded to inspect very closely aspects of their suppliers. This led to quite a complex situation where the buyer in effect was controlling the supplier business and profitability. Again a massive topic but it is difficult to see that approach working in practice long term. It opens many risks, for example if the buyer sees major profit angles in the supplier, apart from price control the other lurking topic is that the buyer may rapidly seek to make the product now supplied themselves. The supplier also has another problem of what if their buying market decided to find another supplier? Major issues here that have to be thought through in personal terms for any company.

Associated with this is the age long issue that if a company has agents then if for example the agent is very good, then the parent company cannot but consider buying that agency? Or setting up their own local company. It reaches a further issue of which is the biggest risk for an agent, to be not very successful and avoid a company setting up its own branch company in the market or be very successful and risk major take-over issues. I have briefly touched this topic.

I bring this further topic in because it directly touches some facets of supply chains. Only this is a direct example common for many companies. You can scale it down to say a one or two person company and the same principle applies, the temptation to just employ the few supply individuals in that small company. Good in some respects but many small companies wish to stay independent, that’s part of why they set up in the first place!

Probably having raised the various issues I will leave it there. Yes to some extent there are answers for these issues but the idea is to encourage the thinking in and around the issues for your own company. To some extent there are answers but this is a small set of notes and thoughts that has already grown too long. Maybe next time I will write a few notes on the subject of Change. It is guaranteed to happen and has many fascinating aspects.

Seasons Greetings & 18th year of Chaplin Multimedia

ecard_christmas.fwLast month was the start of the 18th year of Chaplin multimedia. Over those 18 years there has been lots of change in the web industry. From the start it was beginning of the web where it was difficult to sell the concept to potential clients. Now everyone knows what the web is but now clients want to know how to get customers cosy effectively.
There have been lots of changes over the 18 years on the technical aspects of the web. Going from a few web browsers to lots and then back to a few. At the beginning the king of the browser  was Netscape, after a few years it became Internet Explorer then Firefox and now Chrome. All these browsers been implementing the HTML code differently which has been a nightmare for developers.These days the challenges are mainly down to screen size and touch screens. Plus how to give a good experience on all devices for your website.
Who would have thought that tablets would have taken off just over 3 years ago. Now it is important to have a responsive website where you don’t have to pinch and zoom.The future is looking great when it comes to web technologies. The ever changing industry keeps you on your toes and makes it more interesting to learn new techniques for clients. Look out for our new website early in the new year.

Look out for more articles during the coming year and how you can take advantage of the new tools that you can use to keep you ahead of the game. Making you more efficient and giving you a better return on investment.

Hope you all have a great Christmas and a successful new year and thank you for your business during the last 18 years.

Product specification just as important as product completion

It seems a good time to have a few words about Product specification and just as important product completion.

Apples product

There are many issues we could discuss about Products and the variations on that theme. So just a few thoughts might be useful.
The first and obvious way to avoid risk is to make sure a product is complete. But moving close to this is the topic of what is a Product? Taking an apparently simple approach we might first consider what we see around us, namely Supermarkets.

Looking at this in a deliberately simple way we might say their product is food or plants or clothes etc., no need to go the whole range of what they sell. But are these the real or whole meaning of Product? Thinking in a vertical way we may be saying that we well understand what they sell. There is a drawback to vertical thinking on this point, at some time, if not most times the competition demands a form of price war, built maybe around special offers etc. or some kind of discount or a volume deal that can have many meanings to stock control and supplier situations, a whole big topic that I don’t touch in these few notes.

But what is the possible situation in regard to a Product if we apply some lateral thinking? At first glance we might start to see the supermarket Product is the feeling of confidence that a person feels when the think about the store or when they are in it. We can expand this in many ways, another might be the product is the feeling of being more peaceful because of the ease of parking, it might be a feeling of being more confident that their limited cash can cover what they think they need. So we could continue this and get to the point where maybe the customer is more comfortable there due to the kind of folks who they see shopping there. So what is a Product? I chose not to define this, but leave you to think about it in a Lateral way.

Well it is easy to just catch a glimpse of what a product really is, it can of course have a number of definitions. But at a glance I have moved the discussion on what product a superstore offers away from the more apparent product of food etc. Why take a lateral view of what is the product, well it gives space for another kind of differentiation in terms of competition and allows the supermarket another world of attracting customers, other than a simple price war. I don’t pretend for one moment this covers the whole topic.

So if it happens that you are in a Company start-up situation with a product such as a wheel, I use this to avoid crossing too many paths, we can call it product X so that we keep to the topic of product definition. Now to horizontally expand the thinking is what you intend to bring to market really defined as a Product? Meaning also is it going into a market that already has access to wheels, for example only, or is it a product that has not been brought to market before? Be sure if it is going into a competitive market there will be a high cost of entry, and if into a market that does not appear to exist, there will also be a high cost of developing that market.

So whether this is a big store issue or a solo start-up company product definition is the real critical issue, this at first glance looks simple but a lot of success or failure can swing on product definition. Giving a simple example, deliberately to make the basic point, as a Product the wheel can allow more progress with less effort. Now we can expand this into a real long list of how a wheel is used. But the product definition can make or break the market entry. Apply some lateral thinking and ask yourself questions, what can my product be in terms of product definition? Another question issue might be how many big or small companies have failed because they possibly failed to understand what product they really had? I raise the issue, not going into the many reasons why they might have failed.

So wherever you are in your business, thinking to start or already being famous etc., there is always room to look away from the obvious and think in lateral terms, what really is your product? It might give you quite a start over potential competition.

Next time we might take a look at down the line supplier issues and distribution. A potential make or break issue for many companies, whatever their status.

Thinking of starting a new business

new_shootsWelcome to our monthly Business clinic where we will endeavour to give advice and practical information on running your business or if you are even thinking of starting one.

Our monthly column will be written by Peter our chairman. Peter has a wealth of information gained over many years in various business around the world. Below is a brief biography of Peter.

This first post is introducing myself, my business experience comes from many years in various businesses both in the UK and also around the world,and becoming involved in the scientific, industrial and at times academic action and at various levels of management. Both at corporate level,intermediate management level and in forming my own very small companies.

My responsibilities also included being involved in the  merging and acquisition of various different companies.Expansion and sale of companies This has enabled me to gain many  aspects of understanding how companies are run, business expansion and how to manage change.

In the next post we will start to touch some basic but key topics that affect company success in both start up and ongoing company development and risk areas. Topics that are key in this very tight economic climate for business.

Feel free to leave any comments below.

 

Google Universal Analytics

Google Universal analytics has just been announced. This is an upgrade to the classic Google analytics that has been around for a good few years. It is a “technological innovation” that enhances the way data is collected and processed through the Google Analytics.

If you haven’t used Google analytics before on your website then you should be doing so. It is a free tool to find how people are getting to your website and what they are doing while they are there. Real time information and historical data are displayed in easily read reports. But there is a lot more to it, contact us for details.

The upgrade will change your Google analytic account into the new one but most importantly keeping all historical data and login details. All account will be upgraded eventually but you can manually upgrade your account as soon as you see the button when you login.

The benefits are…

  1. Improved data processing
  2. new collection methods
  3. More analysis
  4. Track users across devices
  5. Improved customisation of the tracking codes

Let us know if you want to be upgraded to the new features especially the tracking codes for analysing how effective your marketing is.

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