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Sustainable websites

Nickisan — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 06:19:39 +0000

Sustainable websites

Nickisan Mon, 07/31/2023 - 09:19

Disclaimer: this post is a bit different. We take pride in not talking jargon to our clients - our aim is that no-one feels like they should be an IT nerd to be able to get a website that is absolute top-notch. However, that does not mean that we don't know our jargon or know the inside and out of creating these websites that indeed exceed expectations - also in the field of ecological sustainability.

Nick wrote this post to showcase what we take into consideration when creating your resource-wise website - and to share the information with everyone else creating websites. We believe sustainable is the way websites need to be created in 2020's, and hope that this information will help some fellow developers out there to challenge themselves, too.

Let's dive into it!

We are exited to introduce you to Nick's Fast and Compressed check list for sustainable websites. It is available for you in order to help you make more ethical and environmentally-conscious choices in the digital realm.

This list is part of Nick's upcoming book, "Digital Permaculture," which elaborates on the integration of permaculture ethics and principles with technology and digital practices.

Nick's Fast and Compressed list for sustainable websites

Don’t use videos, especially not on the front-page and don’t use auto-play. Auto-play sucks anyway and every website that comes along with it gets banned for lifetime
Compress images as far as possible and use modern codecs that are supported by the browsers (non supported is kind of funky but sucks when you get mails that people can’t see your images)
Use lazy loading for images which are not in the First Contentful Paint.
Responsive images. Different image sizes according the browsers resolution
Compress js + css
Minify js, css, HTML
Optimize js
Optimize frontend used, more classes less ids, lean css
Use webfont formats like woff or woff2
Enable Gzip compression on your webserver
Usew http/2 for SSL
Long caching period for static content
Deliver static HTML where possible
If you want to go further
- no loading of 3rd party plugins from remote
- only static sites, no database in between
- reduction of objects in the Document Object Model (DOM)
- images dithering

Website size

< 400 KB = perfect
< 1 MB = good
< 4 MB = acceptable
> 4 MB = needs work
> 10 MB = unacceptable

You could also measure the loading time and set it in relation to the transferred amount of data.

Feel free to get in touch with us regarding topics on the list.

Why you should refresh your website every few years

Lumia — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 11:12:28 +0000

Why you should refresh your website every few years

Lumia Tue, 03/21/2023 - 13:12

I think it’s clear to all, that in today's world, having an online presence is crucial for businesses of all sizes. Your website is often the first point of contact for potential customers, and it plays a significant role in shaping their first impression of your business. That's why it's essential to keep your website fresh and up-to-date to reflect what is it that you can help your client with in the most efficient way. In this article, we'll discuss why it is a good idea to refresh your website every few years.

Keep up with modern design

Design evolves, and what looked modern and fresh last year may appear outdated and stale this year. By refreshing your website's design every few years, you can ensure that your site looks current and relevant. This can help you stand out from your competitors and create a positive impression on your visitors. What we don’t suggest, though, is trying to ”keep up with design trends”. That kind of continuous tinkering on your website is usually not helpful for small businesses, as it steals time and money from more relevant activities.

Improve user experience

User experience (UX) is a critical factor in determining whether visitors stay on your website or bounce away. If your website is difficult to navigate, slow to load, or not mobile-friendly, visitors are likely to leave and look for alternatives. By keeping your website modern, you can improve its UX by incorporating new features, optimizing its speed, and ensuring it is mobile-responsive.

Stay up-to-date with technology

Technology is constantly evolving, and it’s evolving fast. By refreshing your website regularly, you can ensure that it is built on the latest technologies, making it more secure, faster, and more accessible.

Enhance search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engines like Google use complex algorithms to determine which websites to display in their search results. By refreshing your website every few years, you can incorporate the latest SEO best practices. This can help improve your search engine rankings and drive more organic traffic to your website.

Reflect changes in your business

As your business grows and evolves, your website should reflect those changes. If you've recently rebranded, expanded your product or service offerings, or updated your company mission, your website should reflect those changes. By refreshing your website, you can ensure that it accurately represents your current business and serves as an effective marketing tool.

In conclusion, updating your website every few years is essential to keep it up-to-date, improve user experience, stay current with technology, enhance SEO, and reflect changes in your business. A fresh, modern website can help you attract and retain visitors, build trust and credibility with your audience, and ultimately drive more sales and revenue for your business.

Is your website looking old and tired, really slow to load or is it just not reflecting your business anymore? Contact us! We’ll help you get your website back on track!

This article was written by Lumia.

What is ethical advertising and why does it matter?

Lumia — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 14:02:22 +0000

What is ethical advertising and why does it matter?

