It’s Sunday, late morning, and I’m right in the middle of cleaning the bathroom. In the other room I hear a frustrated girlfriend struggling to find accommodation on - lets say - website X, for our trip to the Amalfi Coast. Complaints flying left, right and centre, vented
Read moreLast Tuesday I popped in to DoES Liverpool to see Matthew Hughes give a talk on how to pitch your product to the press. He’s a tech journalist at MakeUseOf — so he had some lessons to share from the other side of the table. In no real order: Be
Read moreIt’s nearly been a year since I joined Fruitful - a fintech startup that’s working to rethink how savers save and how borrowers borrow. Since then we’ve been through a significant product redesign, a complete branding overhaul, a successful soft-launch and a customer response that has more
Read moreLast month Sage approached me asking if I could write an article on marketing for their small business community. To narrow the context a bit, I concentrated on marketing websites. The outcome of which I'm really pleased with. The short post offers an insight into my past 5 years of
Read moreFirstly, think about what your pages do, not what they look like. Let your design flow from the services which they will provide to your users, rather than from some overarching idea of what you want pages to look like. Let form follow function, rather than trying to take a
Read moreJust received a wonderfully engaging / automated / interesting / human / polite / funny / direct / personal upgrade message (there’s an oxymoron there, I know) from the folk at TeuxDeux. This is how automated marketing should be: Dearest Tom, It’s been six months since the launch of the new TeuxDeux and we very
Read moreLearn more below or see the Demo → --- Most of last week I was rebuilding a website for a longstanding client. Performance (i.e.how fast the thing renders) is not only important to this client, it’s imperative. A good proportion of their customers live out in the
Read moreWhen we have a new product idea (and are lucky enough to have the skills and tools to execute on it), it’s often more than tempting to jump in with two feet and start building the thing. Before we know it, we’re pitching the hows before whys and
Read more
Had a wonderful time in the Algarve, Portugal. We hired a car for most of our stay and travelled right along the south coast. Check out the full Flickr Set › If you ever visit, make sure you check out Silves Castle. It was - by far - the most ethereal
Read moreBijan Sabet on Steve Jobs: His relationship with friends deteriorated for the most part. His relationship with family wasn’t great either. Obviously none of us know the real story but the book reflects conventional wisdom: Steve was focused on Apple and Steve. And in that order. The question which
Read moreWhen we hit the bottom of your web page, what do you want us to do? Where should we go next? What are other people saying about this service? Should we get in touch with your team or look at the tech specs for this ground-breaking new product? Too many
Read moreI spent most of Wednesday helping out at Liverpool's Cardinal Heenan School for an Enterprise Day. Apart from having great fun and a school dinner, I worked with the students on a proper roll your sleeves-up day of taking a product from idea through to pitching a concept. I think
Read moreA few months ago I was asked by Sage to be one of their business experts. Thinking that sounded a bit like something from The Office, I asked what the role would involve. The team explained that I'd be rolling my sleeves up and helping the business community by sharing
Read moreTogether with Matt Richards, I'm organising an event in Liverpool on June 20th 2013. With the hope of bringing together those working on tech products and ideas, Demo asks a simple question; what are you working on? Hosted at DoES Liverpool, the event will be made up of a maximum
Read moreIn 2005, author David Foster Wallace was asked to give the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. However, the resulting speech didn't become widely known until 3 years later, after his tragic death. It is, without a doubt, some of the best life advice we've ever
Read more