It’s Boom Time

You’ve worked out that mobile usage has gone up quicker than Australian house prices right?   Here’s a graph we found, but a quick Google Search will provide further evidence.

The Basics – Apps vs Mobile Sites

We don’t need to explain what an app is surely.  What you probably don’t know is the costs to produce one, getting it into the 3 or 4 different stores, producing updates, and of course being found.  We feel time is better spent optimising a mobile site, and relying on the fact that most people will probably find you on google search, not searching the iTunes app store.  Besides is it really worth spending a few thousand dollars, just to tell people your opening hours, contact details, next gig, and a bio?

Put simply, a mobile site is optimised to be viewed on a small screen. Most websites have a style sheet, which dictates the size, colour, font, and layout of your site.  With some nifty little code we can serve up a different style sheet for mobile phones.  Unfortunately we think it’s not that simple, hence we’re opposed to the plugin that does the quick visual fix, and instead believe you should design a site with a mobile user in mind.

Mobile Style Sheet Or Mobile Site

Having explained above, we feel quite strongly that it’s better to provide a custom experience for a mobile user.  The following two reasons should be enough to convince you:

1. Mobile phones typically access 3G data, and resultantly they render slower than a computer on broadband or wifi.  This means the full size images you loaded into your gallery aren’t going to load quickly on the phone, and no amount of style sheet tweaking is going to alleviate this. Once 4g comes out, then perhaps we rule this out, however the clincher is below.
2. Have you ever gone to ikea and got jacked off that you have to walk through everything just to get a rug.  What about your mobile users?  Do they just want to get in and get out.  If your a dentist, doctor, physio, restaurant, it’s highly likely that a mobile phone user is simply chasing your phone number, opening hours, and address.  If your a muso maybe they just want to know where they can get your music from, when your next gig is, maybe read some of your blog/news and perhaps find out what social networks they can connect with you on.

We think the above two reasons are enough to consider serving up completely different pages for mobile phone users that use an optimised style sheet.  Good news is WordPress makes posting content so simple, you can easily update the content yourself and utilise drag and drop menu systems.

How do Mobile Sites work?

Basically you can stick some nifty little code in the header of your page, which acts like a traffic controller.  If a mobile user arrives at the website, the code will redirect them to a new landing page.   Try it out.   Have a look at http://www.worldsfestival.com.au or www.laserhair.com.au and then try opening it on your phone.  If your a muso maybe try www.daveandersononline.com on your computer and then on your phone.

Saving a Mobile Site to your Home Screen

Most people aren’t aware that you can actually save a mobile site to your home screen, so in the future it sits there next to the all the cool kids (other apps).  I guess it like getting into a prestigious university and only paying 5% of the tuition.  Anyway to save a mobile site, or any site for that matter to your home screen, for iphone users, just click the arrow at the bottom of safari, and you’ll see a save to home screen option.  If the site is designed correctly it will have an icon already loaded.

Try http://www.worldsfestival.com.au and save it to your home screen.

How Much

We are currently developing mobile optimised landing pages for clients for $95, which includes all that we discussed above.  Get in touch with us and let us know if you are keen to launch one.

Footnote:  Yes our mobile site is not deployed yet!  Unfortunately in are endless pursuit to put our customers first, we’ve been entrenched developing solutions for them.  Needless to say we’ll be on board as soon as we catch our breath!  Practice what you preach…I hear you.

Further reading:

• http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2011/08/12/mobile-sites-vs-mobile-apps-how-html5-changes-the-math/
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcavazza/2011/09/27/mobile-web-app-vs-native-app-its-complicated/
• http://mashable.com/2011/02/24/mobile-app-dev-cost/

I have to commend him not just on his creativity but also his patience as a teacher.  He has helped me navigate my way around the site so that I’m now confident about adding and changing content on my own.  I’m telling all my colleagues and friends to use Florence Road.

www.mediafriendly.com.au

We build websites using a WordPress Content Management System, arguably the world’s best and easiest CMS, and then we teach you to update it.

