Blog

The Cookie Monster.

We were at a meeting last week and a prospective client asked about the EU Cookie Directive. We didn't have a concise answer prepared and we deferred to the use of cookies by the BBC and how they were informing users of cookie use (other than in their privacy policy), and how they are not now! Although we felt the meeting went well, our answer was a shambles and if anything it has taught us to be better prepared!

So what do you need to know?
The deadline for compliance is nearly here (26 May 2012) and it is the law so keep reading.

How will the EU cookie directive effect my website?
If you site uses cookies the legislation has been designed to to increase data privacy and security for your users. You will now need to tell users how you are using the cookies (information it holds) and ask the user to 'opt in'.

What about compliance?
Anyone in the EU but also those whose websites target Member States.

Why do I care?
Because it's the law! It may prove hard to enforce but with a maximum penalty of £500,000 for non-compliance you need to think again. You may however only receive an enforcement notice!

What about my website?
There will be a requirement for some extra work on your site, back-peddling on the good work you have already paid for in creating a better user experience. Rachel McCombie on her blog about the directive says 'webmasters will be allowed to use cookies without permission in instances where it is strictly necessary to do so for the functionality of the website and where that action is explicitly requested by the user (i.e. where a feature requested by the user wouldn't work without the use of a cookie, such as the shopping basket on an e-commerce site)'.

How do I comply with it?
You will need to be transparent about your use of cookies. Prominent sign posting allowing users to give informed consent. Remember, not all websites use cookies. Talk to your web developer or ask grow to give your site a free website check up.

So what do we think?
In many cases cookies collect anonymous information and do not hold personal data. This we think is fine but cookie misuse can be a pain and there is a probability that there will eventually be an international standard to online privacy.

Analytics is a real issue for us as all our websites use Google Analytics which sets cookies automatically. It is clear that consent will be needed and we hope that Google will find a solution in time, maybe asking users to update their privacy policy or for browsers to include a universal consent or an opt-out button.

We think that owners should get to know their website, know what technology they have and then work with their developer to implement a solution. If your developer is slow to react... give us a call to find out how we can help. After all we are a website design and development company based in Oxfordshire with an awesome technical toolbox at our disposal!

If you are still in the dark there is plenty of reading to be done in the PDF titled Changes to the rules on using cookies and similar technologies for storing information.

Also check out the Guardian article from the 13th April.

Posted by Adam , tagged as Analytics, Cookies, Google Analytics

In with the new

The Umbraco team has just launched Umbraco 5, the latest incarnation to our favourite CMS. We have followed the process since alpha, and although we have been impatient, the end result works better than expected!

Over the next few weeks we will be watching closely for follow-ups by the community, especially plugins and bug reports. If all goes to plan, we should be using it for our next project very soon.

Once again, our thanks and congrats to the Umbraco team for this major achievement!

Posted by Theo , tagged as Umbraco

 What is Social Design

Facebook and Google are on a mission to put social design at the core of their businesses, but how does this translate to your business and how do you create social experiences on your website?

Facebook think that how we understand each other can be broken down to three core elements:  Identity,  Conversation  and  Community.

• Identity  refers to our own sense of self and how we are seen by our communities.
• Conversation  refers to the various interactions we have with our communities.
• Community  refers to the people we know and trust and who help us make decisions.

These three core elements get us thinking about how to reinvent business around the 'social graph'. Users may want to share experiences with their friends or 'Like' a product or service. It is these actions that hold sway within social networks as we move away from the 'what' to the 'who'!

Now is the time to re-think how your business on the internet can be designed by putting people at the centre, and it isn't just about linking to social media but also about personalising your website, encouraging community and defining new conversations.

As our web design business grows in Oxford every engagement with a new prospective company has a question about their Facebook or Twitter strategy. We believe that now it is not enough to just incorporate 'Follow' icons on your home page.

Social Media is an extension of your 'social graph' the one that helps you make a decision about where to send your kids to school or what solicitor you use. Only now community also occurs online, it becomes a utility as we attach identity to our online social graph. As we start to 'Like' or 'Google +' films, music, businesses or products.

So what to do?

• Personalise the user experience and encourage trust
• Develop tools to encourage sharing or incorporate existing sharing functionality from integrated social media
• Encourage identity - how users are seen by the communities

So while social media is 'on a mission to enable lots of companies and lots of industries to re-invent their product and their business through the lens of people and friends' Dan Rose, Vp Partnerships and Platform Marketing, Facebook, our mission at Grow is to advise local businesses on how to implement social design. Watch this space.

Posted by Adam , tagged as social design, social graph, social media integration, web design oxford

January is a month of resolutions, but also of predictions - and mine is that 2012 is going to be the year that TV-optimised websites will take off. Yes, optimisation is still important and your website will remain the centre piece of digital life, but the allure of a HD-quality, video-powered presence on the most-used household device will be hard to resist.

The early signs

There are three tell-tale signs that contributed to our prediction - the same that enabled the rise of the mobile-optimised website:

General availability of hardware

A quick look in any retailer ' s website testifies that all new TV sets are web-enabled. It might take a while to reach Freeview-level critical mass, but the trend is clearly moving beyond the early adopters. Even if smart TV's are slow to catch up, many households can 'see' the web on their TVs through set-top boxes and game consoles.

Industry manoeuvres in the dark

Technology giants are already on the move to take over the TV experience. For starters, there's Google TV, relaunched last year after a poor start in 2010. Leveraging the popularity Chrome and Android is likely to yield results. Look out for a headline acquisition this year, a subject which Eric Schmidt artfully dodged in a recent video interview.

And then there's Apple. In 2011 we saw the death of FrontRow in OSX Lion and a Mac Mini without a DVD drive. It's clear to me that Apple does not want you to plug your Mac Mini to your telly, and my guess is that there is an iPad-style relaunch of Apple TV coming up.

Development platform

This is a tricky one which should be an easy one. HTML5 is the lingua franca of network applications, if companies didn't think that proprietary toolkit is a way to lock people into their ecosystem. One encouraging sign is that Google TV runs a version of Chrome. I can only hope that Apple will follow suit and include a TV-friendly Safari in the next generation of Apple TV.

So what to do now?

My guess is that demand for TV-optmised websites will probably kick off around May, after Google acquires Hulu, the new Apple-TV is out and Microsoft figures out that Media Centre is not an aside but a main feature of Windows 8. 

Grow is preparing the ground now. We are striking deals with video production and streaming partners and tuning our design for the 10-foot UI (User Interface). We like to stay ahead of the curve and this is going to be a good one. If you think likewise, we'd love to hear from you. Grow are a web design company based in Oxford and we love working locally!

Posted by Theo , tagged as Analysis, Web Design Oxford, WebTV

Posted by Theo , tagged as Clients, Company news