We recently completed a project for Gabriel Scientific Consultancy to showcase their field service and scheduling software design services. Gabriel are experts in field service software design and have been in the business since 1987. With a strong and dedicated team you can guarantee that you will receive a personal service with a dedicated project manager to take care of you from start to finish. The software Gabriel develops enables businesses to increase sales and reduce admin costs by improving efficiency and customer service.

Here are some examples of some type of services that Gabriel offers:

Document Management Software – The document management software Gabriel produce enables staff to search a central document library using a PDA or iPhone, read documents and mark as ‘read’. The management system includes a report generation tool that allows you to see which member of staff has read which documents.

Timesheet Software – Gabriel’s timesheet software allows staff to log time spent on every job using a PDA or iPhone. They can log time spent travelling to a job as well as the time spent on a job against each individual customer.

A central management system collects all the data sent by each engineer on-the-fly and stores it against the customer details. This allows you to generate reports on each customer in your database listing time spent on a particular job or all time spent for that customer.

Job Tracking Software – Job tracking software can be used alongside the timesheet software as it allows staff to record job details next to individual jobs and timesheet entries. This allows data such as expenses, parts and signatures to be collected and stored in your central management system.

Scheduling Software – Gabriel’s scheduling software lets you bring up a list of jobs and assign a member of staff to that job along with a date and time stamp. The staff member can then use a PDA or iPhone to view their list of scheduled jobs. Once the staff member receives the job to their phone or PDA they can mark it as accepted and mark it again once it is complete.

The central management software can then be used to see which jobs are in progress and which have been completed.

Asset management Software – The asset management software allows you to track devices or products within your business. This is used alongside bar codes that allow you to label each product or device, so they can be scanned with a PDA and details of each device updated quickly. This information is then sent back to your management system to allow you to see which devices have been updated and what information is stored next to each one.

Head over to http://www.gabriel.co.uk to learn more about these services and the others they offer.

We’ve just finished a design for the iPhone Application Developers Website. The brief was to design a website that would showcase their development services with a look and feel based on the Apple site.

The guys at iPhone Application Developers build great applications for iPhone, PDA & Windows mobile. Their applications are designed to solve your business problems and generally make your life easier! They can take care of any custom app you might need; taking your initial idea, brain-storming potential ideas before presenting the best options to you. Once the idea has been solidified they’ll set about building the application, performing rigorous testing through to deployment and marketing the finished application.

What kind of applications can they develop?

• Messaging and reminder applications that help you stay in touch with your customers enabling you to schedule appointments, manage orders and log enquiries.
• Job tracking applications for mobile engineers and service staff featuring time sheets for logging time spent on jobs.
• Asset tracking, bar code reading and photo imaging software that enables your engineers to identify customer sites, equipment and parts.
• GPS employee tracking applications to manage engineers out on call, plot the best route for engineers to a particular job and provide reports on a load of different variables including mileage and time spent per job.
• Sales management & stock control applications that are designed to monitor the progress of sales staff. Really useful tools designed to work within these applications include sales management, order summaries, event logs, and stock checks.
• Management information applications that produce summarised reports of key financial data about your business for management and shareholders in a really intuitive format.
• Learning and training applications that provide an easy to use interface and enable students to learn quickly whilst being fun at the same time!

We’ve just finished a bit of spring cleaning for Alpha Digital. The website has been given a complete overhaul including a new design, category structure update and content management system.

Alpha Digital is based in Uxbridge, Middlesex and specialise in supplying new and used networking equipment throughout the whole of the UK. However, due to the introduction of The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE Directive) in January 2007 Alpha Digital opened up a new arm of the company to deal with the computer recycling demand from businesses around the UK.

Taking this into account the redesign focuses on the new services on offer including computer recycling and server maintenance and new products including Cisco switches, and Switch parts.

Take a look at the before (left) and after (right) screenshots below:

Have a look at the new website: http://www.alpha-digital.co.uk

As part of a campaign to generate more leads from their website Onlineworx has completed a redesign for Hubys Domestic Appliance Repairs. Take a look at the before (left) and after (right) screenshots below:

Hubys is a Domestic Appliance repair centre based in Hull, servicing the whole of Northwest UK. Specialising in washing machine repair, they employ qualified washing machine repair engineers and service all the major washer brands. They also cover cooker, fridge and dishwasher repairs and supply spare parts for all the appliances they service.

