Creative Design Solutions

Universal Heat Transfer – Case Study

by admin on May 6, 2011

We have recently launched a new website for a client of ours who are heat exchanger and transfer specialists by the name of Universal Heat Transfer Ltd.

The web design requirement was to bring the website up to date and initiate a marketing strategy to complement it. Their was no option but to start from scratch with this redesign as the existing website was built some years ago using dated web technologies and prehistoric standards. While the website did work it failed to meet any of the SEO criteria we abide by, and also lacked in contextual information.

We began by developing a whole new structure for their website to break down the layers, products and services of the business in a more logical and explanatory manner. In doing so we also wanted to achieve a clean, corporate and professional appearance whilst not being boring or too old fashioned.

See fig 1 for the old website, and then fig 2 for the new website to see the transformation from a website which was blocky, and had some padding issues, most of which are probably more to do with the way the internet and browsers/standards have developed over the years rather than the fault of the original web designer, who at the time of development probably did a pretty good job and delivered what was “at the time” a fairly modern look.

Fig 1

Fig 2

The final result above shows the homepage of the website which is designed to form a microcosm like overview of what the website does, who they facilitate and how to follow the correct sales funnel to get in contact for additional information. The website incorporates features such as Print and PDF for usability, products search, and is built to be as SEO friendly as is computer-ably possible.

To see more of our web design work visit our Web and Blog Design Portfolio.

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Facebook is Down Again, Are You?

by admin on January 14, 2011

That’s Right Facebook is down, or has been for a lot of people today and while we are not usually ones to gossip here at Quixotic, but again Facebook has been experiencing server issues. The reason I pose the question “Are You?” is because once upon a time there was no such thing as the Facebook Like button, or any of the other pretty cool (for the most part) Social Plugins. Now there are which means when Facebook has issues, we have issues, at least with our sites if we are relying on some interaction using the Facebook API.

I thought that Facebook by now would have a professional and apologetic method of degrading in these situations, so that when their servers do not work, you can have it timeout to a “Sorry” or “Be Back Shortly” message after I don’t know, say 10 seconds? Instead your site will hang and appear to be loading for eternity when in actual fact, everything has loaded as per usual at the usual speed apart from any Facebook scripts. I have noticed tonnes of sites, almost all I have visited today just loading and loading.

12 Months ago, this would have been an annoyance at the least but with Google “apparently” putting more emphasis on web pages load time would a routine scan of your site at the same time as Facebook lagging, come back with a very negative score? One to think about anyway, so Facebook if you can hear me, sort out some sort of error message and timeout. Purleeeease.

The current status of Facebook can be seen using the Facebook Status Checker on http://downrightnow.com/facebook a clever tool to see if there are technical issues with many popular sites so you can make sure it is not just your connection. The Status at the time of publishing is “Likely Service Disruption”.

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5 Steps of Web Development

January 4, 2011

These days more and more people are becoming interested in setting up a presence on the web. Many people that are interested in developing a web site feel that it is too complicated. They are intimidated, afraid and don’t know where to begin. It is much simpler to build a successful website than these people [...]

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Why WordPress?

December 13, 2010
Wordpress & Thesis

WordPress is the CMS (Content Management System) of choice for all of the publishing projects and web ventures we at Quixotic are involved in, it is also the CMS of choice for the majority of our clients and partners. This article will attempt to justify why we use WordPress every day, why it is a [...]

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Web Design: West Midlands & Staffordshire

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Looking for web design in the West Midlands or Staffordshire? You’ve come to the right place! Quixotic Media, part of One3rdNerd Media Ltd, is a website design and creative media company based on the West Mids, Staffordshire border. We have a varied portfolio of clientèle from both the UK and abroad. Click to view our [...]

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Open Graph for Business

June 16, 2010
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We can announce at Quixotic that within the next few weeks we shall be adding Open Graph to the list of services we shall be offering via our Social Media Optimisation page. We have been testing the new usages such as using the new Facebook meta data, adding the Facebook like button, and other social [...]

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Quixotic Launches Affiliate Program

May 15, 2010

Yes, that’s right, here at Quixotic Media we have been working hard to deliver a stable and profitable affiliate platform that is both easy to use and still offers the features required for us to carry out our ambitions of marketing via word of mouth recommendations over paid advertising options both effectively and coherently. So [...]

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Wake Up Cloud

December 8, 2009
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The Wake Up Cloud is a website about self improvement, motivation, healthy lifestyles and life hacking. The brief was to deliver a clean light site, that was easy on the eye and not too cluttered, whilst still being functional and making the most out of Web 2.0. The emphasis has been based around the branding [...]

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Kevin Hokoana

December 8, 2009
MLM Success - Kevin Hokoana

Kevin is part of a large circle of sucessful online marketers and works from all over the world spending just a short few hours per day to achieve great financial success and a large and loyal following. We were first in contact with Kevin a couple of months ago and threw some ideas out on [...]

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Cheryl Currie

November 11, 2009
Cheryl Currie

Cheryl Currie has been a client of ours for some time now. We have already assisted in her blog management, and help develop her confidence with her content management. After not so much deliberation Cheryl decided to take the leap sooner rather than later and follow suit in changing her WordPress framework over to Thesis. [...]

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