Design

Our Design Process – What We Need From You

Posted on | by moocow

MooCow is an interactive website design agency, based in Brighton & Hove. Since opening its doors in 2006, we have been working hard growing and developing our client base & expertise, offering a dynamic blend of creative thinking, experience and technical know-how. If you’re currently considering working with us, below is a basic guide to what we need from you as a starting point to help create your web page.

– Your company name and a brief list of words relating to your business and industry. For example, we’re a web design company, so we would choose specific words that we want Google to pick up relevant to our business.

– A short description or paragraph about you or your company – who you are, what services you provide, or a little bit about your company history.

– Have a think about what pages you would want to feature on your site and titles for them to appear on a menu. This could be an ‘about us’ section, ‘services’ or ‘portfolio’ etc.

– Drop us a link of an example of a web design style you like, this will give us a better idea visually of the look you are trying to achieve for your site.

– If you’re wanting a specific logo used, send us over a copy that is hi res with a white or transparent background and at least 600 pixels wide. Save this into either a png or jpeg file. For ‘favicons’ your logo will need to be sized to 512×512 pixels. If you want to test drive a new logo, let us know and we can design you a fresh one.

– Any text you want featured on your site, paragraphs about you, your company or the services you provide, send this over too in a word doc or pdf file. If you’re struggling to put together what you’d like to say, don’t worry – our team can help in writing up some dazzling copy personal to your site.

– For images, be sure to pick only hi res images, approx 1500-2000 pixels in size saved into a jpeg or png file. You can also include a title or keyword that describes your images that SEO will pick up easier.

– Make sure to include any contact details you would like featured on your site, this includes a phone number, email address & location so that a customer can call or visit you.

– If you have any links to social media such as a Facebook, Twitter or Instagram page you can attach these too.

– Finally, a link to your RSS Feed/Blog if you currently have one active. If not we can make one for you to add to your site, so let us know if this is something you are interested in. The same goes if you are a business that sells products or other payable online services and would like a shop page included in your site.

The thought of creating a brand new website can be daunting, but don’t worry, our team of experts are here to help make the process quick, simple and stress free and give you all the guidance you need on the way!

 

5 Cost-Effective Alternatives to Photoshop for Professional Image Editing

Posted on | by moocow

When it comes to good design, we all love websites that are packed full of awe-inspiring imagery, and photos that really make you feel like you’re there in that exact moment. We can’t all have the skills of a professional photographer, but what we can help with is showing you how to edit your photos to a professional standard, without having a major price tag attached.

Don’t get us wrong, Photoshop is great. But not everyone wants to pay high prices when there could be a cost effective alternative. So after doing a bit of research, we’ve tracked down 6 Photoshop competitors, all with excellent editing tools and all at a much lower cost. And best off all, the majority of them are free.

Pixelmator (£28.99)

An impressive image editing app for Mac, Pixelmator offers fast powered tools to help alter and enhance images to make professional, high quality photos. The app has excellent retouching and special effects options, and tools to draw or paint. You can save to any format or upload on social media sites, and comes at the lower cost of £28.99.

GIMP (Free)

A free and open-source image and graphics editor, great for image retouching, free-form drawing, photo manipulation and adding graphic design elements. It’s available to download on a wide variety of operating systems, including GNU, Linux, OSX and Windows. A good option if you’re not in a position to invest any money on your editing tools.

Acorn (£28.99)

A nifty download for photo touch ups and edits with great options for creating photo collages, adding text and shapes, or creating new images. There’s plenty of instruments for editing, special effects and cloning. You can also remove image backgrounds and create logos with easy to use tools. Although not free, its price matches with Pixelmator and is still a fairly cost effect alternative.

Pixlr (Free)

An online photo editor that’s free to use and doesn’t involve a download. You can use this site anytime you pop online for quick image editing and touch ups. It’s equipped with all your general editing tools, and has options for creating fonts, logos, borders and backgrounds. A brilliant and cost effective alternative that will get the job done quickly too. You can download any images you create in various formats or upload online too.

