Conflict International’s New Website Launched by MintTwist

MintTwist have launched the brand new website for Conflict International, a London-based private investigations and surveillance company.

The company didn’t have a web site to start with, so much of the creative control was handed to MintTwist with a view to creating a new style for the company’s online presence, away from their other departments’ websites.

Conflict International required a clean and very professional website. They were eager to avoid the common cliché amongst their competitors with military-style helicopters and cameras and stereotypically-shady-looking characters.

The company were very happy with our initial design visual. MintTwist later provided a clean and interactive website which not only appeals to users, but also engages them with stunning modern imagery and a professionally clean new website.

Read our Conflict International portfolio page.
View the new website.

SEO for Small Businesses

Advertising and marketing is the staple diet of any business. With the ever expanding reach of the internet, internet marketing has in turned into an extremely cost-effective activity for businesses. It helps your website target new clients and customers by increasing internet traffic to your business website.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can help you promote your products or services in a cost-effective and measurable way. Online statistics software, such as Google Analytics, can be used to determine the effectiveness of your SEO campaign, tracking every aspect of your marketing push.

The starting point for any online marketing campaign for any business is to address the “organic” or “natural” listings, which are essentially free. They rely on the black box algorithms of the search engines to determine which pages and sites appear at the top of the search results list. To get your website into the top 10 search results for the major search engines can be a tricky process, but with the help of the right SEO consultant or agency, it is certainly achievable. The results may not be immediate but they will definitely be worth waiting for.

To achieve the goal of a top ten ranking on Google, Yahoo or MSN, a SEO agency takes into account proper coding standards, well written web copy, a well thought out site structure and site map and a wide linking network.

It’s only once a web site has achieved a top search engine ranking that the inquiries, and hopefully sales, will start coming in via the internet. Without SEO, your website may never be found and despite all the hard work and investment, it may mean your site never quite reaches its true potential.

A point worth noting is that if you end up with a top ten search engine ranking, but you have a poorly designed website the traffic you have worked so hard to attract may take one look at the website and then leave. You need to take a long hard look at your website and decide if it represents your business well enough. If the answer is no, then you should get it redesigned before starting any SEO activity.

Pay per click (PPC) is a popular advertising tool for larger businesses. It involves bidding for keywords to attract visitors to a web site. These “sponsored links” are displayed at the top of search engine results screens on Google, Yahoo and MSN. PPC can deliver excellent results for many businesses, but a dedicated and sustainable budget is needed.

With an internet marketing strategy that works, your website traffic will increase many times over. Search engine Optimisation is not a mystery. It involves correct coding practices, well written copy, a well thought out site map and an ever expanding linking campaign. When implemented correctly, SEO will improve the sales of any business.

New AGTA Website Launched by MintTwist

MintTwist have launched the new website for AGTA.co.uk.

AGTA are the Association of Greek-Cypriot Travel Agents. Having worked with MintTwist in 2005 to produce their previous website, AGTA selected MintTwist once more to redesign the site and make it fit for the new direction in which AGTA is going.

The brief was to design and build a fresh, clean new website for the Association with a view to increasing traffic to the members’ websites and, in turn, creating more sales for the travel organisers.

To read more about the new AGTA website, view the project portfolio page.
Or view the website (new window).

Essential Web Design Tips: CSS Vs. Tables Deathmatch

Possibly the most empassioned of the web design wars is that which places the logic of using a tabular layout versus that of using a fully-CSS layout.

We are at a point now where new, young web designers are starting out using CSS layouts but, for a number of years now there have been those who started way back when tables where all the rage and, as such, continue to stand by their trusty tabular simplicity.

There is no argument against the simplicity of a tabular layout, indeed it is probably a lot easier and quicker to build a table than it is to write and configure a style sheet. Alas, the benefits of using a table design stops there.

Personally I have always used CSS; I started designing web sites about four years ago. Even then CSS wasn’t as widely supported by browsers and web developers alike as it is today. The truth is that style sheets are a lot more extensible, flexible and you can do almost anything you like on a web page with a style sheet.

