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Ipad – Who it’s really intended for & why it’s going to succeed

Posted: January 28th, 2010

Yesterday Apple finally unveiled their tablet PC called the iPad to the world and it was met with (mostly) negative feedback. After watching their conference it suddenly became clear who they were aiming the product at. Something I think the majority of people have missed. Read on…

I’ve got an iPhone

I use my iPhone everyday. It’s my device of choice for quickly checking on-line content, reading RSS feeds, listening to music and posting messages, links and pictures on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Yes, my iPhone is a gadget I could not live without. The iPad doesn’t do anything major that my iPhone can’t do except present me with a bigger screen. This is the thinking of almost all website writers who have posted their opinions on the new device. However, I think they may have all missed the point.

So come on then – Who is iPad for?

A few years ago Nintendo released the Wii. A console that is still outselling it’s competitors every single month. The Wii doesn’t do as much as the Xbox 360 or PS3, yet it still dominates sales. This is because Nintendo made a console that non-gamers could use and enjoy just as much as traditional gaming fans could. It was removing the barrier of entry (the controller and interface) that has made the Wii so simple to use and so popular as a mainstream device, not just as a gaming machine.

iPhone – Ok, so what about the iPad. Apple said it fits in somewhere between an iPhone and a Macbook laptop. iPhones have a small screen, and whilst you can browse the web on them in a much better way than on most other mobile devices it’s still only on a small screen. The browsing experience isn’t as good as viewing content on a laptop or desktop PC.

Laptops – A laptop such as the Macbook is an awesome piece of kit. However, it needs to be operated in a traditional way i.e. with a mouse/keyboard. Users need to learn how to use Mac OSx. They need to know how to apply updates, install software, manage their disk space, back up data and lots more. This presents a barrier of entry to non-technical users.

iPad and who it’s really for

This is the point where we finally begin to see who the iPad is for. It will be a more mainstream device than a dedicated PC or Phone. It will be for all those non-technical people that don’t know how to use a laptop/desktop, but want to carry videos, books and music around with them.

A real-world example
Recently my mother in-law had a play around with my wife’s iPod Touch. She loved it, she told me it was so simple to use because you just touched the screen to operate it. She’s not technical at all, she’s constantly asking us for help with things on her mobile phone, but she was able to pick up and operate the iPod Touch without having to provide instructions.

She also uses the internet on a desktop PC. She gets by surfing the sites she knows about, but doesn’t really venture further. With a device like iPad she would find browsing the web, viewing pictures and videos on-line a lot easier because all you have to do is touch the screen.

Apple have created a device that can be used by non-technical people just as well as it can by technical people. It’s true that it doesn’t provide any major new features that can’t already be done on other Apple devices. It’s also true that it’s lack of multi-tasking and a camera are omissions that have been highlighted by the technical writers online a lot. However, to the people this device is primarily aimed at that won’t matter. They won’t even know what multi-tasking is. They will simply have a device that just works and does what they want it to do.

It’s a brilliant move. I’ve read more than once from many ‘experts’ that the iPad will be a flop, that it has no place or no real use. That’s because they’re looking at it from their own point of view and not looking at everyone else in the world that doesn’t possess the technical knowledge they have.

Final Thoughts

I too was unconvinced at first about it’s place in the market, having thought about it though I was compelled to write this article. Mainstream is where the device is heading, and that, as we’ve seen from Nintendo, does not equal failure.

Article written by Ian Hazeldine, Managing Director of Yellow Circle Web Solutions Limited

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Posted in General Posts | 6 Comments »

How to plan out your website

Posted: January 20th, 2010

Like anything in business a website requires careful planning. This article will provide guidelines and tips for planning your web strategy. Not only will this help your web designer/developer when it comes to building your site, but it may even save you money too, as the site will be able to built quicker. Read on for more information.

The pen is mightier than the mouse

The first stage of planning your new website will involved sketching out a basic outline of the information you want to display on it. You should start with your top-level links (the main categories or pages for your site). You may find that certain categories/pages require sub-pages and categories. This will almost always be true if you’re planning on selling products online. For example, if your site is to sell pet food you will need to have separate categories of food for each animal that you sell the food for. Work your way through each of the sections for your site deciding whether you need additional pages for each. If you do list the sub-pages below the appropriate heading in your sketch.

Why is sketching out the page names important?
This first step is probably the most important step in the whole process of building your site. The number of pages you have can have an effect on the design of your site. If you have several sub-pages in each category for example, your designer may choose to build your site’s navigation system using a drop-down menu, something that wouldn’t work if you only had top-level pages (there wouldn’t be any sub-categories). The number of pages your site has can also affect the price of your project, or may influence the designer’s software solution for your project (it may be cheaper and quicker to use open-source software rather than building the site from scratch). The designer isn’t able to make these decisions without first know the approximate number of pages/sub-pages/categories you need in your website.

Branding your site

Quite often you’ll want to use the same logo and corporate colours on your website that you use on all of your other promotional material. This is a good idea. It maintains a consistent look across your range of offline and online material and also helps clients identify that the new website they’ve come across does indeed belong to the same company they’ve dealt with before in offline business. However, there are times when it may be necessary to creat entirely new branding. One example of this could be for a new product you’ve developed and are wanting to promote on it’s own self-contained website. Even if this is the case you should include your main company logo on the page somewhere, maybe in the bottom right-corner of the footer, so that people know your company has produced the product. Sites like this are often used for the promotion of iPhone Apps.

Whilst you’ll no doubt have your own vision of how your site should look you should always listen to the web designer. They’re the professionals in this aspect of creating your site and if they tell you something won’t work you should take note, especially where colours and page layout are concerned.

The web: it’s a social thing

As well as planning out the site itself you should also be making plans for how you will drive traffic to the site once it’s completed and thus grow your user base. You may have heard the term ’social networking’ a lot recently. Social networkings sites are websites that allow users to communicate and share ideas and information. They’re also excellent tools for marketing your company’s products and services to a large number of people for free. Twitter is currently one of the most popular social networking tools and you should certainly be investigating ways you can use their service to help spread the word about your site/service/products. This blog is set to automatically post new entries directly to Twitter as soon as they’re published. This is a great way for me to tell everyone that there’s something new for them to read.

You should be prepared to spend some time cultivating your social networking sites. It’s often a good idea to appoint someone within your organisation to regularly maintain and update content for you in this area. A lot of people think that once a website is live you can forget about it and it will start working for you. This couldn’t be further from the truth. You need to constantly keep your site up-to-date with products and information, you need to tell people about your site, you need to advertise your site. If you don’t then you’ve wasted the money and time you spent having it developed.

One final tip in this section, and it’s one I’ve seen people ignore time and time again. Make sure your website address is on all of your company’s printed literature. It’s a no brainer, but is absolutely essential.

Final thoughts

In summary then, you need to start your planning way before a single line of code is written for your new site. You need to reflect your company’s corporate branding on your site in most cases and you need to continue to develop and promote your site once it’s live on the Internet. Follow these rules and you should end up with a professional looking site that helps generate extra income for your business.

Written by Ian Hazeldine, Managing Director of Yellow Circle Web Solutions Limited, a web design and hosting company based in Staffordshire, UK

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Posted in Communication, Marketing, Web Design | 3 Comments »