Rad

Hiring our first employee at Studioworks

When you’re the only person working in your business, it’s really tough knowing when it’s the right moment to hire someone else. After a year of being the sole employee at Studioworks, I found myself working 12 hour days and eating too many ready meals. While I enjoyed having creative control over every project, I knew that I could no longer keep up with demand.

I was also getting to a point where potential clients were beginning to judge me on size. The viewpoint that I couldn’t get the job done because I wasn’t big enough (not like that, calm down) was very frustrating – and in my opinion a load of nonsense. Nevertheless, those views weren’t going to change and so I’d reached the stage where I needed some help. I needed to hire my first employee.

Rad

Painting the town blue

Last week, with the paint just dry, we launched our new brand and office to the world as we co-hosted the march Buy Dorset event. Held on the 27th March, it was an evening of drinks, networking and, importantly for us, the first reaction to out new brand and ethos.

As a company we’ve grown a lot in the past year, taking in a number of new employees and skills. This growth was great for the company, but we’d outgrown the old branding developed when we started in 2009. As a company we felt that this no longer reflected our approach and it was time for a refresh.

Blu

Talking to Developers

We have a team of highly skilled developers, we know all the techie jargon and have been told it is confusing to regular folk so we have put together a list of everyday jargon to help everyone out.

Browser

A browser is the name for the software you use to view a website. When you go to www.studioworks.co.uk you are using a browser to view the website. There are many different types of browsers Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome are the most common.

Rad

Connecting WHMCS and Campaign Monitor

Here at StudioWorks we love our web services and as users of both WHMCS and Campaign Monitor it seemed a shame to us that there wasn’t an easy way to connect the two services, so we put our heads together and come up with our own connector.

Our connector helps users of WHMCS to easily generate targeted Campaign Monitor lists of subscribers based on the products they buy, dynamically map lists based on products thereby allowing you to focus the marketing power of Campaign Monitor.

Jon

StudioWorks chooses Zend Framework 2

Here at StudioWorks we like to work with the latest cutting edge technology. We also love standards, efficiency and organisation which eventually leads to time and money saving for our clients; which is why we decided to choose a full stack PHP web application framework to use for bespoke web application development projects.

For those less technical folk, a web application framework basically provides a platform on top of which applications can be built in a structured manner (thus eliminating bad practices and ‘spaghetti code‘).

Rad

QR Codes: Use them or lose them?

We’ve all seen them around in magazines, newspapers on bus stops and generally anywhere marketeers can slot one in to give you more information on a product or service or display. But what really are QR codes, well these little things actually…. (If you don’t know what a QR code is then this might help you with a little more detail… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code)

 

studioworks.co.uk QR code

studioworks.co.uk QR code

I’m personally surprised how many of these things pop up all over the place given the feedback I get from everyone around me, and not just all my creative type buddies but non-geeky people also. Unless it’s just my corner of the world, I really struggle to see how these engage users more, mainly because no one knows what a QR code is let alone how to make use of it. A Ypulse survey found that 64% of school and college students didn’t know what a QR code was, and of the remaining 36% less than one in five had ever bothered to scan one.

Rad

Why email marketing should be simple

If you’re considering implementing an email marketing campaigns or are currently emailing but experiencing under performance, here is a list of 10 Email Marketing tips that will assure improvement in your email marketing campaigns.

The Top 10 Email Marketing Tips

Despite what you may hear, email marketing is a complicated process with many moving parts. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a successful email marketing program or campaign while keeping things relatively simple. We’ve narrowed down the ten email marketing tips that you absolutely must remember. If you follow them, you certainly won’t fail!

Rad

Don’t use images for critical information in email

If you are just starting to send marketing email and need advice on how to design html email template , or if you are currently sending email but aren’t satisfied with the click-through or deliverability results, this article explains why embedding images in email may actually make your email less successful and detract from its overall performance.

Embedding Images In Email: Why Should I Second Guess It?

Without a doubt, the number one error we see in companies who want to begin an email marketing program is the desire to design an email that looks exactly like a webpage or, worse yet, like a print postal mailer by embedding images in email without any hesitation.

Neale

Facebook Launches Mobile Friend Finder

Facebook has launched it’s latest tool it’s social arsenal, the ability to locate friends geographically, new and existing near your current location. By using this new feature Facebook allows you to use your current location to search the local area for Facebook members.

The idea of this featured originally named the “Friendshake” is to quickly add details for people you’ve just met, which can come in handy, especially when you want to distinguish someone you’ve just met from anyone else with the same name online. This feature requires both users to sign in to the featured so avoids creepy Facebook stalking (as long as you do don’t leave it on!).

There are a number of apps with similar functionality including “Find My Friends” for IOS however the integration with Facebook is what makes this a feature instead of a quick 5 minute fad. This helps bridge the gap between online and in person interaction and will no doubt come on handy at Social Networking events.