Now to the ‘but’.

But Google is a very good search engine. I don’t like the fact that it inflates my rankings if I search whilst logged on to my Google account, but I love the fact that this post will appear on Google almost immediately. I realise that part of that process is due to WordPress and its plugins, but quite simply it suits my needs and my customers’ too.

Sarah Treble’s New Website

Exeter’s Design Credo have recently created a website for Sarah Treble, the renowned wedding dress designer now based in the South West. Whilst Sarah already had a website it wasn’t performing well particularly with search engines,

“I can’t even find myself unless I put my name in.”

Well, we are both extremely pleased with the results. Almost overnight Sarah’s ranking for key search terms improved with key phrases such as “bespoke dresses devon” putting Sarah at position two on the front page of Google. Removing Devon from the search string “bespoke dresses” still delivers a respectable third page Google result.

Somewhat surprisingly (for me anyway) “treble” returns a position two result on the front page of Google.

So how do we know this?

Firstly we make an educated guess about what terms people might use to search. We then reverse search and see how we do.

However Google provides some pretty good free tools help to collect and analyse useful SEO data. These tools not unsurprisingly are known as Webmaster Tools.

What these tools do is to allow us to see what keywords people may be using to search for our site. Sometimes there are some surprises such as ‘treble’. More surprisingly the observant may have noticed that ‘trebble’ appears on the list and searching for ‘trebble’ Google prompts us for a miss-spell.

The webmaster tools goes beyond simple keyword analysis though. It enables us to check the site’s HTML and allows us to see whether the SEO aids such as meta descriptions and page titles are all correctly added.

This is all free, you can do it yourself, but at DesignCredo it is very much all part of the Website Design Package that we offer to our customers

Mr (Chuck) Chumley-Warner Talks Science

OK, sometimes you realise that you know even less than you thought you did and the weekend I extended my personal list by one.

We went to the Branscombe Air – Car show, ostensibly to see the cars and there were some goodies. But the planes stole the show, the Mustang and the Hunter in particular. Afterwards whilst mooching along the airfield en-masse it was time to examine the light aircraft accompanied by a friend (Martine) who had made many of the exhaust systems and at least one of the airframes (well a fair chunk of it).

As I said, the clue’s in the name

Anyway quite a few of these exhaust systems were hooked to Rotax powered Autogyros. Still affected by my Heli flight earlier this year I was a tad surprised to find that the main rotor on an autogyro isn’t actually powered when in flight. It gets better, contrary to popular imaginings this serves to make them rather safe particularly if you lose power.

The video explains it as indeed does this essay.

For now, I feel an burgeoning interest. However I am troubled by the name (Calidus) of the one below. I assume it is named after the Calidus Perregrine

its hunting dive, the stoop,[5] which involves soaring to a great height and then diving steeply at speeds commonly said to be over 320 km/h (200 mph), and hitting one wing of its prey so as not to harm itself on impact (wiki)

Looks great, I want a go.

CALIDUS

This is ‘just because’ really, follow the link to see the bike. About £5k will get you one, I suspect I would look a tad overdressed on it though.

The other day my after a trip to the beach where my daughter insisted on swimming fully clothed she borrowed an old T-shirt of mine bought at the final stage of the 1991 Tour de France. This was the stage where Djamolidine Abdujaparov famously crashed out. Every year since I have wanted to return to Le Tour, next year I will.

For now then a bit of a mish-mash which at some point I will re-visit this post.

First off a reminder of the end of the 1991 race.

The Colour of Cycling

World Colours

For the uninitiated cycle shirts aren’t just about carrying a brand. Some specific shirts have colours to denote the position of the rider within the race (or World). Whether it is the leader in the sprint race, the best climber or the overall leader there are shirts to be worn.

There seems to be some dispute over the origins of Le maillot jaune in the Tour de France. I certainly like the second suggestion.

The colour was chosen either to reflect the yellow newsprint of the organising newspaper, L’Auto, or because yellow was an unpopular colour and therefore the only one available with which a manufacturer could create jerseys at late notice. (Wiki)

Cycling World Champion shirt

Cycle Logo Design

As a youth, the Campagnolo Super Record Mech (shown) was about as good as it got, but I always preferred the look of the Record (below), which was much more ornate. However the Super Record did allow the Campagnolo logo to be seen in all its glory.

Campag Gears

Campagnolo Logo

People argue about the relative merits of the Japanese and European technology but for me it is European, in particular Italian all the way, and it’s about look and history. I ride a Dutch Gazelle with a strange mix of Campag, Sachs and 3ttt. Yes there are bits of Jap stuff in there but had I the money it would be Italian all the way, and probably steel too.

Cinelli Logo

Colnago Logo

Merckx Logo

There is a certain purity to any of these logos. Some such as the Cinelli logo are a world apart from their predecessors, have a look here.

My friend Msr Moutard was having a bit of a whinge about the loose bottom bracket on his (Taiwanese built) Colnago earlier this week but I don’t think I would tire of seeing this logo on t’ push-iron.