Paint.NET (Free)

A free Windows download tool for image editing, Paint.NET is extremely easy to use and great for those with no image editing experience whatsoever. Although a fairly basic download, there’s still plenty of options for special effects, blending and layer adjustments. It also mirrors several of Photoshop’s classic tools such as curves and contrast control. A great download for minor tweaks and retouches.

 

5 of the Best WordPress Themes for Creating a Portfolio

Posted on | by moocow

At Moocow, we pride ourselves on having the most up to date knowledge on the latest web news, tips and trends. With technology and techniques developing daily, Moocow are continuously working hard to help find new ways to develop your business.

Our design team believe WordPress ranks above all the rest as a hosting platform. The open-source CMS works as an ideal model for creating a wide variety of sites for both small and large businesses, and is ideal for showcasing portfolios and products. Having a portfolio that’s professional, visually captivating and clearly showcases your work is vital for your business to achieve success and gain interest from new clients. So below, we’ve hand-picked some of the best WordPress themes for putting together a high end portfolio, that will grab your audience’s attention and gain you new clients and sales.

 

Oshine

Creates beautifully fresh and contemporary portfolios with 12 unique layouts to choose from. Comes with access to over 500 fonts, colour choices, shortcode modules and so much more. Oshine also supports a large variety of plug-ins, including WPML, BuddyPress and Gravity Forms. A great choice if you’re looking for a stylish and modern way to display work visually.

 

 

Adios

A great theme that’s easy to use, extremely fast loading and is ideal for those working within the creative industry. An elegant and artistic approach to portfolio design, you’ll have access to hundreds of fonts, colour choices, layout elements and designs and you’ll be able to use a variety of great options for animation. Adios allows for superb compatibility with all devices and browsers, and will ensure your site is noticed worldwide.

 

 

Art.

Perfect for colourful, chic and customisable design, this theme comes with a coding-free content builder for ease of use. Ideal if you’re looking for an artistic and simplistic portfolio design, it’s packed with beautiful layouts with drag and drop options, fashionable headers and plenty of options for blog posts. You can also create stylish home sliders to showcase large images, and with SEO by Yoast you’re sure to have plenty of great options for getting noticed in search engines.

 

 

Kalium

A sensationally designed theme for those looking for a cool and contemporary twist to showcase their work in style. With numerous options for layout, images and blog posts, this WordPress theme also includes Revolution Slider, allowing users to display work through slideshow. You’ll be able to personalise the slides and create your own unique animations and visual effects too.

 

 

Studio 8

Rated as one of the best WordPress themes on the market, Studio 8 has a superbly sophisticated and stylish design. Beautifully fast and responsive, the theme provides great portfolio options to businesses of all backgrounds. You can upload custom headers and access built in short codes to make editing and designing easier. Known for creating attention-getting websites, this theme will help put your portfolio on the map.

 

 

Using Instagram to Boost Your Brand

Posted on | by moocow

Instagram – the world’s most popular photo sharing app. With 300 million monthly users, the social media site currently has a larger following than Twitter, and its followers are constantly growing. With our easy to use guide, Moocow can show you how to use Instagram to help utilise your social media skills, boost your brand and get you the followers you deserve.

A large majority of online shopping traffic occurs through social media, sites like Pinterest and Etsy have made online shopping even more popular, with buyers being drawn in by adverts and promotions that are visually exciting. Instagram is paving the way for businesses to show off their creative flair, allowing consumers to see a more personal side to how their company works, as well as showing off what their brand has to offer. Below are 5 ways you can improve your site following using Instagram.

First steps – setting up your account!

If you’re already an Instagram user, be sure to keep your personal account separate when setting up a new account for your business. This enables users to identify you and your brand as separate, and allows for any embarrassing selfies to be posted completely out of eyesight of any potential clients. Use your brand logo throughout your page and as your profile image so viewers can establish that your Instagram directly relates to your company. Make sure your bio is short and sweet, but packs a punch. There’s a million or so users out there, you want to make sure your company stands out from the crowd. Last but not least, always attach a link to your website – whenever a user views your profile, it directly boosts traffic to your site.