Lumia Thu, 02/16/2023 - 16:02

It is often said that the actual purpose of advertising is to create needs and wants. I guess it’s because of that I sometimes get weird looks when I tell my business is an advertising agency (partly because it is that, and partly because it’s too weird to say ”my business strives to the small business owner’s best marketing buddy”), especially when I am talking with people that are into sustainability, permaculture and social justice – like myself.

Even the advertising industry itself seems to think that the kind of advertising which only concenctrates on telling the potential customers about the products and services of the advertiser, and how they can help customers with their current problems, wants and needs, is somehow old-fashioned.

I call BS on that. I strongly believe that in the world of massive over-consumption, mental issues due to low self-esteem and comparison as well as the reckless disregard of the ecological carrying capacity of the Earth, we need to change these harmful beliefs - and change them fast.

Advertising can be responsible

In today’s world, it is more important than ever for businesses to be conscious of their advertising practices. Consumers themselves are increasingly more aware of the power of advertising and the potential for manipulation, so it is essential for companies to take steps to ensure that their advertising is ethical and responsible, and for advertising agencies like us to make sure we help them in doing that.

The goal of ethical advertising is to provide customers with accurate information about products and services in an honest and transparent way. This of course means avoiding deceptive or manipulative tactics, such as making false or exaggerated claims. It also means being mindful of the impact that advertising can have on vulnerable audiences, such as children, and avoiding any tactics that could be considered harmful.

Avoid harm but more importantly do good

Ethical advertising is about much more than just avoiding negative practices—it’s about actively promoting the positive side. What are the problems your business can solve? Ethical advertising is in essence helping others - not trickery, exaggerations or false claims that bad advertising often is.

Companies can also use their advertising not to emphasize the importance of social responsibility, sustainability, and other values that are important to them and their customers. Doing so – honestly, not greenwashing anything – builds trust and also contributes to creating a better world for us all.

In addition to embracing ethical practices, small businesses especially need also strive to make their advertising as effective as possible. This means focusing on creating need fulfillment rather than need creation. Advertising should be designed to meet the needs of customers, rather than trying to create desires that lead to dissatisfaction and overconsumption.

Value-based advertising with the right partner

Our goal at Chase & Snow is to help small businesses succeed in their marketing in the heavily competed markets of today. There are companies today in the world that are bigger than some countries, and have marketing budgets bigger than the combined revenue of all our clients together. How can a small business compete with such giants?

We believe: by being smart, planning well – and executing well. That’s why we’re specialized in delivering maximum value and impact for the minimum viable cost in everything we do, in a way that is fair for our client, their customers and us, too.

In the long run, I believe ethical advertising is the way small businesses can succeed in the marketplace. Customers are not dumb – they see through greenwashing and empty claims about social justice or fairness that some businesses try to feed us. By acting ethically and telling about it through ethical advertising practices, businesses can not only win the trust of their customers and create a strong revenue for themselves, but also help to make the world a better place.

If you are looking for ideas on how to advertise ethically and effectively, or some more in-depth ethical marketing consulting, please contact us! That is exactly what we can help you with.

Why we use Drupal instead of WordPress

Lumia — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 12:01:40 +0000

Why we use Drupal instead of WordPress

Lumia Tue, 01/17/2023 - 14:01

Years back, when I was looking for an easy to use web-shop, and cart systems like Magento weren’t available yet, I checked and evaluated different Open Source systems, to name some: WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. It took me a lot of time and development installations, even some failures until I decided to go with Drupal.

Here are some of the points that are important to me

Improved security: Drupal is known for its robust security features, which can make it a safer platform for websites that handle sensitive data or are at risk of being targeted by hackers.
Great flexibility: Drupal offers a wide range of customization options, allowing users to create a website that is tailored to their specific needs and goals.
Better scalability: Drupal is a scalable platform that can handle high traffic volumes and large amounts of data, making it a good choice for websites that are expected to grow over time.
Stronger support & community: Drupal has an active community of developers and users, which can provide valuable support and resources for those who are building or maintaining a website.
Improved performance: Drupal websites are often faster and more efficient than WordPress websites, which can improve the user experience and help with search engine rankings.
Improved accessibility: Drupal is designed with accessibility in mind, and includes features that make it easier for people with disabilities to access and use the website. This can be a valuable selling point for customers who want to make their website as widely accessible as possible.
More reliable updates: Drupal has a well-organized update process that can be more reliable and easier to manage than the update process for WordPress. This can be important for customers who want to ensure that their website is always up to date and secure.