My experience has shown me that you cannot get such flexibility with a tabular layout. Tables should, in my opinion, be confined to the likes of Microsoft Word.

Tables were intended to display tabular data. Funny that.

Transparent ’spacer’ GIFs. Tables in tables in tables. A whole mess of HTML to work with when handing over to a new designer. A table layout really is the thorn in the side of modern web design.

As I have alluded to, I am not writing off tables completely. Tables had their benefits in a day when support for CSS was low and web design was in its infancy. The truth is that web design is, as with the Internet itself, still very young.

But consider for a moment what children do every day… They go to school and learn new ways of doing things because it is more logical than the way they used to do things. Like counting with your fingers, toes and hair strands versus using a pencil and paper, or even a calculator if you’re naughty.

Replacing your skills in using tables for layout with the ability to code using CSS is a similar thing. Why hold on to tables when you can do so much more with a style sheet?

When the time comes to redesign a popular web site (which, lets face it, is usually after just a year, if that) and you’ve used tables to build the last version, it is so much more difficult to redesign, not least because you can’t get access to the deep structure of the page without editing it itself. But also because you simply cannot redesign an archive of thousands of pages so, sadly, you have visible periods of your web design history when reading over a web site’s archive. BBC News’ web site is a perfect example of this.

With CSS, though, you can completely change the way each and every page looks, all at the same time simply by building a new style sheet or even amending a current one.

As I write this, it feels as though I’m writing something that web designer has read before. But if that’s the case, why do so many designers still use tables for layout? After doing a quick search on local web design companies’ portfolios, I discovered so many of the sites they have built still use tables!

I’ve talked about the designer aspect of tables versus CSS layouts, but what about the user? Superficially, some of the better-looking table designs could have been built using CSS as far as the average user is concerned. But what about those with a disability?

W3C is actively encouraging web designers to stop using tabular layouts and instead use CSS.

Tables are layed out in a very literal way. Which is perfect for the human eye, but as any web designer worth his salt will know, not all users use their eyes!

Those users with a visual impairment may use a screen reader. Screen readers will, a lot of the time, fall right down trying to read a web page that’s been built with a table.

In this age of scrutinising your own design to make sure it is both accessible and useable, why turn a blind eye to the fact that tabular layouts counters both standards?

The probability is that most designers who use tables will know how to use a style sheet in its most basic form. To style typefaces and image borders, for example. But why stop there?

For me, the largest argument against using CSS is that some browsers are intent on reading it differently. For example, Mozilla’s Firefox browser reads CSS exactly how it is supposed to be read. But other browsers, such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer just aren’t happy unless they are writing their own rules, garbling web pages in the process. This creates a problem and a web designer must fix a problem Internet Explorer is causing, which then creates two problems in Firefox.

But with a little playing around you can get it. That’s how you end up with some truly beautiful websites.

All Internet Explorer’s CSS issues does is make a web designer’s life a little more difficult. And when you see the end result, a beautifully-designed, well-structured, 100% accessible and useable design, safe in the knowledge that you built it yourself without the aid of a table, you feel proud.

Coding for all browsers and all of the Web community using a trusty style sheet makes the extra work worth it, the end result considerred.

MintTwist’s Essential Web Design Tips: Navigation

With designing a web site comes great responsibility!

Okay, I stole that from Spider-Man but there is some truth behind it. Designing a web site is about much more than superficial Photoshop visuals and CSS coding. A web designer must make sure that everything is in its place and that the web site is clean, navigable and obvious.

Any decent web designer knows that an ‘average’ web user (don’t you just hate that phrase?) has a very short attention span. It is for this reason that everything must be immediately obvious to them.

There are, obviously, no rules regarding web site design. That’s why you get some truly awful-looking web sites. But there are conventions. The MintTwist’s Essential Web Design Tips series will see us publish what we consider to be the top (in no particular order) web design conventions so that those who are just starting out, or those who are just looking for some tips can be as good at web site design as the design team at MintTwist. Well, almost as good…

We’ll start the series with Navigation:

Easy Navigation With MintTwist
Perhaps one of the more important conventions, the main navigation for a web site simply must be easy, clean, obvious and consistent. With the use of some simple CSS, it is perfectly easy to create a beautiful yet functional navigation system for a web site. Colours should utilise contrast in a way that makes the links within a menu accessible to everybody who can see.