(Told you it was a mish-mash).

Working on behalf of Yorkshire’s Techserv Cutting Systems, Exeter based Design Credo have created a brand for a range of newly developed machines.

More Than a Logo

The scope of the project extended beyond simple graphic design and logo design. Design Credo initially advised on product names creating a ‘brand-family’. Part of this advice extended to researching suitable domain names.

The rationale behind the logo design was to create a simple clear design that would communicate the accuracy and quality of the Techserv products. The logos were designed using simple geometric shapes with reference to the letters a&j, p&j, r&j.

Techserv have already commissioned Design Credo to photograph the first of these machines.

The Finishing Touches are being applied to Sarah Treble’s new website.

Working closely with Sarah Treble, Exeter based DesignCredo have created a clean and minimal website design with space to allow the images of Sarah’s stunning creative work to be enjoyed. The website implements the new brand designed for Sarah by DesignCredo.

The website will develop and change with news, reports and images of beautiful new bespoke bridal and couture wear combining innovative design with impeccable craftsmanship and attention to detail.

Highly Functional and Great SEO Abilities

Based on the WordPress platform the site is nearly finished and almost begun. What we mean by this is that the launch of a site such as this is the starting point for further developments.

As well as looking great the site combines PubSubHubbub technology as well as high levels of SEO to make the website perform well on search engines such as Google. Add to this automatic backups and you have a robust site that performs well all round.

I am a slow speaker, I know I am but once many years ago this was really brought into focus when I was trying to teach a friend how to ride a drop handlebar bicycle. She fell off at the point that I had said “take your hands off the lower part of the handlebars” and never got to hear me say “slowly, one at a time and move them to the top of the bars”. She survived (we didn’t). The point was that the communication clearly failed.

Why Mining

Frequently I hear people say things like “I need a website” or “I need an A4 brochure”. Rather foolishly some might say, I usually engage in a bit of Why-Mining by asking “why?”

To aid communication the emphasis is on the why not the mining. Why-mining is an effective although slightly annoying tool. Quite simply people frequently tend to already hold many of the answers that they seek, they just need someone to stand in front of them and ask them “why?”

“I need a four page A4 brochure”
“Why?”
“Because my competitor has one”
“Why does it need to be A4?”
“Because thats what they always are?
“Why do you need four pages?”
“Dunno”

Eventually you will get to bedrock and even if this bedrock is “I don’t know”, that will be a good place to start.

The bottom line is that what we at DesignCredo are trying to find out is what is the customer’s story, the unique thing that they are trying to communicate to others.

Form Follows Function

Yes there are standards, paper size, press size, envelope size, but surely the function of a piece of print is to communicate a message, some information, your story, whatever that is. The same goes for websites or any other communication aid. Most websites offer an entry point and frequently a contact point. And yes your story may be similar to your competitors but hopefully it will be a bit different and that difference will be your selling point. And your story may fit neatly on one, two, four pages but it might not.

My Daddy Plays With Apples

Ask most children what their parents do and you won’t get much sense from them. When young I thought my father was in a jazz band when he in fact flew in aeroplanes. But then I thought that the man who came round to sell insurance was Lee Kuan Yew the prime-minister of Singapore where we lived when I was five.

The problem is that if one asks many adults what they do one may struggle to get much more in the way of sense from them. This is frequently the first great stumbling block when designing websites. Good people, able people, talented people often struggle to be able to say what they or their businesses actually do.

Initially I found this surprising but now I seem to have become somewhat resigned to it, I expect it to happen, I frequently pre-warn customers,

“You will reach a point where your new website asks questions about what you do”.

In truth there is a lot of trust needed between the client and the designer, quite often searching questions will need to be asked in order to get the website right. The designer really needs to know the ins and outs of your business in order to get the site working well. It is relatively easy to create a website. It is a much more considered piece of work to get the website to communicate the appropriate message.

Don’t Stop Me Now

Further to this websites need to be forward looking. It isn’t good enough to design a website for now, it will date horribly. In order to make your site future-proof you will need to trust your designer enough to share your plans and of course you will need to be able to articulate these.

DesignCredo specialise in WordPress sites. The appeal of these blog-sites is that they put the customer back in control. We offer expertise in setting the site up creating the look and extending the functionality of the site whether it is improving the PubSubHubbub capabilities or improving the SEO setup of the site. We have a lot of experience in making sites work effectively for search engines, we have faith in the WordPress platform. In addition we will probably encourage you to become more active in social networking, particularly Twitter. We expect content to be searchable on Google within seconds and minutes, we will help make your site perform.

However this means that ultimately our customers share the responsibility for making the sites work well. For us this is a good thing. Good businesses are thriving organic things that constantly develop. Why shouldn’t their websites be too?

Are We Human?