When Hubys approached Onlineworx the website appeared on page 14 of the search results for just one keyword and as you can imagine this rarely generated any solid leads. Three months later and the website is ranking for over 60 keywords; that’s 40+ page 1 Google rankings! This in-turn has meant an increase in leads generated by the website and Hubys now benefits from over 20 website enquiries per week.

Take a look at the new website: http://www.hubys.com

Onlineworx recently completed a redesign for the French wine tours website Vineyard Partners.

The Vineyard Partners website offers wine tours at award winning vineyards in the Languedoc region of Southern France. Holidays offer guests a guide through the wine making process, guided vineyard tours, wine tasting and local accommodation.

David Bailey owner of Vineyard Partners explains:

“Vineyard Partners offers a unique opportunity to increase your knowledge of the wine making process. We have created a range of exciting gift packages, tailored to suit every pocket, to take you on a voyage of adventure and discovery which we hope will appeal to all lovers of fine wines, from the debutant to the expert.”

The new design needed to showcase the different wine tour packages in a way that was immediately visible to customers. This was achieved by using large visual calls-to-action to grab attention, providing a scannable summary of packages directly on the home page.

Below are the before (left) and after (right) screenshots:

Vineyard Partners guides guests through the wine making adventure:  increasing their knowledge of wine and winemaking, taking a guided tour of the vineyards with an English speaking guide, following the story of the wine from the vine to the bottle, enjoying a 3-courseg lunch, taking part in a tutored wine tasting, purchasing wine at a discounted rate (cheaper than the locals in France can buy it!) and even creating their own individually crafted fine wine.

Take a look at the new website: http://www.vineyardpartners.com

Onlineworx design team has been working to a tight schedule with Nottingham based Telemarketing company Action For Business. Completing the site in just two days AFB Telemarketing is now live!

You can find the website at www.afb-telemarketing.co.uk

Last thursday we saw the announcement for Google’s browser Chrome being taken out of its “beta” testing stage. This came as quite a shock to the web community as there were a few problems along the way, however the Chrome development team must be happy with their bug fixes, and the slick new browser has left “beta” stage with almost 10 million users.

Although Chromes 1% marketshare is probably on a gradual rise, expect a surge following the eagerly expected releases for both linux and mac. This public release really shows the web world how confident Google are with their browser against market leaders Internet Explorer and the awesome Firefox.

I’m pretty sure Google have a team dedicated to thinking up spots to include Adsense, and to be honest it can get a little bit over the top. Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land spotted a sneaky way in which single ads were incorporated at the top of the Search Suggest feature.

Not only will they induce misclicks, which im sure we are all guilty of from time to time, but will send traffic that converts rather poorly. Of course, these ads can be relevant, but there are limits. Google did send Danny an image of ads they are also testing which appear at the bottom of the listing. I agree with Danny that these are less intrusive and will result in traffic that converts at a much higher percentage:

I am a fan however, of the inclusion of related news articles at the bottom of some search suggests. These, are not paid inclusions and does not play on the individual to be tricked into clicking. Instead you can learn a thing or two with relevant articles from some decent newspapers.

As the Google developmers are continually put under pressure to create new spaces for ad units, i can’t help but get the feeling that new Google features are just made for the purpose of future monetization. Some ads spaces i expect (banner and skyscrapers ads), but some are just annoying!

Forgot to buy milk? Got a client to get back in touch with?

You might remember us writing a post on some useful web design tools for designers. Its always useful to make a mental note of things to do, and we have been really impressed with the simplicity of Adobe Air application Minitask. Minitask is painfully simple to use, it lets you organise your day in an easy drag and drop way. Its only limiting factor being that it is a desktop only application.

So surprise, surprise, Google have released a nifty task application for Gmail. The addon in its simplest form allows you to create and store tasks, so bin the post-it notes, banish the crusty old notepad and keep your to-do list with you at all times. (internet connection permitting of course!) Is there anything these guys wont do!? Give it a week or so, and we’ll be sure to see something else.

According to BBC News, Britain is set for its busiest online shopping day of the year, with an estimated £320 million to be spent online today.

Despite being in the midst of a credit crunch, UK shoppers will be venturing online to buy a record number of items online in the run up to christmas, the IMRG (internet trade body) estimating the UK’s Christmas online retail sales could reach £13.6bn. This also coincides with a huge increase in christmas related search engine optimisation, as advertisers attempt to cash in on the frantic shopping months of november and december. Read the rest of this entry »