Make an impression

Be big, beautiful and bold! Boost your brand by using product shots that are eye catching, colour co-ordinated and fun to create. Believe it or not, certain colours are actually more of a hit than others on Instagram, with blue being one of the most desirable colour trends with followers. When creating adverts always use HI RES professional photographs, opt for a text overlay on one of Instagram’s photo editor apps to create quick and trendy ads.

Identify trends

Keep up to date with what’s hot on Instagram – which users, hashtags and themes are trending. Do your research, take a peak at your favourite brands, look into companies similar to yours and see what gets them plenty of likes. What styles of posts are popular? The main aim is to boost your brand professionally, but customers and clients want to see you have a fun side also. Outdoor shots that show your customers actively using your products are a great way to show off your adventurous side. Whether you’re having some downtime with your team, or are busy getting creative in the office, these are great opportunities to capture your company’s creative side on camera.

Get #Hashtagging

When posting your pics, pair catchy descriptions with relevant, trending hashtags. Picking a popular hashtag allows any user across the world to view your post. Use hashtags that relate to your area of business, such as company name, location, what you’re doing, and words that describe exactly what you’re posting. Research hashtags that are currently trending, be it colours, days of the week, events or features in the news, and use these to help shape the audience you want your post to reach. Use a minimum of 5 to help boost your audience range, so don’t be shy. You can even create your own hashtag relevant to your business name.

Network

Get networking! Make sure to share on other social media platforms your company uses such as Twitter & Facebook. Encourage clients to share, like and comment on your posts, and return the favour too! Keep an eye out for new business opportunities by connecting with new users and building a rapport with relevant brands.

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Why Marketing Through YouTube Can Help Boost Web Traffic and Sales

Posted on | by moocow

At Moocow, we pride ourselves on having the most up to date knowledge on the hottest web and marketing trends. With technology and techniques developing daily, Moocow are continuously working hard to help find new ways to market your business.

One of the most popular ways to help boost your brand is with the use of video content. More than 80% of all internet traffic is video, with both large and small independent businesses opting to target their audience members through channels such as YouTube. As it stands, YouTube currently has over 1 billion active users monthly, and despite the popularity of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, video is quickly taking the lead as an essential platform to successfully market your business on. Choosing to tackle video marketing could give you an advantage over your competitors as well as giving you a rise in your Google ranking.

Setting Up a YouTube Channel

Think of YouTube in the same way as you think of the layout of your website. Your YouTube channel represents your homepage, and the videos you add are like the pages you populate your site with. The more videos you post the more chances you will have at reaching a higher audience and potential new clients. The greater audience you achieve, the more likely you are to see positive changes to your ranking on Google. When getting started, be sure to make your videos relevant to the theme of your business and channel, ideally making each video no longer than 3 mins in length, or if necessary, stick to under 10 mins for training or ‘how to’ guides.

How Can a YouTube Channel Benefit My Business?

Wondering why you should bother? Having a YouTube channel linked to your business can benefit your company in several different ways. It can help to bring new viewers to your actual web page, help to show off your brand on a nationwide level, and even help you to make direct sales. Creating video reviews or filming ‘open box buys’ are a perfect way to generate sales by creating a link off the video directly to your site or online shop. The same as any social media platform works, the more views, likes and connections you make from posting your videos, the better ranked your channel and website will be on Google. With more and more companies making the switch to video marketing, 2018 is not the year to be camera shy!

 

 

How to target your audience through Email Marketing

Posted on | by moocow

At Moocow we are continuously striving to find new ways to help market your business. One of the most popular ways to market web content is via email, with a recent survey stating that 82% of business professionals opt for email marketing over social media to successfully boost their brand. This research means that email is still currently leading the way for digital marketing in spite of the growing popularity of Facebook, Twitter and other sites, with only 66% relying on social media to reach the targets they require. In the guide below, we will offer you tips on how to market your company via email.

