Another week and another new piece of work to add to the portfolio. This time it’s a nice little project for SEAT Young Driver Training. As the name suggests, SEAT Young Driver offer driving courses for under 17s at locations across the UK.
We’ve been working with Young Driver to help launch their online offer to customers, as well as developing an entire back end which handles all the booking and process management for each venue. The site allows customers to book sessions online through a secure payment gateway and then view and choose from available time slots at their preferred location. Course organisers can then see a full rundown of stats for each site and co-ordinate the driving instructors. As well as the main payment system we also built a gift vouchers platform, and added a soon to be populated online shop.
Further to our last post on making the Style Birmingham Christmas TV commercial we wanted to post the final version up here on the blog and give a little more information about the campaign as a whole. Hopefully, you may by now have seen the spot which airs on ITV and Channel 4 throughout December. If not, there’s still a few days to catch it (or of course you can just click play on the video above!).
The campaign as a whole this year was developed to try and encourage shoppers to explore more of what Birmingham has to offer at Christmas. We recognised that many shoppers miss some of the highlights in the city, either due to time constraints, or not knowing where to look. As such, the ‘One Mile of Style’ campaign was developed to encourage visitors not only to ’shop’, but also to explore and experience other Christmas highlights in the city.
The concept behind the ad was developed in conjunction with the lovely guys at Fullrange and aimed to promote the mile and drive people through to stylebirmingham.com (which it’s been doing very well!). On the site, potential visitors can then explore an interactive ‘One Mile’ map and print off a synopsis of information about travel, independent retail, in-store promotions and festive fun, to take with them when they visit.
In addition, a number of users have been using the new dayplanner feature to generate personalised shopping routes and recommendations based on their age, brand habits and wish lists.
If you’re watching Dick Tracy, The Bill, Big Bang Theory or Deal or no Deal today then you may just catch it!
Urban Pie is one of the showcase sites in this months .net magazine. It’s been out for a few days but we’ve only just managed to get one. Pick up a copy if you’re interested – we’re on page 66.
Today sees the launch of a little project we’ve been working on called ‘Tweelove‘. Tweelove is an anonymous twitter messaging service with the aim of spreading a bit of positivity around twitter.
For 383 the site has mainly been an exercise in getting an idea (provided by @Bostinbloke) designed and built quickly. Seeing as it’s coming up to Valentines we figured it could be a bit of fun to design and build this and it also gave us an excuse to be a bit more indulgent than we might otherwise be with our daytime work.
The design came together pretty quickly, and after hammering out a few different ways of creating the interface we settled on a simple ‘pick a word’ and ‘add a message’ format. As well as ensuring the messages have some level of consistency in their tone, ‘picking’ a word at the beginning helps remind people the service is meant to be positive. You can follow the account to see who’s recieving the kudos by following @tweelove, or visit the site yourself to send a few messages.
The development side of the project has itself been a bit of fun, so for those that are interested, you can read about the process here:
The geeky bit
Once the design was handed over, we coded it up and then made a start on the functional parts of the site.
First, to minimise spam from bots and user error we made sure that when someone builds a Tweet the site will check whether the Twitter user who the message is directed @ exists. If they do, the TweeLove account will auto-follow the recipient. If they don’t, then the user will be prompted with an error message to try again. If the service gets used a lot we’ll knock the auto-follow on the head if it’s getting near 400 a day to ensure twitter don’t think there’s any spamming going on!
To minimise abuse the site will also check the body copy of the message for any un-niceities in the text. This checking has been built into a buffer so Tweets don’t just get sent straight to Twitter as the user submits them. The buffer currently submits every two minutes so messages you send will have a slight delay before getting pulled in to the main feed.
Lastly, we used the twitter search RSS feed to catch any messages people might hashtag with #tweelove or @tweelove. This way, people can tweet messages from their own accounts if anonymity isn’t a concern.
After our last post with a rundown of our work that slipped through the net over the last few months we’re now back on track and can blog about current projects – one of which is a new website for the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham.
The site itself has recently launched and so a few areas, particularly the directory, will become more rich in content as more businesses begin managing their own listing. The site has been built to provide a better online presence for those working and living and in the quarter, as well as those planning a visit from out of town. Historically the Jewellery Quarter seems to have been a bit lacking in terms of online coverage compared with other areas of the city and we hope that the tools on the site can be put to good use by the community they were built for. One of the catalysts which has informed the sites development throughout has been the need for an online space where the creative community in the Quarter can broadcast what they’re doing, and network with one another. We’re really hopeful that the blogs in particular provide a better insight in to the great work the Jewellers and creatives in the area produce and provide a platform for people who have lots to shout about to be more easily heard.
383 were responsible for the design and build of the site, apart from the video content and advert which have been produced by the guys from SGUD and Dene Films. There’s a bit more information about the project in our portfolio, and a big hello from blogger David Louis on the site itself.
