Rapid Web News

We recently posted about the launch of BanksyTshirts.org. If this interested you, you may also be interested in the recent launch of another Banksy t-shirts website!

Rapid Web is happy to announce the recent launch a t-shirt website based solidly on our main and highly, flexible e-commerce system.

This website offers a full e-commerce experience for both the visitors browsing the advanced front-end shopping basket/cart system, and for the client who can utilise an in-depth, customisable administration system. This administration system allows the client to add and modify products that display on the public areas of the website and to manage the orders received through the site including orders taken via any number of payment gateway systems that can integrate with our e-commerce system.

The integrated payment systems included in this website are the SagePay payment gateway (previously known as ‘Protx’) and the ever popular PayPal, though our e-commerce system’s checkout can easily be integrated with any common or even obscure method of electronic payment.

As well as the background code that powers this website, Rapid Web also created the custom, bespoke website design for this Banksy t-shirts website. The design emphasises the details commonly associated with graphic artists such as Banksy himself. If you wish to view this custom design in its full glory, take a look at our portfolio page or the Banksy t-shirts .net website!

We’re very happy to announce to recent launch of Banky T-shirts.org, a website that sells t-shirts from the graphic artist Banksy, and donates £1 of each Banksy t-shirt to a charity of your choice!

This website uses our in-house e-commerce system to power the online e-commerce shopping experience and the WordPress blogging system to power the Banksy News section.

This Banksy t-shirt website is a great example of how our in-house e-commerce system can be heavily customised, added-on to and made bespoke for the needs of the particular system. In this case, the charity choice during the basket and checkout stages is a custom piece of functionality that has been integrated into our system. This is shown on the front-end of the system as part of the customer experience, as well as in the administration to keep record of required charity donations based on each Banksy t-shirt which is sold.

If you want, please go ahead and browse one or more of these awesome Banksy t-shirts!

“The Nudge lets you exchange and manage brief reviews with people you know on everything that’s happening in your City, and beyond.

Let your starting point in choosing anything (from a hotel in San Francisco or a restaurant in London, to a new book or a concert in New York) be the reviews of people you know, whose opinion you trust.

The Nudge is also launching weekly City Editions for London and New York. These can be accessed through the site or subscribed to via email and will combine our favourite member recommendations with some insider knowledge of what’s new and happening in your City each week.

The Nudge will launch over the summer of 2010. If you’d like to be involved as one of the first to have access to the beta version of the site, please let us know by subscribing below.”

Rapid Web is proud to be working with The Nudge, to create a new social networking abstraction, which focuses on the recommendation of consumer products and services, dependant upon a well defined and focused network of local social knowledge.

The Nudge teaser site is now live and contains a custom made web design, a themed blog system and other dynamic contact, such as a form to allow users to sign up for the up and coming beta.

If you are interested in what The Nudge will have to offer in the future, take a look at the new blog post on The Nudge Blog, ‘Why Subscribe to Join the Nudge?‘.

To apply for The Nudge beta, just head to thenudge.com and fill in the ‘Apply for the beta’ form.

Rapid Web is pleased to announce the recent redesign of a long term client’s website, Body Sculpt UK.

The new web design of Body Sculpt UK features an entirely custom web design, templating and integration into both existing and brand new textual content. The new website design also features the use of a dynamic blog system to go alongside the static content of the main site. Links also exist to various social networking and social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter allowing easy promotion of the the Body Sculpt brand.

Body Sculpt UK have been working with us at Rapid Web for several years now, and we are delighted to see them continue to work with us into the new development of their brand and website.

If you’re interested in getting a new web design for your website, feel free to give us a call on 01785 250222 or contact us directly.

While promoting your website via search engine optimisation techniques and Internet advertising campaigns, it is important not to forget the power of the social web for website promotion. The social web consists of blogs (or ‘web logs’), social networking, social bookmarking websites and micro-blogging services.

So, what are all of these social web elements? Let me explain.

• Blog – A blog, also called a ‘web log’ is a series of articles called posts, which are written and published over a period of time to the web. Most blogs are provided in the format of many pages in which the posts are displayed in reverse chronological order, and are categorised and tagging by the topic or topics of the individual posts. Blogs can be informative, such as tips and ‘how-to’ guides, personal, in the format of a journal/diary, or corporate, giving information and news around a specific topic or range of topics. What you are reading now is an example of informational, corporate blog post.
• Social Networking – You may already be using a social networking website already without realising it. Examples of very popular social networking websites are Facebook, MySpace and Orkut. Social networking websites allow you to keep it contact with your friends, family, acquittance and colleagues. Many are open to various advertising and marketing campaigns, commonly targeted to users via their age range, gender, location or interests.
• Social Bookmarking – Social bookmarking websites, or social news websites, allow users to post links to other web content and share it with other users of the website. Examples of social bookmarking websites include Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon. These social bookmarking websites are the perfect opportunity to promote engaging and viral content includes articles, images and videos to a large number of users at once.
• Micro Blogging – Just like social networking, you may already be using a micro blogging website but not have heard of the social media terminology. Examples of micro blogging websites include Twitter, FriendFeed and identi.ca. Micro blogging is the same general idea as a blog, a reverse chronological listing of posts. The difference with micro blogging is in the name – the posts are deliberately small in size, generally under 140 characters. Micro blogging sites are used frequently, like social bookmarking websites, to share content via links to webpages or video clips, so are, again, a great social media website promotion tool.

If you want some help promoting your website via search engine optimisation techniques or social media, we offer quite a few great services to promote your website. Feel free to contact us about them!