February 4, 2013

Residential Showroom of the Future

Posted by Virtual Viewing under 3D Animation, Augmented Reality, Residential | Tags: , , , , , , |
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Virtual Viewing have partnered with industry leading tech supplier, 3D Exposure, to create the ‘showroom of the future’. The interactive digital showroom can provide a multi-sensory experience for a potential house buyer, allowing them to get a tangible ‘feel’ for the new home they could purchase. The interactivities that Virtual Viewing and 3D Exposure can offer include, sharing via social media, interaction with smart phones, augmented reality and multi-sensory options including sight, smell and touch. Read more below;

Residential Showroom of the Future

 

April 8, 2011

Help with tasks, not tools

Posted by Virtual Viewing under content management, web development | Tags: , , , |
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Online systems – whether they manage websites or air-conditioning – are essentially software. While anyone working in IT will be familiar with the phrase “Read the manual”, many other people who’ve tried doing so have decided that was where their problem started. Or rather their second problem.

Traditional technical documentation has an unfortunate tendency to describe how to use software from the point of view of either the software or the people who wrote it. These aren’t usually people who need to add new sales brochures, announce special offers or the Christmas opening hours. They usually think in terms of database schemas or phrases like “enter an alphanumeric string of <80 characters; apply auto-truncation and disallow HTML tags”.

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April 1, 2011

Never mind the width, assess the quality: measuring website and email campaign performance

Posted by Virtual Viewing under e-mail marketing, e-marketing, web development | Tags: , , , , , |
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measurementsMonitoring online performance brings to mind two clichés: ‘never mind the quality, feel the width’ and ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’. As even the best statistics are measures of volume, the human tendency – to take the easiest path, by measuring what’s easiest to measure – is to monitor the width. Or in traffic terms, the volume.

That’s not wrong per se – you need to know which web pages are (and aren’t) being looked at, which email newsletters triggered the most clickthroughs – but it’s not the whole story. Like any kind of statistic, online traffic figures require interpretation.

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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 4, 2010

Pulling Together – using the web to support a charity fund-raising event

Posted by Virtual Viewing under e-mail marketing, e-marketing, hosting, web development | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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Virtual Viewing has always been proud of its long history of ‘giving something back to the community’: even the extensive list on our website can give only a flavour of the degree of our involvement.  We’re equally proud to say that some of our clients are equally committed to the life of their own cities, and to raising welcome funds for deserving charities. Indeed, we’ve been working closely with one such customers, Lumbers Jewellers of Leicester, to help them to raise awareness – as well as funds – for a forthcoming charity event that certainly represents an ‘oarsome’ challenge.

Dominic Gommersall, Lumbers MDStarting on 29 June, a team of rowers – including MD Dominic Gomersall (shown left) and Watch buyer Paul Bassett (shown right below), as well as prominent Leicestershire businessmen and sporting stars – will row from John O’Groats to Lands End. The title of their most recent press release gives you a hint as to the scale of their endeavour: 1097 miles, 12 oars, 6 rowers, 3 weeks. And 1 boat…

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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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April 26, 2010

Recent client website launches

Posted by Virtual Viewing under content management, e-marketing, hosting, web development | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |
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At Virtual Viewing, we work with companies and organisations of all sizes and in all sectors to develop websites that make the very most of the opportunities – and the budgets – that are available to each client.

We have worked with many of our clients over a number of years, building partnerships where we are able to combine our skills – not just in the technical aspects of development, but in using the in-built measurability of digital and online media to analyse online performance to offer recommendations that maximise the use of available resources – with our customers’ industry expertise to continuously refine and enhance their online presence.

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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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November 20, 2009

Need to know about web hosting, but don’t know what to ask?

Posted by SUE under hosting, search engine optimisation, web development | Tags: , , |
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Companies can spend a five figure sum on a website that can potentially achieve great things for them – and then take a £99 hosting deal somewhere, thinking it doesn’t really matter. Hosting may be comparatively cheap, but you really shouldn’t skimp!

There are some important issues – like downtime, backups, technical support and server options – that you must consider, and which are well documented in numerous articles across the Internet. But some factors are less obvious – and just as important for your company to consider.

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November 18, 2009

Cutting the right profile – using images on the web

Posted by OSCAR under content management, web development | Tags: , , , , , |
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No doubt you’ve been party to many a conversation about presentation and image too; probably so many than any sense of ‘party’ is hard to muster. The role of visual imagery in presentation is as undeniable as the abundance of clichés in modern life. Like everyone else, you’ll also have heard the expression ‘a picture paints a thousand words’. But have you remembered the following line of the song: “then why can’t I paint you?”

Not all clichés are truisms, of course: this article couldn’t be summed up in a single picture. So why, on the web, are there so many clichés – in terms of content and use – when it comes to including imagery? Why, instead of painting a thousand positive or informative words, do so many images say ‘we went to a photo library’, ‘we took these ourselves’, or ‘we might be good at we do, but it’s not photography’?

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