It constantly amazes me when I am working with people the amount of apparently technologically adept people who use the Google entry field as the browser address bar. Doh…

Some basics,

• Website names such as www.designcredo.com are called URLs. These are like pointers to the website that you are looking for.
• Search engines are tools to help you find suitable URLs
• Search engines are generally used if you don’t know the URL
• If you do know the URL you may as well type it into the address bar at the top of the browser window.
• Most of the time you won’t need to type in the ‘www’ bit or even the ‘http://’ for that matter

Very occasionally you may be trying to access a page that Google (or another search engine) doesn’t actually know about. If you type this page’s address into Google you won’t find it although it actually exists.

But the bottom line is that we are human, we use things in a way that wasn’t intended and being human lots of people do fundamentally similar human things. This then leads me to the advanced search capabilities of search engines.

“UOK” “Yeah GR8″

Most schools use a Proxy Server to protect our little sweethearts from the evils of the interweb and most of the evil little sweethearts know how to get round the Proxy Servers mainly to access mind-numbingly dull games or to engage in fascinatingly tedious little conversations across a classroom.

I have walked into a class full of angels searching in Russian, and why is this you may ask. Well in Somerset the darlings were protected from the evils of Google Image searches but only the UK Google site was blocked, so the students would “Поиск в Google” by entering the search into Google.ru.

However few of these treasures would really know how to do an advanced search in spite of my interventions and to that extent I failed to engage them further.

The Ever Expanding Pit of Possibilities

Recently both Yahoo and Google have added tools to aid searches. Yahoo has a Search Assist box that appears in near-real-time giving you alternative search suggestions to that which you have entered. You may be forgiven for thinking that far from refining your ability to find something you may be tempted into the ever expanding Pit of Possibilities, who am I to comment?

Google on the other hand offer a range of tools that help you to refine your search. This appears on the left hand of the browser window.

Perhaps the first of these options that we should examine in the UK at least is the UK option. If we are looking for a UK based product or service it may worth filtering out the rest of the world.

What about if I had managed to miss Wimbledon altogether and wanted to find out who won the Men’s finals yesterday. Maybe looking for search results in the last 24hrs would help and that is exactly what Google offers here.

You get the idea I am sure.

What Worries Me Is…

Many years ago as a psychology student a friend designed a blindingly simple memory experiment, asking people to say what was on the back of a 50p piece (the side not represented by royalty). Remarkably few people could say what was there, the theory was that (being human) they had habituated to it and filtered it out.

So for me there is an awkward question to be answered. Are these search tools made for run of the mill humans? Are they understood, are they even seen (or do we habituate to them).

I ride motorbikes, my leathers have knee sliders to help me go round corners better. In my dreams the only time I will ‘get me knee down’ is just before ‘getting knicked but the police.

The reality is that the only time I ‘get me knee down’ is just before I ‘fall off me bike’.

Looks quite fun (the new Range Rover Evoque) thankfully the car isn’t in beige although as I write I am mindful of the fact that the early Range Rovers did indeed look very proper in beige.

It is with sadness though that the arrival of this new Range Rover coincides with the departure of Spen King

Charles Spencer ‘Spen’ King, one of the British motor industry’s most famous, resourceful and prolific engineers, died last weekend as a result of injuries sustained in a collision between his bicycle and a van a fortnight earlier. He was 85. Autocar

If you go though you might as well leave a legacy and what a legacy Spen left.

• Rover 2000
• Range Rover
• Triumph Stag
• Triumph TR6
• Triumph TR7
• Rover SD1

It is easy to overlook highlights of British motoring history, I would be happy to have any of the vehicles mentioned here, yes even the TR7.

Rover have a fantastic history and the era of the Rover Gas Turbine cars perhaps encapsulate the spirit of adventure. You can hunt out the other Rover Turbine cars, the Jet is my favourite but for mow here is the T3.

Exeter design company Design Credo is extremely pleased with the initial performance of the WordPress website that they have created on behalf of Topsham’s Nest interiors. The site has well and truly hit the ground running with large numbers of visitors already viewing the site on a daily basis.

The built-in capabilities of this WordPress site enable us to see that within days of going live the site is getting extremely good viewing figures. This is like having hundreds of extra people looking around the shop on a daily basis.

The website is based on the WordPress platform but has been designed to give a strong visual appeal. DesignCredo have undertaken photography for Nest Interiors to strengthen their existing stock of images. The site aims to capture and convey the rich visual appeal of the Nest Interiors shop.

Great SEO results

A great website is of little value unless it can be found. Of course searching on the company’s name puts it top but more relevant search strings such as ‘new + england + style + furniture + devon’ perform extremely well, less than a week from the site being live. Further to this simple search strings such as “Lexington + Devon” provide first page Google results with more detailed searches such as “Lexington + Chesapeake + Cushion” giving a position 1 on a worldwide Google search.

This is extremely important for a company selling quality brand items such as those from Lexington. Putting it simply Nest interiors although based in Topsham near Exeter in the South-West of England are able to create national and international interest.

Add to this the inclusion of PubSubHubbub technology to ensure almost immediate submission of website developments to Google and we have a very search engine friendly site.

However, this is just the start. Design Credo will use various collectable data to monitor where site-traffic comes from and will continue to develop content that will create a good hit with Google searches.