One of our long standing Agency clients recently asked us to provide some training for the Umbraco Editors at a mortgage industry client of theirs.  The site had been in existence for a few years, and wasn’t one we had been involved in the development of. We started the engagement with a quick phone call to discuss what the editors knew and where they felt that training would be beneficial.  They were interested in: How to manage tables in Umbraco without having to learn HTML; Creating new panels and front end components on their site; Uploading images to the media…

A couple of years ago I wrote about the great Yahoo Style Guide which I still feel is a real go to reference for the written word on the web.  Sadly the guide is no longer online and only available as a book. Quite why a guide to online writing is now only available as a book is beyond me.   But instead of titling at that windmill I thought I’d have a hunt for some alternatives, so here goes: BBC News Style Guide Guardian Style Guide Economist Style Guide Telegraph Style Book Wikipedia Manual of Style reads like it was…

Back in 1946 George Orwell wrote six simple rules for for writing, which I think still hold true today especially in technology writing. Never use a Metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do (see Short words). If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out (see Unnecessary words). Never use the Passive where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a Jargon word if you can think of an everyday…

Clever people have already written about SEO in Umbraco before, but it’s been a while and we wanted to plug a commercial Umbraco package that we use all the time. Last year we were approached by our now client Vistaplan. They were unhappy with the performance of their existing website. They just weren’t getting the orders through their site that they really wanted. We built a brand new responsive Umbraco website that incorporates both Tea Commerce and also Richard Soetman’s SEO Checker package, in order to increase the profile of the site in Google. We’ve had a site license for…

We were recently approached by one of our agency clients to convert their client’s existing Umbraco site to be 4-way multilingual (English, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese).  We’ve got plenty of experience of multilingual using Umbraco, so we worked with them to understand their requirements, and then chose the best approach from the many different options available to them.  In conjunction with their translation agency, we ensured a smooth transition from initial idea to finished site. The key factors in this implementation of multilingual Umbraco were that the client was starting with 4 languages but this may be added to…

On Wednesday 21 May we’re running a workshop in conjunction with the great guys at Zurb, the makers of Foundation. This all day workshop will be a practical opportunity for you to learn more about Responsive Web Development using the Foundation framework. In the morning the guys and girls from Zurb, the makers of Foundation will be running a session introducing Foundation, how it works and how it can be used. This will be followed by a short session from Orcare talking about how wev'e used Foundation over the last year, how it affects our workflow and some of the…

Recently one of our existing customers in the Education sector asked us to investigate options to to improve the integration of their customer systems.  Currently we manage the web applications that Tutors and Learners use to access learning resources, which we developed using Umbraco. Tutors also have access to an online customer portal developed by a different agency which enables them to register courses and learners.  While this is also a .NET based system it currently has little integration with the Umbraco site.  For example, users have two separate log-ins and passwords, and when logged into one application they…

Following last week’s look at what makes a good landing page, the next step is some hints and tips for building a killer page of your own. How do I build a landing page? Having established that a landing page is the right move to boost your conversion rate, we now need to consider what should be on that page – because get that wrong and you have wasted all of your work so far. Simplicity is key here. Bearing in mind that we have already stressed the need to guide the potential lead through the action you want them…

Have you got a website, but still have a nagging feeling you should be doing more to reel in people who search for or stumble across you online? The information below should help you wonder no longer, as Orcare’s friendly team explain just how you can make your website as appealing as possible and increase the number of leads and customers you get through it. I’ve got a website – isn’t that enough? A good website is crucial for any business, whatever product or service you offer, but having a striking site is not the be-all and end-all of web…

Swiss Style, also known as International Style, upholds the less is more maxim. Most Swiss Style craft work and artists are devoted to the minimal elements of style such as typography and content layout rather than textures and illustrations. The impact of these styles on the web is that they are naturally very user-friendly interfaces, as any message is conveyed clearly, with minimal artistic clutter around it. Key features of this style include uniform design and strong geometric shapes, as well as deliberate use of whitespace and grid systems. If you think your site could benefit from some Swiss…