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DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY LABS

#002 Dec 2017

DTL Newsletter Newsletter from

Digital Technology Labs

Number 2

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1. Introduction (page 3)

2. Web design tips from a pro web developer (page 4)

3. Open for business… again / still! (page 5).

4. Gallery (page 7)

5. Who we are (page 8)

Contents.

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Digital Technology Labs is excited by the opportunity to bring you our second newsletter, and merry Christmas

2017 too!

You’ll find a selection of our favourite blog posts from our Labs over the last year or so - and we’d love to

hear your feedback. Don’t forget to leave your comments or share on your favourite social media

channel!

Signing off for the year, and have an amazing 2018, do let us at Digital Technology Labs know if theres anything else we

can do for you?

1. Introduction

Kevin Gordon

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2. Web Design tips from a pro web developer

A quick synopsis of my web design process

A quick synopsis of my process is to the the UX design, or wireframes in Balsamiq, and get the structure, navigation and content agreed with the content. Then I move on to the graphics, fonts and colour scheme, for which I use Sketch. I will either build the site from scratch – if the client wants a static site, or I will build it in WordPress if the client wants a content management system, and/or blogging tool. Alternatively for eCommerce, I will tend to build on the Shopify platform.

For building from scratch, I usually base the build on Foundation (see

What follows are my top 10 web design tips from me (a professional web developer – amongst other things). social media publishing and digital marketing. With detailed requirements these estimates would be refined.

below), and for building the site in WordPress I will use Elegant Themes Divi theme, which is a great way of constructing a responsive site in WordPress, that is very close to the original UI design in Sketch.

Top 10 web design tips

Here is a summary of the above web design tips and some others too:

1) UX design – For UX design I use Balsamiq – https://goo.gl/rW7t12 ($89) #webdesign #tips

2) UI design – UI design gets fabulous using Sketch – https://goo.gl/2ziRQX (£100) #webdesign #tips

3) For generating logos & graphics – So for generating logos and graphics, I use a variety of tools including Canva – https://goo.gl/2Uzwi8 ($free) or Gimp ($free) #webdesign #tips

4) For rendering on devices – Magic Mockups can be used for rendering websites and apps in

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situ in beautiful looking scenes – https://goo.gl/NQF4NZ ($free) #webdesign #tips

5) For building from scratch – I use Foundation when building a static website from scratch – https://goo.gl/o1n9m ($free) #webdesign #tips

6) Fonts – And for fonts I tend to use google fonts; they’re awesome, free and easy to use – https://goo.gl/DtwDcM ($free) #webdesign #tips

7) Icons – For iconography, I use awesome font, it’s fabulous – https://goo.gl/qsHA5t ($free) #webdesign #tips

8) For building with a content management system (CMS) – For this I use WordPress for my content management system, and with WordPress installs, I use Elegant Themes Divi – THE best way to build sites! – https://goo.gl/xo7Pv8 ($89 / year) #webdesign #tips

9) eCommerce – To build a full eComm site from scratch, I recommend Shopify, for integrating payments to existing site I use Worldpay #webdesign #tips

10) Photography and Imagery – And for all my photography & imagery I use unsplash; best photography

website ever! – https://goo.gl/B8J7I5 ($free) #webdesign #tips

Please share – and it would be lovely to hear others feedback about these tools.

3. Open for business… again / still!Back in 2016 I started a boutique web design agency, well this boutique web design agency; Digital Technology Labs. I did in fact transition to full time from a fabulous full time job at a large UK-based Fintech company in the city of London. What follows in this blog, I hope is a combination of the motivation that led me to quit, how it went, what I’m doing now and some lessons learned from the entire experience – I feel I have become a much fuller and well-rounded person from the experience.

The pre-ample

I confess that I have had the longing to have my own business, or start my own business for years. And it all came to a head at a technology conference in March 2016 – where I realised I couldn’t keep putting myself through the idea of starting a business, I had to JFDI – and make it happen. So my resolution was to quit immediately on returning to the UK.

