Web design blog by Caged Fish

All the team at Caged Fish would love to congratulate Mark and Kel on the birth of their new baby boy, Logan Quin. Born today in Leicester Royal Hospital. Good to see another Taurean enter the world.

Caged Fish Directors Steve Hawkins and Garry Aston were guest of Mannix Security at the Leicester Tigers Players awards dinner.

The Caged Fish boys had the pleasure of spending the evening with Tigers prop Dan Cole, who also won “Young player of the year” well done Dan.

The Tiger Players, player award was won by scrum half Ben Youngs (what a season he’s having)

Do you have an existing Actinic Store?
Are you looking to upgrade to the newest version of actinic, Actinic v10?

If so give Caged Fish a call on 01858 469988.

Caged Fish will take your existing Actinic Store and upgrade it to the current version, Actinic version 10 implementing all of the new features such as Realtime Stock, Recently Viewed Items, The Streamlined Checkout and Customer Feedback.

Also worth noting is the speed of Actinic is quicker. On a Test Site (80Mb) approx 300 products, Caged Fish found that Actinic 10 was 1/3rd faster to do a full refresh  than Actinic 9. (10 minutes as opposed to 15 minutes). Also the time to Snapshot was quicker.

If you are interested in upgrading, or even having an ecommerce site built within Actinic v10 then give Caged Fish a call on 01858 469988 or email us at steve@cagedfish.co.uk

Actinic 10 was released today, and with it comes 4 distinct new features over the last version. 

1. Realtime Stock Control
2. Recently Viewed Items
3. A Streamlined Checkout Procedure
4. Customer Feedback

1: Realtime Stock Control 

With Realtime Stock Control, the stock figures you set will decrease online when some one buys a product from you, and will instantly hide a product when its stock hits 0. 

In previous Actinic’s Stock Control was handled on the download and upload of the site, therefore you could be out of stock of a product but the website would not know that. 

If you work with Actinic and especially deal with stock, 10 is for you. 

2: Recently Viewed Items

Hot off the heals of the Also Bought Items, Best Selling Items and Related Items (introduced in Actinic ,  Now comes Recently Viewed Items. 

Anyone who has visited Amazon, Play, most modern eccomerce sites will be familiar with a box that lists the items you just looked at. It is a quick and easy way to navigate back to products you have previosly looked at. 

Also a welcome addition to Actinic. 

3: The Streamlined Checkout

Actinic’s checkout procedure prior to Actinic 10 involved a slightly confusing checkout which required you to place your shipping details on multiple pages, for example the first step would be to choose your country then on the next page place your address details. 

The Streamlined Checkout in Actinic 10 has reduced actincs side of the checkout procedure to 4 distinct steps 

The 4 checkout are : Address, Shipping and Tax, Confirmation and Tax ,Reciept and Email 

With the Streamlined Checkout, Customers should be able to order easier from your site and not get confused within the checkout process. 

4: Customer Feedback

Actinic 10 has built in compatablility with FeeFo. Feefo is a online site that gathers feedback from your customers. 

According to feefo, their system is similar to the Feedback system as seen at online sites such as Ebay. 

The Feefo system however is not free. See FeeFo for more details.

We will be developing new Actinic sites within Actinic 10 and if you are an existing Actinic User we can also upgrade your site to the latest version. 

Call Caged Fish on 01858 469988 to discuss Actinic with us.

Caged Fish web design Market Harborough are pleased to welcom their new member of staff. Thay are joined by Jamie Grove in the roll of Web developer

Caged Fish have had 2 new recent additions to their biorb, this brings the number of fishes to 5.

Caged Fish have finished the move into our new web design studio on St Mary’s Road, Market Harborough. The light and friendly atmosphere from the old studio has been enhanced by a first floor, barn conversion location.

Our new server room and meeting room will add to the space available and give the opportunity for workshops on blogging and content managing your website (more news to follow).

If you ever wish to come and have a chat about your web design projects or internet marketing, give us a call, make an appoitment and come and have a nosey at our new studio.

