|Creative Chartered Marketers | Branding Consultancy

Meet Nick. Our newest web developer. Nick joined our branding agency a few weeks ago. Nick lives in Worthing, and when he is not working, he loves Hiking, Photography and developing iPhone Apps.

Naturally, we grilled Nick to find out his loves and hates, and here are his replies:

VV: So Nick, when you’re not working on websites or up a mountain, what do you like to do?
NC: I am a member of the National Trust and love visiting their historic properties.

VV: What kind of music do you like?
NC: I listen to lots of lounge, ambient and electronic music; basically anything that I can have in the background while coding.

VV: So what is your food?
NC: Authentic baked NY Cheesecake, om, nom nom nom!

VV: So what was your degree all about?
NC: I graduated from Portsmouth University with a degree in Computer network management and design. Whilst there I studied a wide range of subjects including networking, web development, programming etc.

VV: So what will you bring to our customers?
NC: Fresh ideas and my expertise in web development, iPhone and Moodle. My work will compliment your award-winning branding agency.
VV: Sounds Great!

VV: Tell us, what exactly is a Moodle?
NC: Moodle is an open source e-learning platform that enables educational organisations, companies etc create online e-learning courses.

VV: What is your favourite website?
NC: I recently joined 500px, a portfolio site for Photographers, the site’s usability and design is one of my favourites.

VV: Any last words?
NC: All the website development projects I work on are naturally W3C standard compliant, paying special attention to semantic mark-up to ensure our customers websites make more sales.

VV: Welcome to our team Nick!

Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression. The Brand Surgery’s speciality is branding websites combined with good functionality. So if your website is letting you down, don’t fear. Call us on 01903 824229 to have a no-obligation chat about your website. The Brand Surgery, branding agency in West Sussex serves Brighton, Portslade, Shoreham, Worthing, Littlehampton, Arundel, Chichester, Portsmouth, Horsham, Crawley and the Gatwick Diamond area.

At The Brand Surgery, we like to practice what we preach, and we have been saying for several months now, how important it is to ensure that your website is easy to use and navigate on different devices, cross-platform and cross-browser. That’s why, we have been working away producing a ‘mobile-friendly’ version of our website, for mobile phone users.

Mobile Website Pages

The mobile website provides an easy to use layout, with controls that mimic the styles of your mobile devices operating system. Our website is excelling in search engine search results due to our secret recipe SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and blogging skills, not to mention the huge catalogue of pages thebrandsurgery.co.uk has archived away. The mobile website does not affect this though, it simply switches into place if a mobile phone user is detected. This is extremely important, so if you are in a similar position, your fears can be relaxed, implementing a mobile website with The Brand Surgery will not affect your SEO.

Now, the mobile website is considerably smaller than the full website, with only our key services and information available, as well as the most recent etchings from our portfolio and our news. However, if visitors wish to view our full and main website (including our extended portfolio), they can do, simply by clicking the link at the bottom of the mobile website.

To give you an idea of how both versions of our website look on a mobile phone, look at the screenshots below:

As you can see, its extremely hard to read the text on the desktop site (when viewed from a mobile phone) and would be even harder to click on the right links. Yes, most mobile phones allow you to zoom in and out, but doesn’t the mobile site look that much easier to use? We think so, and we’ve had some great feedback already.

If you would like to make a mobile friendly version of your website, contact us on 01903 824229 or use our online contact form to arrange for a FREE no obligation quote or meeting.

Just before Christmas we brought you the news that The Brand Surgery had successfully submitted a mobile application to the Android Market and that an iPhone App was soon to follow for the well received ‘The Review Doctor’ website. Well, that day has come and we are pleased to announce that The Review Doctor is now available in the Apple App Store. You can download it by following the link below:

Anyway, after undergoing the process for submitting to both online app repository’s, we thought we’d compare the two processes and have our say on their pro’s and con’s. We have broken the process into several categories.

Development Environment

Ok, so we love both Mac’s and PC’s at The Brand Surgery, the Mac is brilliant for design work, especially when using Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator and the PC is great as a general purpose machine and has many advantages for web development. (Not that Mac’s can’t be used for web development). But put simply, we like the option of choosing what we work on and the Android Market allows us this freedom. We can download the development tools for any platform! Apple however, restrict you to only developing on a Mac, which is somewhat frustrating for those that don’t have a Mac – this could greatly increase the cost of development!