From a site builders perspective the following is important to me

Flexible Content types: In Drupal I have content types which allow me to add fields to them. This very practical especially for standardized content. In a shop I have several different products, but the content structure is the same. There will be always a product picture, a product description, a price, etc. With the fields I’m free to create any content type I want. In WordPress I’m limited to posts and pages, which of course can be heavily altered using the block system but still, for the next post or page I have to start again.
Extensive Taxonomy: While different content types gave me already a wide variety of possibility with Taxonomy I can drive this even further. In WordPress I’m limited to the category and the tags. In Drupal I can create an unlimited set of categories and tags. Think of it as the possibility to have categories, tags and flavors, or colors, or car models, etc.
Views: Views are database queries with which I can query the content, taxonomy, users, etc. Whatever I have put onto the site, can be put in lists. This comes very helpful for example if I want to put a list on my blog that shows all posts that have more than 50 comments, or all comments that are older than a year, or all photos that I ever put up in specific content type. The sky is the limit. In WordPress this is simply not possible.
Easy User management: User management in Drupal is simple. I can create several different roles and in the permission table grant rights for different roles. This is very fine granular and far more than WordPress is capable of. I can add a role for specific jobs, like for example only for changing the header image of the front-page. This means: The author and editor can see and do what they need to see and do, and not be overwhelmed by things that only the site manager or administrator need to see and do.
Non-cluttered back-end theme: WordPress is very cluttered when it comes to the administration and the worst part is that most site owners access their WordPress with an administrator account, and then have far too many options available to them. With Drupal I can decide which roles have access to what and therefore the back-end looks tidy and manageable.
Non-cluttered front end: WordPress shines with the availability of easy to install themes. But this is very it usually ends. WordPress themes come with far too many possibilities and options. Both beyond the capability of a standard user. And while they look pretty they also come with a lot of overhead on the technical site, like not needed libraries, CDN (Content delivery network) loaded fonts, and other CDN loaded libraries. Usually WordPress themes are bigger in total file size and by that load slower.

At Chase and Snow we offer WordPress to Drupal migrations. Contact us today and together we find a solution that suits you and your business.

Ps. even though we don't build pages with WordPress, we're happy to fix and improve your existing WordPress websites, and manage their updates so that they remain functional and secure. Contact us!

This text was written by our web developer Dominik Jais.

Mikä ihme on ystävällinen mainostoimisto?

Lumia — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 10:05:56 +0000

What is a friendly advertising agency?

Lumia Mon, 03/15/2021 - 13:32

When you come to our website, you are greeted by the phrase "We are a high-quality and friendly small advertising and marketing agency from Pirkanmaa and our task is to help small companies succeed in their marketing." Good quality is probably a pretty clear attribute for an advertising agency, but what the heck is a friendly advertising agency?

It becomes clear when we look at our values. The first of these is “friendly,” and we write this:

“We are your company's honest and genuine partner in marketing matters. We want to get to know your company and its customers so that we can help you in the best possible way. Cooperation with us is cordial, relaxed and effective. We say things directly but nicely. We want the best for your business and go about it like a good friend would. We want to build a customer relationship with you based on trust and the same goal - the best for your business. ”

The value of friendliness could be summed up in the fact that we want the best for you and your business, and we will do our best to get you just that. If you want, we will be happy become a long-term partner for our company - or as in many good friendships, we can just meet every now and then and continue where we left off.

Friendliness is important to us also because we are inherently easy going, friendly people. It can be said that Chase & Snow is down to its core a friendly advertising agency, and hopefully this also made it clear what it means. Work with us and experience it for yourself!

Keep healthy and do some marketing

Lumia — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 10:28:03 +0000

Keep healthy and do some marketing

Lumia Sun, 03/29/2020 - 13:28

In the middle of the beautiful early spring season - empty streets, quiet cafes, closed boutiques. Schools and event arenas are empty, only the grocery store is still buzzing. The effects of COVID-19 are visible in everyone's everyday life, all around the world.

Small business are in a really tight spot now, as the business planned for the spring disappeared in days. Our clients are these small businesses. We ourselves run a small business. Even if the illness hopefully passes us all health-wise, it now affects us all. It is important now that, once the epidemic is over, we still have small businesses.

So do the shopping you need from a small entrepreneur - order online, buy an online course or a gift voucher, eat a home delivery lunch! Local businesses have already come up with many new ways to serve you during this emergency - use these services if you can!

And if you are a small business entrepreneur who now has plenty of time because you can't do the work you usually do: get ahead in marketing! This crisis will be over one day, and when life is back on track, you'll have a good chance to get up and running really quickly.

At Chase & Snow we provide a wide range of marketing help and services including websites, marketing planning, print materials, advertising and campaigns. Just ask us! Payment in installments and over time can be agreed flexibly and all work can be done remotely. Just contact us if the situation permits and let's see how we could help. We are here for you, be there an epidemic or not!

Stay healthy!

Regards

Lumia and Dominik / Chase & Snow Oy