Monthly Roundup: Articles & Links

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:00:29 GMT

What we've been reading this month and interesting links:

Interesting article on using iPad as a device to assist a person with disabilities.
Lens Pimp featured in Digital Photo Magazine

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:22:42 GMT

Back in early January we launched a brand new, professional e-commerce site for a lens hire company called LensPimp. Since then we’ve seen their orders grow month after month and...
Website Redesign for a Mixed Martial Arts Magazine

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:16:55 GMT

MMA Worldwide (Mixed Martial Arts) website has gone live. We’ve built a bunch of nice features into the site including a “Gym Finder”, unique forum for gym owners and a Flash free video player allowing videos to be watched on a variety of devices including the iPhone and iPad. Take a look -

Design Militia Mobile Website

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:57:44 GMT

We finally had time last week to put the final touches to our mobile website. According to mobithinking.com 60% of all mobile handsets shipped in 2009 can browse the mobile Web and this is set to grow to 80% by 2013. With the...

Why and how you should create a Facebook Fan page

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:29:56 GMT

Facebook is not only a platform to express yourself, connect with friends and networks. It’s also another avenue for your business to connect, network and promote your brand. Facebook’s press page claims more than 400 million active users in...

Google dominates the search engine market but by how much?

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:30:10 GMT

We use search engines everyday to search for news, products, services, locations and whatever else is on our mind. Search engines decide how to organise and display websites that match our search queries.

We all know Google has the biggest search engine market share but by how much and how close behind is Bing and Yahoo? As of...
Need to send out an email marketing campaign? Try something simplr

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:30:33 GMT

Sending out emails to your customers has just got a lot simpler thanks to our very easy email marketing application. In fact it so simple we've called it simplr mail. We've built a new website to home
New Website for Bristol Bound

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:30:49 GMT

Last week, we were working with Bristol Bound to design and build their new website. It had been some considerable time since their website was designed, and a new site was well overdue.

For example the

Design Militia Rebranded

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:31:15 GMT

Design Militia is 2 years old in May and since the launch of the company back in 2008, our services and portfolio have outgrown our website. Therefore, we have decided to rebrand the company and relaunch the website to reflect our offerings and our simple, beautiful approach to website design.

Like all websites we produce, SEO, companies are not taking advantage of the power of thinking local. Ofcom (2008) reported that 76% of UK adult Internet users find out about local services online. Since more people search for local businesses online then anywhere else it's crucial to...

Could your website speed affect your page rank?

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:32:04 GMT

According to Google, yes. Your website’s performance could soon be a factor of where your website gets listed in Google’s search results. It is not yet known when this new factor will be introduced, however, we expect in early 2010 to coincide with the release of Google Caffeine (real time search results).

Update: Google have announced that site speed will...

Putting an end to the META keyword debate

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:32:18 GMT

We get the question all the time. META Keywords, will they help my search engine ranking? The Official answer from Google is no - Google do not use the meta tag to determine...

Statistically, 8 out of 10 people will read this headline

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:32:38 GMT

But only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. This is not uncommon - it can be pretty difficult to stir up interest among the masses when it comes to getting them to read what you have to write. You can be a brilliant copy writer but if you can't write a good headline, nobody will ever know. So we’ve put together some quick fire tips to improve the odds of your insightful commentary getting read...

Let’s drag the mobile web into the present!

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:33:36 GMT

The latest research from the Nielsen Norman Group shows that the mobile user-experience is years behind today’s standards of usability and what people have come to expect online. The mobile web is neither...

Think Twitter is a load of Twaddle?

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:33:52 GMT

Unless you’ve been living under a particularly large rock on the far side of the moon for the last six months, most of us have at least heard of Twitter by now, yet not everyone has created a Twitter account or fully embraced Twitter for business. If not, you could be...

Spotify, audiobooks and the model of free

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:34:16 GMT

If you haven’t heard of Spotify then you’re in for a treat. If you’re already a Spotify convert, you can skip to the next paragraph. Still here? Spotify is an application for Mac, Windows and Linux allowing you to listen to a huge library of...

Safety in Numbers

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:47:56 GMT

At Design Militia we care about our clients’ (and future clients’) data and keeping your content safe. After all, you're spending time creating it and carefully optimizing for search engines and people, the last thing you want is to worry about is losing it. Backing up isn’t the most interesting subject (I’ll try and make it a little fun to read) but since...

Why filling in credit cards forms online is painful

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:01:53 GMT

Why some companies choose to make filling these forms harder than they need to be is beyond us at Design Militia. A simple web form for filling in your payment details normally consists of:

Card number

Expiry date

CVV/CVC code (security code on the back of...

Email address and usernames

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:57:18 GMT

During our time developing login systems for sites such as the CMA we’ve run into a few interesting things that effect us all every day, so I want to take a few minutes to talk about one of them.

When we first saw the pre-Design Militia CMA site, it required users to log into the membership area via a username and password. While we initially evaluated this system...

Improving the Sainsbury’s experience

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:59:27 GMT

So next week sees the start of “I’m running Sainsbury’s” on Channel 4. Certainly a shameless marketing ploy on the part of the supermarket giant but we're definitely...

Breaking the Silence

admin@designmilitia.co.uk (Design Militia) — Mon, 25 May 2009 15:46:38 GMT

As you might have guessed from the complete lack of movement coming from the Design Militia camp since before Christmas, we've been extremely busy here.

You mean you thought we'd gone for good? Lord no...

So what's been going on? Here's a quick rundown...

We have moved offices.

We have moved...

Design Militia Swiss Blog Role | Design Militia

Monthly Roundup: Articles & Links

Lens Pimp featured in Digital Photo Magazine

Website Redesign for a Mixed Martial Arts Magazine

Design Militia Mobile Website

Why and how you should create a Facebook Fan page

Google dominates the search engine market but by how much?

Need to send out an email marketing campaign? Try something simplr

New Website for Bristol Bound

Design Militia Rebranded

Could your website speed affect your page rank?

Putting an end to the META keyword debate

Statistically, 8 out of 10 people will read this headline

Let’s drag the mobile web into the present!

Think Twitter is a load of Twaddle?

Spotify, audiobooks and the model of free

Safety in Numbers

Why filling in credit cards forms online is painful

Email address and usernames

Improving the Sainsbury’s experience

Breaking the Silence