Given our ultra-active lifestyles sat at our computers, day in, day out, and coupled with our fantastic diet consisting of Maccy D’s, KFC, and Mother Kelly’s fish & chips, I can assure you we’d rather not be out there attempting to compete with the rest of Pompey’s fit rowers!
If you fancy watching us suffer, feel free to pop down to the event which takes place on the lake at back of our office building at 1000 Lakeside in North Harbour, Portsmouth. Here’s hoping the weather holds out for us!
We manage a number of Google AdWords campaigns for our clients, but sometimes new clients don’t understand the value in outsourcing the management and optimisation to us - probably my fault for not explaining it properly!
Anyway, I thought this was a really good, plain English explanation of the Google AdWords auction system and how it works, and it starts to show the kind of things we have to take into account when managing and optimising campaigns for our clients.
On a slight tangent, I can’t help be amused at how a company as cutting edge and opulent as Google decided not to use some young geek with cool animated/digital graphics for this presentation, and instead opted for this geezer explaining the system on a whiteboard with a marker pen and sticky bits of paper. So old school. I love it.
do1 has been invited by Business Link to give free 15 minute one-to-one business advice sessions at their major event, Enterprise 09, which is taking place in our own home of 1000 Lakeside in Portsmouth’s North Harbour area on Thursday the 23rd of April.
The event covers a wide range of topics and themes, with free advice from other leading local companies across different industries. There’s also a keynote speech by one of the blokes from Dragon’s Den too.
I’m quite looking forward to meeting lots of new businesses and chatting to them about their web needs/dilemmas and hopefully I’ll be able to help them all out. I’ll be chained to a desk from 10am til 7pm, and I believe I’m dealing with a different business every 20 minutes, so I guess that’s 27 businesses in total for the day (lunch is for wimps). Hope to see you there!
Thanks to a successful PR & marketing campaign in our local area in the last quarter of 2008, do1 is looking to steadily expand its ultra-talented team in 2009.
We are actively seeking exceptionally talented and driven individuals for the roles of Account Manager and Junior Web Developer. If you think you’ve got what we’re looking for, why not apply?
If these positions aren’t for you but you think you may know someone that it applies to, why not let them know and give us the heads up - we’ll reward you with £100 cash as a thank you!
I’m really chuffed to say we’ve been shortlisted for The News’ prestigious Business Excellence Awards. In all honesty, I really wasn’t aware of just how much of a big deal this was until all the messages of congratulations accumulated!
Whilst we don’t expect to win, especially given that we’re up against the likes of the mighty Netbasic, me and the lads are very much looking forward to ditching the hoodies for one night and busting out the suits for the awards ceremony this Thursday at the Guildhall.
As part of the development program do1 were tasked with rebranding Winchester’s shopping centre. The Brooks Shopping Centre is located in the heart of the historic city and is owned by the London & Henley Property Group. The mall offers shoppers an enclosed environment with a range of high street names as well as independents.
The rebrand enabled us to work with a blank canvas. We began with developing several fresh and crisp logo concepts to bring the Brooks branding into a higher class.
do1 began with developing several logo concepts which we presented to the client. The logo the client finally chose was rich in bright, clean colours. This was also the path our designers decided to go down with the website. do1 recognised that the typical visitor to the Brooks website would be looking for information such as opening times and the location of the shopping centre, so it was important that the website was designed in such a way that calls to action were easily accessible.
It was essential that the website tied in well with the rebrand; clean and simple. This was achievable by utilising the primary colours used in the logo and the careful selection of relevant stock photography.
Once the client had agreed a concept do1 set about building the website in XHTML and CSS to the latest W3C standards. One of the big problems with the clients original website was it was built using tables and inline CSS. This was a problem as search engines were unable to index their website properly subsequently making it difficult for the typical user to find the information on The Brooks Shopping Centre they were looking for. Now the website is ’search engine friendly’ it enables potential visitors to the shopping centre to get the information they need fast.
The end result produced a crisp and clean website that tied in well with the clients rebrand and draws new customers to their website and shopping centre.
Just a quick post to show the contrast of diets here at do1. Since Ed discovered that there’s a drive-thru McDonalds less than a mile down the road from our new office at 1000 Lakeside he’s visited it 4 times in 4 days (over the weekend he visited it 3 times within 24 hours). At this rate it will be a homage to Super Size Me.
Whilst Ed and Kris each tuck into their greasy McNuggets, large fries, large banana milkshake and quarter pounder cheese burgers, myself and Ben whip up a culinary delight in the kitchen consisting of pitta breads, salad and salami.
We are also well on the way to building the Great Wall of Relentless. This is the power station of do1 and has helped us through some long, late sessions in the office.
We’ve gone through some big changes in the past month. Along with launching our new website, we also moved offices to the new 1000 Lakeside building in North Harbour, Portsmouth.
This huge building was originally built in the 1970’s as part of IBM’s European headquarters and boasts over 600,000 square foot of office space, of which we inhabit a small portion of this.
Surrounded by an idyllic green belt filled with wildlife and a large fishing lake to the south, you often feel removed from the city environment which in turn creates a very relaxed working environment.
Upon entering the 1000 Lakeside building you are greeted with an impressive atrium, allegedly the largest of its kind in the South of England, which holds a reception, soon-to-be cafe bar, sitting areas for informal meetings and an array of large conference rooms. You instantly recognise the quality of the £14M refurbishment carried out here by developers Highcross, as each area of this building is finished to a high standard.
do1 is based in the Regus serviced offices area, located in the East wing of 1000 Lakeside. The whole place is quickly becoming a bustling business location with a variety of different businesses from Swedish Bank, Handelsbanken to Portsmouth’s leading digital design & development agency (that’s us!), with great opportunities to network and socialise.
Moving to 1000 Lakeside has really improved the atmosphere further here at do1, and will allows us to continue to grow as a business and a brand. If you fancy popping in and joining us for a tea or coffee, just give us a shout and we’d be happy to have a chat and show you around!
James gets all the attention. Today, he’s as happy as Larry because he has a Disney balloon, a collection of toys from Toys ‘R’ Us, a load of sweeties and a Spongebob cake.
I didn’t get anything cool like this on my birthday!
Earlier this year, Apple announced that it would open up the iPhone platform to third party developers so that other programmers could get in on the action and build their own applications.
This was pretty exciting news for us here at do1, given that we are all iPhone junkies! Our developers now have the tools and knowledge behind them to allow us to build iPhone applications for our clients.
If you’ve got a good idea for an iPhone application, or you’ve got an existing web application that you’d like ported across to the iPhone, why not get in touch and have a chat with us about we could do.
