Freshleaf recognised as Investors in People employer

This week Freshleaf celebrates being awarded the Investors in People standard.

The Investors in People standard helps businesses to improve their performance by developing their people. It provides a framework for good practice in the training and development of individuals in the team in order to meet business goals.

Being awarded the Investors in People standard reflects Freshleaf’s commitment to ongoing training and development of its staff, in order to provide a good foundation for growth and success.

Throughout the process we received excellent feedback from the assessors, who were impressed with the levels of job satisfaction and the open, supportive work environment Freshleaf provides. The final report comments that the assessment found Freshleaf to be “a well run, well organised efficient business with a clear focus for the future and a strong commitment to training”.

Our MD, Michael Johnson, commented “I'm delighted to have passed the standard. The really nice thing was that we had an excellent starting point, so we didn’t have too far to go; and going through the process pushed us to that extra level. The resulting improvements in the business are clear to see.” July 8th, 2009 / Trackback

Bing! Search reaches new heights - or does it?

It might sound like the sound a microwave makes when it finishes heating up your ready-meal (or whatever), but Bing is in fact a new search engine from Microsoft.



Well, I say 'new'. Really they've sort of applied a spit'n'polish reworking to their uninspiring and largely unsuccessful Live Search. Launched this week, the new search engine is intended to compete with Google the (so far) undisputed king of search, and according to Microsoft, Bing will focus on four key areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition, and finding a local business.

So why do we need a new search engine? Well, Microsoft reckon that Bing brings us new and shinier search results in the following ways:

• Bing was developed to help consumers make decisions, not just to catalogue content.
• Bing organizes results by searcher relevance, rather than by algorithm relevance.
• Bing filters out results that aren't relevant

So you put in 'where shall I go on holiday?' and Bing will tell you? Right? Helping make decisions sounds fine in principle, and organising results based on what types of results have proven relevant to former searchers may or may not work, depending on who the former searchers were and whether they were looking for the same stuff you are. But filtering out results that aren't relevant?? Surely that's the whole POINT of a search engine? It's not like Google goes "yes, I know you searched for 'website design' but here are some results on fishing".

Still, natural scepticism about Microsoft products aside, early feedback seems to be pretty good. There's an air of surprise about it, but there's also a lot of people who are cautiously impressed. But, good or not, Bing will have a hell of a long way to go before it can think about competing with Google's extremely dominant market share. You could argue that once the phrase 'Googling' became synonymous with searching, it was all over for everyone else.

Reading List

• Microsoft's Bing will change the face of search
• The Guardian - Discovering more about Bing

June 2nd, 2009 / Tags: Bing, Google / Trackback

Just Say No!

At the Future of Web Design conference last week we were lucky enough to hear the thoughts of a number of speakers, but no one - in my opinion - more interesting than American freelance web designer Sabrina Dent.

In her talk, entitled "Throwing Client Collaboration out of the Window: The Stalinist Web Design Model", Sabrina suggested a whole different way of running web design projects.

Don't give your clients choice. Don't seek their opinions. And just say no.

It sounds like an unlikely way to achieve client satisfaction, but Ms Dent maintains that that's exactly what it does. It's not just about being draconian, though - taking a look at the philosophy behind these recommendations, it all starts to make perfect sense.

Eliminate Choice. How many times have we offered a client a number of design choices, only to experience either the bitsa response ("can I have that bit from number one in number two") or worse, design by committee. But as Sabrina pointed out, the psychology of choice indicates that in general, people are much happier with one solidly recommended choice: "this is what your website should look like", rather than a few well thought out suggestions.

Don't seek opinions Why waste time explaining to your client that they need a search box on their site to help users find something, when you can just get on and add it, and the site will be better and the user will be happy? Don't get embroiled in long discussions where your recommendations, based on years of experience, are ignored - just work based on those recommendations, and everyone will be better off.

Just say no When you're asked for something that's either out of specification or simply won't improve the site in any way, just say no. Again, don't get into discussions, just make the first answer no. In many cases, clients are just asking whether it would be a good idea, and no is not just an acceptable answer, it's the right answer, so don't feel you're obliged to do something, just because you've been asked. It also works as a filtering process - most times a no will suffice, but if a client comes back to you on something, you'll know that's the thing that really matters to them, and then it's time to seriously consider the request.

Of course, to say no repeatedly and avoid collaborative working takes a good deal of experience, confidence in your own abilities and skills as a web designer, and the ability to say no without giving offence. Clients need to understand and believe that they can trust the 'no', that you are looking out for their best interests, and that the final result really will be better for it.

But done well, Ms Dent argues that this system results in everyone being happy - you're happy as a designer, your clients feel that you have a clear vision of what they require and are using your experience and expertise to their advantage, and the end user finds a better experience waiting for them when they arrive at the site. May 8th, 2009 / Tags: FOWD, Future of Web Design, Sabrina Dent / Trackback

The Future of Web Design

Carsonified’s Future of Web Design 09 Conference in London today produced some interesting food for thought. Not entirely focussed on the ‘future’ of web design as such, it could perhaps have more accurately been titled “some people with some very interesting and some less interesting ideas on web design” – although I doubt that would have sold as well.

There were a total of twelve speakers throughout the day, on subjects as diverse as ‘the mobile web’, typography, and, bizarrely, the graphic novel (it’s not a comic, apparently) Watchmen. Interestingly, for me at least, some of the most useful and thought provoking ideas I took away from the whole thing were less about web design itself, and more about ways of managing web design projects and workflow. Not really cutting edge and fascinating, you might think, but 100% relevant to what we do.

Danny Somekh spoke about a new ‘rapid co-creation’ workflow methodology he’s been trialling, Brett Welch of GoodBarry talked about web design business methods in an increasingly competitive marketplace and in my favourite talk of the day, freelancer Sabrina Dent talked about saying no to clients a lot. (More on these in a later post).

Not all of the talks were quite as beneficial, though. Carsonified’s own designer Mike Kus filled us in on some of his thoughts on web design from a graphic design perspective; and his apparent implication that web design is a handy extra skill that graphic designers can learn in a lunch break (rather than a completely separate discipline), as well as his suggestion that we should all stop whinging about usability, accessibility and cross browser support and just get on with designing stuff will probably have raised many hackles in the room. Odd move, scheduling it after Robin Christopherson’s excellent piece on accessibility, too.

Overall, though, FOWD 2009 was interesting, engaging and has left us with a lot to talk about. April 30th, 2009 / Trackback

Freshleaf swot up on eCommerce law

Always keen to keep up with the very latest on everything web related, last week we sent Richard to an eCommerce Legal Workshop, where he rubbed shoulders with representatives from Yahoo!

Perhaps surprisingly, we were the only web development company represented at the workshop, which whilst it was primarily run by lawyers for other lawyers, yielded a wealth of useful information about the dos and don'ts of online trading and data capture.

As well as having the chance to do some high-powered networking, Richard made copious notes on everything from best practice relating to privacy policies when taking user information, to opt ins and refund policies and the law relating to distance selling. While we'd probably have been heading in the right direction with most of these things just by using common sense and best practice, we now have our very own expert who is fully briefed on the latest information. April 9th, 2009 / Trackback