We found a fantastic Blog this week with the following post, this was so relevant we though we’d share it here, original post can be found @ http://www.attackr.com/

10. You Hired Your NephewSo he is an electronic wiz. He plays video games, accumulates 2,000 texts on his phone a month, knows how to use the remote for your entertainment system plus took a website class in high school. You’ve heard that he has created a website or two and see an opportunity to save a few bucks. Sure, you can hire him for dirt cheap, but that’s about what you’ll end up with for your website. A few hundred dollars later, you find that the website he created has done more damage than good. You find yourself taking your URL off your business cards, stationary and email signatures. Worst of all you’re missing out on potential customers and profits.

9. You Hired out Your Web Design and Development to a Near-Third-World-CountryHiring outside of the country is often difficult and disappointing.  If you caved into the idea of hiring a professional for less outside of the country you’ve probably found like many of my colleagues and myself included that the hassle and work you received isn’t even worth it being done for free. Save yourself the stress, and hire a competent firm close to home.

8. You Used Hosting Software to Easily Build Your Own Website.How hard can building a website be? The honest answer, not very hard at all. HTML is one of the easiest things to learn.  You can find tutorials or a class that can get you started in building a website within hours. Templates make it even easier. Just about anyone can create a website, but being able to build a website that brings success takes a lot of experience and a lot of talent.  If you’ve decided to try it out as a hobby, go for it, I personally find very few things more enjoyable than crafting new designs and programming new systems.  But if you want a website that gets results, turn it over to the professionals.

7. Your Web Design SucksIf you don’t take your business seriously, how can you expect your clients to do the same. Your visitors are looking for the latest and greatest products or services. In short, get with it, or fail.

6. You Have an Intro PageEven if you think your splash page looks “cool”, you’re providing little to no benefit to your visitors. Our studies have shown that websites with Intro or Splash Pages lose a multiple of visitors compared to if they didn’t have Splash Page.

5. Your Website contains little to no content.Usually in this case you have a website because you were told you needed a website. Not only is this tactic looked down upon by your users, but  search engines as well. Create something of value for your visitors, design a strategy to get them to build your revenue. A one page site says, “I only did this because I had to.” If you only have one page, your site is a failure.

4. Your Site Has No AppealKeep things fun, keep things light and above all keep things interesting. It is interest that brought your visitor to your site in the first place and it will be interest that will keep your visitor from leaving.  If everything about your website is boring, you’ll never convince them to stay long enough to take a chance on you.

3. Your Budget Only Included Web Design and Development.It doesn’t matter how influential, beautiful or amazing your web design or development are if you have no way of getting people to your website.  When budgeting out your website, make sure to appropriate sufficient funds to attract an audience to it. It is suggested that you budget enough to build your website, and hire an Internet Marketer to get targeted traffic to your site. You need both to succeed.

2. Your Website is Too GenericA good looking website and a well branded website are two very different things. A good looking website might impress your audience but a well branded website will influence your audience to a profitable action. If you’re running a business, the latter is the smarter choice. Every aspect of your website should be communicating the same message, from your design, to your logo, to font, text and style.  Keeping these aspects of your website consistent will create a stronger and more influential  brand.

1. Your Site is Not Based On Achieving Your Website Objectives.If you didn’t plan out the primary and secondary objectives of your website, then your website is probably spinning your visitors in circles.  Give your website an objective, and every aspect of it should be accomplishing it.  If you’re trying to sell a product make it appealing and easy for them to do so, if you want them to call you on the phone do the same.  Too often a website is about a company and loses its potential influence it can have to make your company more money. If you aren’t getting what you need from your visitors, your website has failed.

Caged Fish would like to congratulate friend and client, former Leicester Tigers player, Steve Redfern for winning his place in the Tigers Walk of Legends. Steve, a member of the famous triple John Player Cup-winning side, won 46 per cent of the vote.

Steve’s site www.majorcabeachrugby.co.uk runs a beach rugby tournament in Majorca on 2nd & 3rd of May and is in it’s 2nd successful year.

The new Caged Fish Website is finally online. The re-design still contains everything the previous site had (and more).  This includes the bubble bobble game which we have hidden within every page of the site. See if you can find it.