You don’t just get a website. You learn a new skill.

Wordpress
It’s the #1 Content Management System, running more websites than any other. It’s free, it’s powerful, it’s flexible, and we love every single little line of code.

Design and Branding
Our eyes are on the web all day every day, and with 10+ years experience, we’ve got a good eye for design. Bring your own, or we’ll get the paint brushes out.

Social Ready
You website should be the hub that feeds the social networks. We sync up your various social profiles, and offer automated posting and feeding.

Hosting and Domains
We don’t own giant server racks, but we do know how it all works. You can bring your own hosting and domain, or we’ll sort if for you for a very small admin fee.

Training
We teach people how to run their website which minimises agency and designer fee’s. We also provide self help video’s so you can keep on keeping on.

Support
We publish self help video’s and best practice articles, but if that’s not enough we’re always an email or phone call away.
Our clients rave about it.

Prices for our services vary depending on what you require.

We can bend as low as a few hundred, we can work by an hourly rate or we can agree on a project fee. Let’s talk about what you need.

 Contact

Your a muso not a marketer, and yet your spending countless hours trying to figure out:

- how to buy a domain name, hosting and set up a website
- What your website should look like?
- What social sites you should be on?
- What email newsletter software to use?
- What music e-tailer should you sell from?

This 19 page ebook will take you through almost everything saving you the time to focus on your music.

iTunes doesn’t deal with independent musicians, and with 70% of the digital market, musicians can’t afford not to have their music on iTunes. This eBook covers the top 5 digital distributors, specifically focusing on the big two Tune Core and CD Baby, helping you understand which digital distributor is right for you.

Actual figures are presented, including royalties paid to you and annual service fee’s.

“Fantastic overview…saved me hours of research” Kent Eastwood, Independent Singer/songwriter”

Set sail for Port Fairy because we’ve just launched the website and rumour is the early bird tickets are already gone!

Working with the lovely Claire Foxton who put together some seriously cool artwork, we produced the site in a few weeks with some pretty funky features.

Head on over and gives us a like.

Georgi is going to be a superstar.  Such a unique voice, and yet so young.

You might have heard her backing a Foxtel promo, but I’m sure you’re going to hear a bit more. We just did a mini make over on her website. Taking the initial white background, and making it black. Curved some edges, put in some shiny new buttons, and she’s look a little hot to trot.

Check it out. What do you think?

I was met with a dilemma yesterday as I tried to get a video that I had just shot up to my self hosted WordPress website.

The WordPress iPhone app which is great for making quick posts, and uploading a couple of pictures, has a video upload feature built in, however when I tried to upload my video, I got major compatibility issue when trying to watch it via my laptop.

First I tried Internet Explorer, which didn’t work.  Then I tried Firefox, and all I got was a big grey box with a sad face.

Having done some research it turns out that neither of these browsers are compatible with the format that the video is being coded with.  Not really an adequate solution considering the majority of folks use these two browsers. I tried installing a plugin, which was supposed to resolve the problem, however this didn’t work.

It’s fairly important to remember that the video is being uploaded in it’s raw format, which means the more videos I upload, the more storage I’ll need.

I then figured maybe it’s better if I upload the video into Youtube first?

You would think you go to the Youtube app to upload video’s to Youtube right?  Wrong.

So here is how to do it.

1.  Open your photo/video library, and click on the arrow in the bottom left corner.

2. Click on Send to Youtube.

3. Sign into your Youtube account, if you haven’t already, and enter your video details.  They’ll make you enter in all fields.

4. When your done click publish.  Don’t be surprised to the see the following once it asks you to view it online.

5. Now if you have Auto Tube Video Plugin installed, which most of my clients do, then it will automatically publish the video from Youtube into WordPress.

It’s simply a matter for waiting for it to come through, usually takes an hour.

6. Last but not least, if you have Word Social installed then it will automatically publish it to Facebook.  So don’t forget to give it a decent title.

Hopefully you find that useful.

Credit: AskDaveTaylor for the images in this post