April 13th, 2010
Posted by Ian
I booked a stand at the Brighton and Hove Business Show one week before the exhibition. A week in which I was flat out with client work during the day. So, I spent 24 hours over that week getting my act together. Here’s what happened…
May 14th, 2009
Posted by Ian
An e-commerce site selling collector’s reggae music. You can listen to tracks before you buy, watch videos of your favourite artists and learn more about reggae music in regularly updated features. With over 1,500 items in stock, it’s a veritable aural feast!
Reggae unlimited is the place to find and buy rare vinyl imported from Jamaica. It is owned and run by one of the UK’s best known and respected men in reggae music &ndash Gladdy Wax aka Mr Vinyl Fingers. He has over thirty years in the industry as a recording artist, producer and is also the owner of the infamous Gladdy Wax Sound System – a cornerstone of the Notting Hill Carnival every year.
The proof’s in the pudding – we’re selling music throughout the world and our customers keep coming back for more. They worked really hard to make it all happen.
72 dots have been working with Gladdy and crew since 2000, having built a previous website for his destination record shop Wax Unlimited which was based in Stoke Newington, London.
The website is not just about selling music, it’s also about building a reggae community and a place where you can find out more about the music and people involved in making it. The site features regularly updated news, events and in-depth features. There’s a healthy bunch of newsletter subscribers and the shop sells right round the world. The reggae community is a truly a global niché – the shop regularly ships to Japan, Scandinavia, Italy, New Zealand, Brazil and France.
In 2006, we digitised the music catalogue to enable us to launch the e-commerce site – about 5,000 items. Working with Gladdy, we decided upon a new name for the site which would build upon the already established reputation and also make it clearer what the website was all about – Reggae Unlimited does what it says on the tin!
When designing the new site, we wanted to differentiate the site from the competition and give the site a strong non-derivative look and feel. We wanted to convey the vivacity and dynamism of the music culture, but strayed away from the ubiquitous colours of Rastafarianism – red, gold and green. As much as we admire the highly crafted found-object styling by Intro for Blood and Fire records, we wanted to give the site a more clean and professional look – it’s also a look that’s difficult to translate into an on-going online environment as it’s so design-intensive.
We don’t belive in re-inventing the wheel, so we built the site using Cubecart, a robust standards-compliant e-commerce application which is reasonably easy to extend and customise.
We extended the functionality of the software to allow us to add features, news items and crucially for a music shop, a simple mechanism to play sound clips. We also hooked up videos pulled in from Youtube to add further richness to the site. Similar mash-ups are in development with Flickr where we’ll allow the reggae community to be included at a deeper level.
Working on Reggae Unlimited and witnessing its popularity grow over the years has been a joy – things can only get better
May 14th, 2009
Posted by Ian
You may recognise Richard Shelton as Emmerdale’s evil Dr Adam Forsythe, but there is a great deal more to this versatile performer:”I’m an actor who sings, a singer who acts…’aint nothing like the thrill of a big-band but I love the challenge of acting too!”
Like many performers, Richard had a website, but it wasn’t doing him justice. It had nothing about his speaking appearances, business workshops or fundraising activities.
The site styled Richard as a old-school jazz crooner, and he wanted the site to show that he’d moved on.
“He didn’t want to leave that entirely behind,” said Ian Hallworth, Creative Director of 72 dots. “But he was feeling pigeonholed, and wanted to present a broader, fresher profile. For us that meant both richer content and an update to his visual brand.”
Some clients are frustratingly unclear about why they want a website, but not Richard:
“Awareness and bookings! Everyone expects immediate access to information and being a performer is no different from any other business — you have to be able to show people what you offer as quickly and professionally as possible. A great site gives you the edge over the rest.”
This was very reassuring to us. “Websites for individuals can become vanity projects,” said Ian. “This can make the design process difficult. With Richard, we knew that he wanted to showcase his talents and reach new clients, and that set us a very clear brief.”
The heart of a website is its content, and that’s where we always begin. So we asked Richard to gather photographs, testimonials, and any new information he wanted on the site. From this we created a navigation and site structure which showcased his talents to potential clients.
The branding brief was to update Richard’s look – “make it more modern” – without losing the cool, sophisticated feel. Ian started the brand revision by keeping the basic colours and exploring new typography.
The page layout took a more radical shift, focusing above the fold on on three elements: calls to action (‘Book Richard’), the star’s talents (‘Acting’, ‘Singing’ etc), and the performer’s showreel.
For Ian, the showreel was key: “Performers sell themselves with their showreel, and we wanted it front and centre on the site.” With Richard convinced, 72 dots brought in partners GraphicMotion to re-edit a range of showreels both for the website and for DVD.
It was time to Richard to review the design. “We were prepared for several rounds of design,” said Ian, “but he liked it straight away.”
While the design was being coded, 72 dots was gathering assets and filling in gaps. “We wrote a fair bit of the content ourselves,” Ian said. “It’s something we’re used to, and we have plenty of experience in that area.”
Richard was very focused on his look, choosing photos carefully and supervising the production of the reel. These photos were being uploaded into the site’s content management system, which would allow Richard to edit and change the site at his convenience.
This flexibility means that Richard can update the site with news of his tours and events day by day. This gives several benefits, as Ian pointed out: “It’s not just about keeping fans updated – keeping a site fresh with content means that people keep visiting it and keep linking to it, which keeps you high on search engine results.”
With the showreels completed, the site went live. What was Richard’s reaction?
“I love it! It’s fresh and modern and the streaming video allows my showreels to showcase both my acting and singing work.”
And what about the reaction from those all-important potential clients?
“Very positive. I’m returning to the UK after a period away and am hoping for some big bookings!”
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