Optimal October

Matt

There has been lots of interesting and exciting website design and development this October. One of the larger projects I’ve been working on involves a website and training application for the new world of drone flight training. Not quite the glamour of the Drone Racing League, but a very important service for anyone wanting to fly drones commercially, as they must now be certified.

The Website

The first part of the project is more straightforward, a modern and engaging website. The website needed to give key information for anyone researching commercial drone certification, with the main focus of steering people who are ready to start their training towards signing up for the online training. Once launched we will be running online advertising which will deliver traffic straight to the certification landing page, so there was a lot of time spent making sure this landing page was optimised, ready to convert the traffic into conversions, through course sign ups.

The Training Application

Once the website has performed its magic and customers have registered for their free module, they are given access to the training application. One of the great features of this training course is the convenience of accessing the theory training and tests online, so customers only need to travel for their practical assessment. To achieve this we are building a custom training application designed specifically for this project. The application needs to be really easy to use, breaking the theory course content down into manageable chunks, and giving student feedback on their progress.

Wayne

The clocks have gone back, it’s dark at night and it’s frickin’ freezing!

But this kind of year brings some really nice days when the sun is out. It’s crisp and refreshing, which is good for the creative projects we have on the horizon as businesses are back in full swing now that the summer holidays are a distant memory.

During October I spent a lot of time with Matt & Simon updating the front-end framework which we use to build our websites. Using our own framework ensures our websites load quickly. It has many advantages over popular alternatives such as Bootstrap, for example being a fraction of the size, having full control over each element and having it tailored to our design and coding style.

Some notable updates include improved design elements, a new ‘slider’, better compression, updated media queries (the responsive elements which make the website adjust to different device widths), an improved navigation menu and reduced server requests. The time we have invested in Grilla 2.0 so far has reduced the time it takes us to build a website and we are already seeing much improved page load speeds compared to the initial version of Grilla which we rolled out in February 2018, which itself was already much faster than Bootstrap.

In October I have been helping Matt with a number of websites which we have been working through as the workload picks up heading towards the end of the year. I got to work on a web project from start to finish – it’s been a while since I’ve had that opportunity – and you can see the result below. Xceed Fitness is run by our good friend James who himself is a Personal Trainer and runs a number of fitness classes in the local area. As well as a new website we have also developed an online booking system which allows their clients to register online and book on to Xceed Fitness classes. This has helped Xceed become a cashless business, reducing the admin time and avoiding any “can I transfer it you later on” scenarios! Xceed Fitness now have a full working database of class attendance and member details making it easier to manage turnout and figures.

Adnan

This month has gone by quickly. First 2 weeks of the month I made changes to all of our accounts and set them up for the month with only minor updates needed throughout the month. This was done as I was away for 2 weeks of the month…

Since my targets are specific for each account, I am actively making changes to hit these targets. For e.g. it’s not just Lead Generation, it’s specific types of leads such as X amount of calls X amount of forms. Learn how to Measure The Success Of Your Website With Analytics here.

Certain accounts hit the target for leads however may not hit the target when looking into the type of lead. So monthly site changes, ad changes, keyword changes are the the kind of things I will be looking at.

Looking forward to hitting these targets in November…