October 13, 2010

Winners at the SocITM 2010 Local Government IT Excellence Awards

Posted by Virtual Viewing under 3d modelling, city models, web development | Tags: , , , , , , , |
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Virtual Viewing receive the Socitm Supplier Excellence Award 2010

© Socitim Press Office, 2010

We’re delighted to announce that our project in partnership with the London Borough of Redbridge, the Ilford Blueprint (visit the website or download a Case Study (PDF)), has won a Socitim 2010 Local Government IT Excellence Award for Supplier Excellence at the Socitim Annual Conference in Brighton. The competition highlights public sector IT projects that improve the efficiency and delivery of services within local communities.

The Ilford Blueprint Online – which already created a major splash at the Property Lynx conference – is a web-based marketing tool that incorporates 3D visualisation of development potential in the borough using Virtual Viewing’s Massive Scale Modelling technology. Socitm said the project team has combined web based commerce and gaming technology with planning policy and regeneration, to promote development opportunity sites identified in Ilford’s Area Action Plan.

Judith Carlson, project manager for regeneration at the London Borough of Redbridge, said the project represented a “cutting edge approach to promoting Ilford, the borough’s main town centre, with technologies widely used in the film and gaming industries that brings the council’s vision to life”. And she applauded Virtual Viewing as making the Ilford town centre area action plan “more accessible by developing a user-friendly interface for developers”.
[Image © Socitim Press Office, 2010]
 

September 22, 2010

yourpeoplemarket recruits the services of EMMA

Posted by Virtual Viewing under e-mail marketing, e-marketing, web development | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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yourpeoplemarket.comBased in Milton Keynes and founded by a team of recruitment experts, yourpeoplemarket.com is a new fixed fee online recruitment marketplace that connects employers and recruiters. Designed to take advantage of competitive market conditions, their online recruitment marketplace puts employers in control of the recruitment process, posting jobs at a fee they set, engaging with a recruitment community based on performance and complete transparency, and achieving significant cost savings.

As a company that has not only put marketplace transparency at the heart of recruitment – employers can, for example, rate recruiters on a range of criteria based on their own experience of using their services – www.yourpeoplemarket.com has brought a new approach to the online market whereby easy, quick data capture and the effective management of client communications is key to maintaining competitive advantage.

Yourpeoplemarket launch campaign emailIn light of this, yourpeoplemarket.com has adopted the services of Virtual Viewing’s EMMA (Email Marketing Assistant) email campaign and newsletter management system. Indeed, their use of EMMA has been both critical to the success of this young business and sophisticated in the use of some of EMMA’s more advanced features.

After initial consultation, during which we provided analysis and review of the initial yourpeoplemarket.com system build (focusing particularly on usability and functionality), we developed an HTML email newsletter template design that reinforced the website branding, and created an EMMA account.

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August 25, 2010

Make video part of your Online Marketing Strategy

Posted by Virtual Viewing under content management, e-commerce, e-marketing, search engine optimisation, Uncategorized, web development | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Video is making a real difference to our online viewing experience, and many companies are now exploring the best way to incorporate video into their online presence. Online viewing is growing dramatically, providing significant and unique opportunities to grow brand awareness, convey company missions, values and ethos, promote both products and services, drive web traffic and uplift sales in B2B and B2C marketing – an opportunity that Virtual Viewing, working in partnership with A2S Works, can help you to realise.

They say a picture paints a thousand words: moving pictures say even more. The following video illustrates just some of the points we make in this article (as well as introducing us):

So where do you start? – read on to find out more.

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August 16, 2010

From crowdsourcing to consultation – the web provides new opportunities to engage with a wider audience

Posted by Virtual Viewing under e-mail marketing, e-marketing, search engine optimisation, web development | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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From the outset, the world wide web was designed to be a medium for collaboration and interaction: indeed, one of the main triggers for its initial development was to allow scientists to share their information and research with each other online.  This line of thinking has been traced back to a historically significant essay, As We May Think, written in 1945 by Dr Vannevar Bush, the US Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (a copy of this essay is still available online). Having directed the American scientific community to support the wartime effort, he was concerned with the peacetime application of technology to more constructive means: his ideas included a (hypothetical) model for a ‘collective memory machine’. The video clip below shows an animation – itself made in 1995 – that shows how his machine, the ‘memex’, might have looked and worked: it’s hardly as coolly iconic as an iPad, but modern technology has still barely scratched the surface of some of the ideas his essay contained.

We usually accept that widespread take-up and adoption of different technologies can be unpredictable (we’re still using fax machines, for example, but the idea of micro-payments has been explored for at least 20 years with little sign of mass take-up), but the speed – or lack of it – with which we adopt them can still be surprising. Sci-fi writer William Gibson once memorably observed that “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed”, and a look at the invention dates of many everyday items does prove his point (sms messages, 1992; digital camera, 1975; GPS, 1978; credit card, 1950; mobile phone, 1947; microwave oven, 1946; robots, 1921; radio, 1895; battery, 1800).

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June 2, 2010

Hold the Front Page: making a first impression

Posted by Virtual Viewing under content management, e-commerce, e-mail marketing, e-marketing, search engine optimisation, web development | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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If you follow the media’s coverage of the media itself, you’ll be aware of plans for some daily newspapers – currently available to read pretty much in their entirety free of charge online – to put their content behind ‘paywalls’. There are complex business reasons at play: newspapers are struggling financially as more of us get our news from the web. Google and other search engines make it easy to browse not just the country’s but the world’s newspapers in an instant. Indeed, people use Google – making Google profitable – to access newspapers online, who make nothing from the transaction. Old business models are being outstripped not just by technology, but by the way we use it.

But listening to James Hewitt, editor of The Times, being interviewed on The Today Programme recently, he raised a point that is hugely relevant to all websites – whether or not they charge for access beyond their first page. That first page – usually your Home Page – is not just a gateway: it’s also a lure to tempt people to explore further, and an advertisement for what they will find inside. Hewitt drew the comparison of a newsstand: customers see only the front page – and usually just the top half of it. That view must tempt them to buy the paper, confident about its content.

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March 12, 2010

Want to stand out? Best foot forward …

Posted by Virtual Viewing under content management, e-commerce, web development | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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If your business operates in a crowded and competitive marketplace, how can you make sure your website really stands out from the crowd and serves you best?

The shortest answer to this question is probably “think it through”. Although we now accept the idea of the web being an interactive environment, too many businesses still treat it as a ‘broadcast’ medium – “here’s our online brochure, please admire it”. But there are simple pieces of sound advice that might help you to kick-start your thinking:

  • analyse the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors’ sites to – are they clearly laid out or cluttered, easy or hard to navigate and use, what features and functionality do they have (and learn from this)
  • focus on what your audience want/need to know about as much as what you feel you have to tell them: to engage them, it is your audience you need to address – you are not your own customer (and remember, they control they mouse)
  • play to your strengths – your web site is your ‘shop window’, and you need to present yourself in the best light.

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