Example Navigation Menu

That doesn’t mean the menu has to be a boring, post-it yellow and brick red set of links. Experiment with colours. Make a colour pallet and save it; you never know when you might need to use those colours again!

The navigation should be uniform throughout the site, even on the Home page. By uniform, I mean consistent, and on EVERY page. Colour-coding your navigation is good, though, for a site with many pages. Each section that has a specific colour can be represented in the navigation but make sure it benefits the user. If it helps with navigation of the site to have colour-coded sections, by all means go for it; it must be obvious, though.

The most important point to remember is that we must try not to make a web user think about what he should click. If it follows the conventions, the user will stay put and there is a much greater chance that he will continue to browse the site and maybe even come back! If you confuse the user with multiple navigation systems throughout a web site, or a different style of navigation on each page he will simply leave the site to get the information he requires elsewhere.

A user has expectations when it comes to visiting a web site. The menu is expected to be in a certain place (the top or to the left), the logo or ’site ID’ should be at the top left, the content shouldn’t stretch across the page and so on.

Placing the menu at, say, the bottom, or having it float and follow the user to the obscure parts using dodgy JavaScript is, for the most part, less than helpful. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on your viewpoint) people do judge a web site by the way it looks and acts. Functionality for the sake of functionality is a web design faux pas!

The fantastic thing about building clean, simple and navigable navigation is that it is easy and only needs a few lines of CSS. As long as you get the basic rules of a CSS menu right, the challenge should only be with creating a style to suit your web site. The posibilities are endless. See after the jump for an example of an easy to build, yet clean navigation. I’ve chosen a horizontal menu, for use below the masthead of a site, and above the content.

Happy CSSing!…

Looking Forward

Paris and Beyond

Wow, it seems like this internship and study abroad experience has gone by really really fast. It seems like I have hardly been here! I’ve done a lot of exciting things in London, at MintTwist and around Europe and I have loved it. Here at MintTwist I have written a lot, which I never really enjoyed before but now I have realized that I don’t hate writing if it’s creative writing. All those papers that I have to do in the next five days before I leave don’t seem that tough any more.

Now that I have been with MintTwist for about five weeks, I can tell that the company is really going somewhere fast. The vibrant, youthful and fun attitude which is portrayed through www.minttwist.com is representative of the people working here, and the direction they want to go in. In addition to being a fun and eager company, they have the right opportunities coming their way to do something really impressive in the future. I’m excited to see where the company is going and I will definitely be following up. Did I mention MintTwist is on Facebook!?

I also got to go to Paris last weekend. I have wanted to go for so long! It was beautiful, but I think it looks better in pictures for some reason. I also wish I knew French because it was not easy to communicate, even with the people who spoke English. My favourite thing there was the Louvre which I only got to see for an hour and a half because it was closing. I would have gone there just to see the building if there wasn’t eve art in it. It’s so big and so nice and I can’t wait to go back someday and spend a whole day there. That’ll have to wait until I’m rich one day though.

Anyway, this is my last entry. London has been great and so has MintTwist. I will keep my eye out for all the good things to come from MintTwist and I can’t wait to see the USA site up…

Cheers,

Tommy

Web Design Vacation

Oh my, this weekend was the craziest I have had yet, and arguably ever. All I have to say is thank God they speak English in Dublin. We got to Dublin at about midnight, and took a cab straight to the hostel which was hidden away not too close to down town. After we finally found it, we were told that we couldn’t stay there because we had booked incorrectly. Oh joy, here we are dead tired after working and travelling on a Thursday night without a place to stay! Uh oh.