Apple 0 – 1 Android

Cost

If you’re going to enter the world of mobile development, there is going to be a cost involved (at least if you want to use the market leaders) so this is purely a case of who is cheaper! Now, neither development programme is expensive (at least it seems), but Android Market charges $25 (around £16) as a one-off fee. Apple however have a slightly more expensive fee of $99 (around £64) per year. So Android wins again!

Apple 0 – 2 Android

The Review Doctor on the App Store

Sign-up Process

Androids process was quick, simple and intuitive. In fact, if you already have a Google account, you simply associate it to your development account. Easy, brilliant, thank you very much Google!

Apple however, require you to (if you sign-up as a business) provide proof of your companies existence by sending off various documents, etc. and we found them extremely awkward and arduous to deal with! After sending off our certificate from Companies House (as requested) they then changed their rules and wanted something else, and we ended up going backwards and forwards for several days!

Apple 0 – 3 Android

Support

Now it must be said, that we haven’t required much support from either Apple or Android, but Apple does appear to be far more equipped with a plethora of documentations, examples, videos and various other resources within it’s ‘Member Centre’ (presumably what the large cost is for) and although Android does have documentation, Apples is just far superior.

Apple 1 – 3 Android

The Review Doctor on Android Market

Submission Process

This was for us, one of the biggest differences between the two platforms, and to be perfectly honest, a perfect medium would be somewhere between the two!

Android accept pretty much anything onto the Market, once you  have created your app, you fill in the details to be displayed in the Android Market, upload the app and click submit. Then as soon as it has uploaded, and you verify this, the app is live in the Market. Brilliant! Or is it? Not exactly. It’s great for people like The Brand Surgery who are designing and developing quality applications because we get into the Market quickly, but consider for a minute those that are producing apps which are broken, pointless and poorly produced. These apps also get instantly approved and enter the market, filling it with a lot of poor apps to search through. Not ideal!

Let’s look at Apples approach then. You submit your app in much the same way as Android, except your app gets sent off for ‘review’ by one of Apples staff. This obviously allows for the rubbish apps to be rejected (although with some apps on the App Store, you may wonder who was reviewing them) but it also adds considerable time to the submission process, especially if your app is rejected. This would then result in a longer appeal process unless you make the necessary changes.

Neither gets the win in this round so it remains:

Apple 1 – 3 Android

Market Share

Simple, Apple hold the market share, so they get the win! We are able to reach far more people on the App Store than we can in Android Market. Ask us in a year’s time after the Google branded Android builds momentum, it might be a different story!

Apple 2 – 3 Android

So after all is said and done, this suggests that Android is the better platform to build for. Wrong! They are both of equal marketing value as each other. Each holds a significant weight in the market, and it gives off a better overall brand if you have both of those names attached to your website, application, concept or company. We highly recommend you add some weight to your brand by creating a mobile application and we’d be more than happy to help you out! Not only would you receive our fantastic design and top quality development, you will have all of our CIM Chartered Marketing experience and branding skills on tap as well!

Call us on 01903 824229 or contact us on online to arrange a FREE, no obligation quote or meeting.

This week, The Brand Surgery published their first mobile app to the Android Market, with an iPhone app soon to follow in the Apple App Store. The application, for The Review Doctor, allows users to find local businesses listed on The Review Doctor and read/write reviews about them.

The application features a fun, yet simplistic design which we feel reflects The Review Doctor’s current branding whilst keeping the look and feel of a mobile app, which is important to make sure mobile users feel at home on the app!

By presenting the user with a map view, using the GPS location sensors and/or Wi-Fi of the mobile device to detect the users location, the user can easily see what business (that are listed on The Review Doctor) are immediately around them. If the business they want to read/review isn’t listed, they can easily add them by ‘tapping’ where they should be on the map!

For those using the app that aren’t near the business they are trying to look up, a simple directory search is available using both Alphabetical Order and Categories to make it easier to find your listing.

Check out the screenshots below to see how the app looks:

The app, which is FREE to download from the Android Market, is available now, and the iPhone equivalent for the Apple App Store is currently in the process of being verified and will be available in the New Year.

If you have a mobile application that needs developing, please give us a ring on 01903 824229 for a FREE, no obligation chat.