 

  • To begin with, be sure to send any emails from a professional email or company email address, don’t send from your personal account. If you don’t yet have one, make sure this is set up first. It’s normally good to include a brand logo also.

 

  • A welcome email is always a good start, something that thanks your customers for being part of your business, or even an incentive such as a deal or discount to make signing up worth their while, allowing them to pass this on to potential new customers.

 

  • Talk to your subscribers and let them know what they can expect from the email or newsletter, whether this might be a letter from your CEO, business updates, deals, promos or advertisements.

 

  • When writing your newsletter, make sure that it correctly represents you or your brand, fitting in with any house styles for writing web content, adding images that fit in with your business, website or logo.

 

  • Keep it short and sweet, use text that is concise and easy for readers to skim through if needed, nobody wants to read through an entire essay. Make sure your content is appealing and speaks out to an audience relevant to your business.

 

  • Keep your emails regular and send on a specific date to avoid confusion. Research what days and times of the week you feel would be best to target your clients or customers.

 

  • Make sure emails are mobile friendly and can be read on any device. A high amount of clients and working professionals will access their emails from their phones so make sure that your newsletters are compatible, similar to how your website is.

 

  • Check your text, avoid using special characters, writing in caps & sending across broken links, remember to write subject headers that make sense. These tips should help you stave off heading directly into the spam folder. Spam filters can pick up on minor issues such as these and can automatically stop your emails from reaching your customers.

 

  • There are several email marketing services you can use to help do the job for you. MailChimp, Constant Contact or CoffeeCup are all worth a look.

10 Free WordPress Marketing Plug-ins That Are A Must Have For Your Business

Posted on | by moocow

At Moocow we’re all about knowing what’s best for your business, whether it’s design, branding, SEO or marketing. And when it comes to getting you your perfect website, we know exactly how to get you there. We’re huge advocates of WordPress, and we believe they have the tools to really launch your brand towards profit. Below is a list of 10 of the best WordPress marketing plug-ins that are a must have for your business site.

With WordPress you can take away the hassle of creating lengthy marketing plans, by using their plug-ins to create new strategies and interact with others at the press of a button. They’re ideal whether you’re a small, local business or a nationwide company and there’s plenty to choose from. We’ve narrowed down what we think will help you the most.

Jetpack

Great design, marketing and security features. Comes with customisation tools, mobile integration and options to edit CSS. You can also access SEO and Ad tools, and monitor your stats and statistics to see how well your site is performing. There’s also security extras for spam and malware protection.

Yoast

The number 1 plug-in for SEO, Yoast gives you complete power over how you use and access site breadcrumbs, with great tips and templates for title and meta descriptions which you can edit and alter for better branding and snippets in Google and other search engines.

WooCommerce

An open source e-commerce plug-in for WordPress, WooCommerce lets you sell both physical and digital products online, with ease to use shipping and payment options including BACS and PayPal. Adaptable for both developers and beginners, it’s perfect for store owners, whether your business is large, small, local or worldwide.

WPReview

This little plugin helps you create reviews or testimonials with ease, without any problems loading your page or alterations to site speed. You can create reviews with a choice of using stars, percentage or a point rating. It also includes support for translation, WPMU, Google rich snippets and unlimited colours.

Google XML SiteMaps

Rated as the best ever WordPress plug-in, Google XML SiteMaps helps improve SEO and allows search engines including Google, Bing and Yahoo to index you site more clearly. This makes sure your business is on the map when it comes to web traffic and will help move you up in search rankings.

Editorial Calendar

If you need a bit of help getting yourself organised when it comes to posts and marketing, the Editorial Calendar is a handy extra. You can create helpful schedules for when you want your posts to be published, with easy to use drag and drop features and an easily visible calendar to help you keep track.

