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Bathrooms and Showers Direct Refreshes and Reinvigorates its Digital Presence with Affino

Affino Unified Digital Business PlatformB2B RetailBathroom Fittings and FurtnishingsBathrooms and Showers DirectConsumer RetailecommerceFeaturedPPCresponsive designRetailseoSSL+-
2017AfFeatSitesBASDTakeLook700

We’ve been working with Bathrooms and Showers Direct (BASD) for nigh on a decade now and have had to handle a variety of challenges together over the years, in particular the complexities of the integration with Google Base / Google Merchant Centre which is an ongoing project with Google’s consistently evolving approach.

 

BASD is something of a special case in that it targets and serves both the trade, as well as domestic customers through the same ecommerce website, i.e. ...


Displaying Tables within a Responsive Framework

responsive designResponsive FrameworkResponsive TablesTables on MobileWYSIWYG Tables+-
2016AfBlgResponsiveTables700

When responsive design frameworks came along, the first thing they did was to dispense with absolute table structures and replace them with relative positional divs. This means that robust tables are slightly more difficult to create and manipulate / style within a responsive framework, than they ever were within tabular HTML.

 

The standard WYSIWYGs still have table formatting, but the scope of this is significantly diminished / limited - and in fact quite different considerations need ...


Responsive Websites are essential for More Traffic and Longer Sessions

mobile appsMobile InternetMobile Webresponsive designResponsive WebsiteSmartphone Usage+-
2016AfBlgMobileTraffic700

A recent headline on Business Insider states ’Mobile Apps are now bigger than Web’ this alludes to the fact that people are more frequently accessing content via mobile smartphones and maintaining their sessions on those devices for longer. It stands to reason really that the only device you are likely to have on your person at all times is the one that is the most used. The figures now wholly quantifiably support the notion that people are spending more time accessing content via ...


Affino Midyear Report

AffinoAffino Site LaunchAffino Unified Digital Business PlatformCRMdesign centreecommerceProductivityresponsive designSocial CRM+-
2016AfBlgMidwayReport700

It’s been a heavy duty year on the development front, particularly as regards the CRM component of the platform. When the CRM was first introduced several years ago, it was mostly used as an adjunct to existing CRMs and ERPs, but as many Clients have moved away from systems like Salesforce, Affino’s CRM has had to take on an ever greater central role. To a point where it will very soon offer the complete Media Company CRM Solution - including print planning and management, order ...


Smart Font Selection is Essential in Responsive Design

Font Selectionresponsive designTypesettingTypographyWeb DesignWeb Fonts+-
2016AfBlgResponsiveFont700

With the limitations that come with Responsive Design, you cannot use design framework accents and precise filigree details quite so much any more, certainly not to the extent of table-based HTML. The flow of responsive design relies on much simpler blocks of always-scaling elements and so font use and typography becomes a critical element for defining identity, personality, tone and differentiation / uniqueness.

 


Sans vs Serif

 

All literary types will tell you that the most ...


Website still considered most important marketing channel for majority of businesses

advertisingBrand StrategyDirect MarketingEmailmarketingMarketing ChannelsMarketing StrategyMobile WebPPCpublishingresponsive designseowebsiteWebsite Strategy+-
2015AfBlgCrossChannel480Bg2

In the Econsultancy / Oracle Marketing Cloud ’Cross-Channel Marketing Report 2015’ - where the question posed was ’Which three marketing channels are the biggest priorities for your organisation over the next year? The most mentioned ended up being Website, by a clear margin (57%), then Email (48%) and Social Media (42%), with SEO (34%) and Paid Search (18%) rounding off the top 5.

 

There’s a strange distinction in this survey between first placed ’Website&...


Shape Up and Lock Down Your Sites!

Certificate Signing RequestEncrypted Pagesresponsive designSecure PagesSecure Sockets LayerSecurity CertificateSite LockdownSSLSSL Encryptionwebsite designWebsite LockdownWebsite SecurityWebsite SSL+-
2015AfBlgLockDown480

After fielding a number of question this year about site security, alongside general strategic recommendations, Affino has just two areas we want everyone to focus on this year:

 


#1 - Make Everything HTTPS

 

It Used to be the case that only Login, Registration, Checkout and User Account Screens were secured with SSL Encryption. The current advice though is to apply SSL to the entirety of your site - every page.

 

Just as search engines started to give priority to ...


Too Many Apps?

App StoreappsFreemium AppsIn-App PaymentmobileMobile AdvertisingNative Appspublishingresponsive designsmartphone+-
2015AfBlg2ManyApps480

The average smartphone user has between 25 and 100 apps installed on their phone - I happen to have a rather more elaborate 253 currently. Regardless of numbers, the typical user only really uses 25 of those apps regularly. We have discussed the pros and cons of native apps versus responsive-design websites in the past - the key differences between browser bookmarks and stand-alone utilities.

 

In light of better privacy controls coming to browsers (e.g. Safari 9) - which allow users ...


Responsive Design vs Native Apps

adaptive designApp StoreGoogle PlayMobile First ApproachMobile Platform DesignMobile PlatformsNative Appsnative designresponsive designResponsive Design FrameworkResponsive Web DesignWeb DesignWindows Store+-
2014AfBlgResponsiveNative480

There’s been much in the media recently about the relative merits of the Responsive Design approach versus creating platform-specific Apps. Firstly, it goes without saying that a great number of Apps get their input / database feed from a master website of some description. For many companies, the best strategy would be a mix of both of the aforementioned formats. Yet here we will line up the pros and cons of each to help you figure out which overall approach may be strongest for you:

&...


Mobilegeddon encourages publishers to fast-track mobile optimisation

Google Mobile FriendlyMobile First StrategyMobile Friendly SearchMobile Friendly Search ResultsMobile OptimisationMobile PublishingMobile Publishing OptimisationMobile WebMobilegeddonpublishingresponsive design+-
2015AfBlgMobilegeddon480

Following on swiftly from Cookie Armageddon, publishers have another recent development to be wary of. Last Tuesday, Google once more modified its search algorithm, this time to give preference to sites which were deemed to be more ’Mobile-Friendly’. The new changes favour mobile-optimised sites, such that they will now appear higher up the search results rankings. By contrast, sites which are not mobile-friendly - will drop down the leaderboard.

 

Affino has long held to a ...

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