Luckily we had an extremely nice and helpful cab driver who was able to tell us some other places we could stay. After a €60 cab ride and a couple unsuccessful inquiries for a room, we found another hostel to stay in. It was actually way nicer than I ever expected a hostel to be; we had four beds and our own bathroom! We were so relieved. We wanted to stay there again because it was really close to the centre of the city and obviously was very nice. So we asked the place we had mis-booked if we could cancel, and they said yes and that we would only loose our deposit of €40. Sounds great. So we booked the nicer one nearer to city centre and paid. I felt so happy and relieved.

Then we called the other place to cancel, and were told that we couldn’t and we would have to pay for that night. It was really frustrating and since we don’t have tons of money, we had to cancel the nicer place and walk a couple miles to the next place, which ended up being a college dorm that stunk like old take-out food and didn’t have working showers. Yay!

We finally got to go out in the city and begin our day at about 1:00. We saw the Dublin Castle which was the weirdest “castle” I have ever seen; it had modern buildings attached and colourful painted exterior walls. Anyway, part of the point we went to Dublin was to meet one of my best friends from home who has been studying in France this summer. Once we met up we ate, and then went out for the night. It was a great night.

The next day we walked to the Guinness factory in the rain, got literally soaked, and waited in line for an hour to walk through a building, not a factory, which simply promoted the Guinness brand. What? I was expecting something much different but that’s OK because its one of those places you “have to go.” After that we went to dinner which was a huge meal – three courses! I was so excited until my friend had a panic attack and we had to leave to go to the emergency room. He’s OK now, but it was a pretty intense situation at the time. And now we know how the health system works there, which is very different from America. I saw a women collapse in the waiting room and no one even cared. My friend was crying and freaking out on the ground and no one cared. I saw people who looked terrible and clearly needed help who had been there for 6 hours and would be waiting for who knows how long. After we were there for three hours and were told it would probably be six more, my friend tried to get it together and said we should leave. And that is my Dublin story. It was a mess but it was really fun as well.

Here at MintTwist I’ve been creating templates and documents to help before and after projects and to gain feedback from customers. I can’t believe it but after this week it will only be one more week here! Next week I’m going to Paris so watch out for that entry cause it’ll be the last.

Stonehenge and Bath

Last weekend I got to go to Stonehenge and Bath, both of which were very interesting and unlike anything I have seen before. I have heard that Stonehenge was awe-inspiring, and while it was impressive I was surprised I didn’t find it more fascinating. I was also surprised that it is just off of a main road. It was weird because we were suddenly there, right next to Stonehenge. It was really cool and I am glad that I got to see it, but I do not think I will go back.

Next we were off to Bath, which I knew little about. Immediately upon arriving I loved the architecture and atmosphere. It felt very old and home-like. Not that where I’m from looks anything like that, it just felt cosy. We went on a walking tour through the city and learned the history and stories of Bath. It was beautiful; there were lots of flowers and well-groomed gardens because apparently they enter a contest every year for having the best gardens. Then we went to the Roman Baths which were humid and dirty looking. Seemed like it would have been an amazing place during Roman times but now it’s in decay and looks pretty sketch (sketch, or sketchy is the American word for dodgy BTW). They say that the water from the spring can heal anything so I drank some, but since I wasn’t sick or anything the jury is still out on that one.

My time here at MintTwist is still going well. I enjoy the meetings on Monday mornings because I like to listen and know what’s going on around the office. That’s one thing I think some businesses fail at—basically communicating by having regular meetings to discuss what’s going on. Note number two: if I ever have a desktop computer again I have to get two huge screens. I think that’s all for now, I’m going to Dublin this weekend so I gotta get going!! I can’t wait to write about that next week.

My Feelings on Branding

It’s my second week in London. I love that the temperature here isn’t too hot, but the cloudy sky is getting really depressing. Pittsburgh is known to be cloudy and depressing but this feels much worse! They say it’s supposed to get sunny soon. Can’t wait! Anyway, right now I’m learning a lot about MintTwist, what they’re all about and what they are good at. MintTwist has created a really cool brand which they have reflected through their website. I happen to be very interested in branding so I’m excited to be able to work here. Maybe my interest in brands comes from being American where we are obsessed with brand names and material goods. Branding is definitely an effective way of selling products.