On returning to the UK, and sharing my plans with some close friends, I came to the realisation I should put my finances in order, to give myself enough coverage to not be making

money for a while if I quit – so on that respect I remained in full time employment for a few more months! However, on not reaching my target ! I decided to take a risk and proceed anyway!

How it went

It was amazingly successful on many levels – however not really on a financial one, through the whole experience I failed to make much money from the whole enterprise. However I took some massive learnings from the experience, and met some amazing people. And I did in fact generate a quite humungous backlog of work post Christmas which would have kept me extremely busy. It is the importance of people, networking and meeting people that was the biggest take away I learnt through this experience. People are everything, if you don’t offer a service that people need, or do not fix a problem that is a pain point for people then you haven’t got a business – or at least a viable one. Building trust and networking is a long game, but building trust and relationships with other businesses and business folk that have complementary skillets or services means magic can happen i.e. you can help each other and each others business by providing value

to each other by doing things quid pro quo.

I did a lot of quid pro quo, and it helped my business, helped other’s businesses, and help me learn, expand my portfolio and develop further skills.

What I’m doing now

I continue to operate Digital Technology Labs as a fun side project, where I have a wonderful and unique set of customers that I still work with, and I offer a very focussed and well defined service – specifically beautiful websites built on WordPress or eCommerce sites built on Shopify. I offer advice on a variety of other topics and associated services and areas, but prefer to hand clients off to people with more expertise in those fields. I’m always happy to take on interesting, challenging or quirky projects, and I still do some bespoke stuff (if persuaded!). Please contact us if you would like our assistance with your business or project.

Oh yes, and I’m back in full time employment, and friggin loving it. I continue DTL as a hobby, and I’m very happy with that. And by significantly reducing my costs, I’ve turned it into a boutique enterprise with a on-going gradual income, which is very much a delight, compared to the famine and feast that I was existing on in 2016.

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Lessons learned

Okay here’s my top 10 lessons that I learned during the experience (in a sporadic and non-order of importance):

1. Networking is one of the most important part of building a business

2. As is people, do stuff quid pro quo, that’s what free really means; exchanging complementary services with other businesses

3. Keep your out-goings and costs at an absolute minimum!

4. Use project income to invest in marketing and gaining new customers that will buy on-going services

5. Choose to offer services that incur monthly income e.g. hosting fees, content update fees, to ensure small regular incomings

6. Volume is important, the more small regular incomings you can earn leads to greater income, when they are all aggregated

7. Automate as much as possible, from having everything even documents as templates that can be re-used as ‘cookie cutters’ for new customers

8. When starting your business you will get an awful lot of emails offering you the service you are trying to offer (rather than genuine customer enquiries) – don’t let this get you down

9. Try and focus on everything that you will get renumerated for, or that you are doing quid pro quo for others, minimise things that don’t add value or don’t generate income

10. Except for things that are critical to the operation and growth of your business of course!

And what’s next

Well my hopes are that I can offer my services to some wonderful new customers, we offer affordable beautifully designed and built websites that we can create with you

in person, rapidly (or take away your requirements and do offline). We’ll take the pain away from building a website (and maintaining a website) – and you’ll have a beautiful ‘shop front’ that you will be proud to share with your customers. Go on reach out and discuss your latest project, we don’t bite!

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4. Gallery

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5. Who we areAt our heart we are a boutique Web Design agency, led by Kevin Gordon, who has over 14 years of industry experience at the highest level, with a field of freelancers that include UX and design experts, front end and back end developers, social media experts, content authors and copyeditors.

We are passionate about injecting energy, stunning and beautiful design, and return on investment in a company’s digital footprint. We do this by building great websites, and taking them to the next level by generating and curating content, and marketing that content through digital channels.

Since we started we have

been responsible for helping small, medium and large businesses improve their digital ‘shop fronts’ as it were, and to generate traffic, contacts and conversions into real customers.

We are small, nimble and fast moving. Based mainly in London and Essex, we can easily work remotely and also travel to you as required.

Our business model is quite simple:

1) Web design collaboratively with you.

2) Website build3) Launching, hosting and

maintaining websites

And all three can be customised to meet your needs, and will be conducted in a collaborative way that works for you.