SEO for Babyzone.ie

Myself and Trevor have continued with the SEO project for Babyzone.ie and we've got some good results already. For many products, the site wasn't showing up in Google searches at all. However, with a little skillful manipulation of keywords, meta tags, alt tags, and content text, several of the products are now showing up in the top ten and top five in Google. Some are even at number one or two, such as the Baby Elegance Pebble travel system.

The key here is not to overload the page with keywords - over 3% or 4% will make the search engines suspicious! The key is really to create high quality content that people want to read, rather than horrible text littered with keywords. Making good heading tags is important as well, so that Google knows which text is the most important. Adding emphasis (eg <em> or <strong> tags) will also pinpoint the words that Google should be looking for.

Articulate Storyline - Museum App

I've spent the last few days working on an app to guide users around a museum. I've created fives scenes: Title page, Introduction (featuring a slideshow), About the museum, Our Collections, and Hotspot. The title page is designed around the live tiles of Windows 8, and the tiles grow and move.

 The rest of the app is based on a similar design, but I mixed up the positioning of the tiles to keep it fresh.

 I've made heavy use of hover functionality and animations to lose the element of 'texbookness' that often goes with e-learning resources. Transitions and animations also liven the slides up. I've copied the colour scheme from the museum's own site, and the images are not my own - I've simply used them for illustrative purposes and they will not be used in the final app.

Last week's webcast

The webcast on Friday went really well. We were in a new location so there were new setup issues to consider such as the source of the internet connection, availability of cables, etc etc, but Conor at the Radisson was really helpful and provided us with any extras we needed.

Using Telestream Desktop Presenter was much better to update the bids live than to simply input the information into Wirecast. We set up Presenter on two different computers (one that already had Wirecast, and a spare laptop). From Wirecast, I created a Presenter scene, and connected to the other machine via the network, where I had created an editable file with bidding information. I updated this file as the auction went on, thus not overloading Wirecast with information.

In the top right corner, the banner with the price is not actually part of Wirecast, but an external Google Docs presentation from another computer.

It was great experience to be able to manage the project myself, although I had great help from Andrew and Trevor. Andrew mostly took care of the camera. Overall it was a very interesting day and a useful experience.

Storyline

I've started working with Articulate Storyline again, and only now do I realise the full potential it has; previously I was working with it in quite a limited way. I've followed quite a few tutorials now and have created some really interesting content and functionality. I have to continue the work on the current project, but once I've made the progress I want to make I will post some screenshots :D

Here's a little taster of what I have so far - detailed post to follow.

 

Wireframing

I was tasked with creating wireframes for the backend of a site that Andrew and Aine are working on (for which I also did use cases, as documented here: http://emermurphyworkplacement.blogspot.ie/2013/09/use-cases.html ) 

The programming team needed a starting point to develop the user management system for the site administrators. There was also to be a screen for configuration and reports. I had no information about what kind of reports would be generated so I did not design this screen. The config screen did not need to be complicated - I simply designed it with a radio button to be clicked or not, depending on whether or not the site needed to be offline. I created user management screens, first showing the list of users and then providing options within the individual users.

I used Gliffy.com to create the wireframes. This is an online wireframing tool. It has a lot of options for shapes etc but isn't always user-friendly. Seaghan wanted to use an online wireframing tool but, having used the downloadable version of the Pencil Project, I find that better. It can be very difficult to find the perfect wireframing tool, however.