W3 Total Cache

This plug-in aids website performance and boosts download times through content delivery network (CDN) integration and is recommended by web developers and web designers worldwide. It vastly improves conversion rates, and in turn helps boost your rankings on Google

Google Analytics by MonsterInsights

If you’re wanting to link your WordPress site to Google Analytics to manage site conversions, this plug-in by MonsterInsights is the way to go. It shows you stats, site performance and how easy people are accessing your webpage and products. You can access the Google Analytics dashboard inside your WordPress dashboard also.

Envira Gallery

Envira is a “drag and drop” photo gallery plug-in, great for sites that are using a lot of hi-def photography or product images. Envira will ensure your images will look great on all devices whether it desktop, mobile or tablet. There’s also great options for watermarking your work, creating video and slideshow galleries and linking with social media platforms.

Popups by OptinMonster

OptinMonster helps you grow your email list and get more subscribers with pop-up opt-in forms, templates and email marketing services. Take your pick from forms, floating bars, slide-ins, sidebars and more, this nifty plug-in is compatible and works alongside many popular email marketing sites including Mailchimp, Aweber, MailPoet and many more.

 

GDPR and The Launch of WordPress 4.9.6

Posted on | by moocow

At Moocow we’re all about knowing what’s best for your business, whether it’s trending tech news, the latest updates, design tips or marketing tactics. And when it comes to getting you your perfect website, we pride ourselves on making sites that are both manageable and secure.

Following the launch of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation laws (GDPR) which began May 25, WordPress have made some important updates to privacy and maintenance options for site users. GDPR requires businesses or web page owners to be clear and upfront about how they’re using, collecting or sharing your personal data. It also means users have more choice and control over how their data is stored and shared.

Due to this, WordPress have decided to release WordPress 4.9.6 – the Privacy and Maintenance release. Features that can be found within the update include automatic changes to the comments section where users will be given options to whether their details will be saved on the browser. You can now also create a privacy policy page using a new default menu feature on the WordPress dashboard.

Although allowing for a speedier process, WordPress still recommends to add the privacy policy manually to the footer on each page of your website also. Webpage owners can also export or erase a clients data and send automatic requests asking for permission via email. WordPress have also created a handbook that guides you through privacy policies when using plug-ins which you can learn more about here.

95 other updates and modifications have been included in WordPress 4.9.6. including:

  • “Mine” included as a filter in the media library.

  • When displayed in admin, plugin-ins will now show the minimal PHP version required.

  • New PHP polyfills for forwards-compatibility and proper variable validation have been added.

  • TinyMCE updated to newest version (4.7.11).

Take a look at the WordPress site here to read up on the more in depth details on all the updates included.

 

Get the Party Started and Celebrate the WordPress 15th Anniversary on May 27th

Posted on | by moocow

At Moocow, we love all things WordPress. It’s free, open source, available in 69+ languages with over 50,000 plugins. I mean, what’s not to love? Over the years the popularity of WordPress has grown immensely. W3Techs reports that WordPress now powers over 30% of sites on the web. And it’s no wonder when they have such great extras on offer.

On May 27th, WordPress with be celebrating its 15th anniversary of WP’s original release, and they’re holding a worldwide party, which you’re all invited to. To get involved, check out the WordPress 15th Anniversary website and find out whether there’s a party you and your mates can tag along to nearby, and RSVP to the event.

If there isn’t, then why not get cracking at setting one up yourself? Brighton has a huge creative network when it comes to design, and whether you’re a developer, copywriter or graphic designer, we all have one thing in common – we’d all rather swap a day at the office for an afternoon spent in one of Brighton’s many beer gardens. So why not get involved and get posting about your very own WordPress Birthday Party.

You can even get yourself some special 15th anniversary WordPress swag. In tribute to the anniversary, WordPress have added a money off code CELEBRATEWP15 to get 15% off all accessories till the end of 2018. So whether you end up hosting your own WordPress party, bake a WordPress cake or even just get your hands on lots of cool new merch, make sure you get posting using the #WP15 hashtag online to help celebrate WordPress worldwide.