Website design is really a modern way of reflecting a company’s brand and image to their audience. So in a way MintTwist is more than a Web Design Agency, they are like a marketing company as well. Some of the work I have been doing has been creating questionnaires for new clients to gather information. One of them was a Branding Questionnaire which I found to be particularly pertinent for a few reasons; I love branding, I think all companies should have a clear brand identity, and I think MintTwist should become more involved in branding their clients.

In a way, it is necessary for a company to have a strong brand identity before creating a website, because if they do not have a sense of self how can MintTwist create a website which reflects their spirit? In addition this brand which we reflect on their website needs to be carried throughout their company with print work, business cards etc. So when a client comes to MintTwist I think that we should help them develop, update, or create a brand image, then create a website which reflects that, and then complete the project with matching business cards and letterheads etc. Obviously I’m sort of an idealist, and that is definitely an ideal, so take it for what its worth. I think I got that ‘full service’ attitude from working in retail where they would tell us to “complete the sale” by getting customers to buy basically anything and everything and then opening a credit card at the register. I don’t really appreciate that attitude because it feels really corporate and pushy, but in terms of branding I believe in it because brands should be all-encompassing. In short, I love brands and the creation of them.

First Week in London

Hello, my name is Tommy and I am an American student studying abroad in London and interning at MintTwist, a Web Design Agency in North London. I attend the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania where I am studying Communication and Economics. Many people have never heard of Pittsburgh, but you probably just didn’t know you have, because it’s where Heinz Ketchup is made! I love ketchup… but that’s not what I’m here to discuss; I am writing this blog to chronicle my experience as an intern at MintTwist! But, no worries this blog won’t be strictly business, I will also include stories from my personal life and the trips I will be taking to Stonehenge, Bath, Dublin and Paris!

I’ve been waiting 5 years to come back to London, and I have finally arrived!! I am so excited, and really exhausted, but to be totally honest London isn’t the place I always dreamed of studying abroad. Trinity College in Dublin is where I’ve dreamt of studying. But that’s not what happened! So why am I here, you ask? Because I also love London, and I think I want to move abroad one day (possibly to London) and if I wanted to see what it would be like to work in the UK. After all, if I was going to move to a different continent, it would be helpful to have had working experience there, cause if I didn’t I would probably be homeless. In short, the opportunity to have an internship in London was too good to be true and when I found out I could I knew this was what I wanted to do!

Now that I’ve settled down and done all that orientation stuff, I’ve begun my internship at MintTwist. In case you have been speed reading or haven’t been paying attention, MintTwist is not a drink… it’s a Web Design Agency! My mom said it sounded like a beverage, it does, and I think that’s the point, its refreshing! It’s a cool name, (people don’t say ‘cool’ here do they?) and it makes you take another look and ask who are you MintTwist? I’ll tell you what I know… which is what I’ve seen on MintTwist.co.uk. Besides that I am researching Search Engine Optimization (SEO) like none other and trying to get used to my new life for six weeks.

My first impression from the site was that MintTwist was a young, vibrant and creative company. I loved what I saw because I felt like it seemed like a quirky, fun company. Those who know me well might (I mean would probably) describe me that way. So I was happy to be interning at this place called MintTwist. Now that I am here sitting in the office I can tell you what MintTwist is like behind the beautifully designed website. You must want to know if the website is reflective of the actual company, right? If not, skip this and go to the next entry.

The atmosphere at MintTwist is actually very similar to the website; the company is busy, energetic and of course, creative. That’s not to say that the website is ‘busy’ though, it’s very well laid out! But what more would you expect from a company that designs websites which are reflective of their organizations? I am excited to be working for such a young, energetic company because there is a positive attitude and an eagerness to expand the business to new markets and regions of the world. Eagerness and excitement in a business is really important to me because there is nothing worse than working for a company which isn’t excited about its work. That can be truly miserable and boring. MintTwist is not that kind of place, and that is refreshing.