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We design lovable websites.

If you love your users, set them free.

Great websites link out and don’t try to hide the fact that the web is a serious of connected entities. Making sure that we open external links in the same window instead of opening new windows and tabs actually encourages users to return to our site because they can click the back button and return more quickly. There has been extensive study about this.

On the web, the golden rule concept really pays off. Think of how you’d like things to work when you’re on a website, and make it work that way for your users. It’s annoying to see a website URL and not be able to click it. Users don’t have much patience for this kind of stuff and they pick up the fact that you’re trying to keep them on your site quite quickly.

There’s been a real trend in recent years to go the extra mile in providing useful links and information. Quite often blog writers will hyperlink terms in text that may be confusing off to dictionary.com or wikipedia. The concept is that if your site is useful and helpful users will return to keep reading.

The fact is, if people want to leave, they will. Instead of trying to find ways to trick them into staying, it’s better to build great content and useful links to augment your content that will keep them coming back.

Posted by Micah on February 6, 2010 | Comments (0)

Let a professional at it

I was having coffee the other day with a friend who has a lot of I.T. experience. He’s seen it all. We were discussing the fact that a university student is redesigning his organization’s website and he’s a bit skeptical that it’s going to go well.

The student may have a lot of talent and may even have some experience but he’s not a professional. When it comes to web design, a talented designer can make your site look great but is that all you need. A great looking website can attract some new business or draw attention to your organization but there is the risk that it’s too superficial.

An experienced web designer wants the website to look good and work well. Perhaps a little extra help on setting up your site navigation will help your visitors get to the right place quicker. Perhaps a bit of help with a content management system will mean your site operates faster and with less down time. Perhaps some help moving your content from your existing site to the newly redesigned one will mean a bit less writing. Perhaps working with someone with a few more project under their belt is less risky. It might be a bit more expensive to hire a web design company over a student but that extra money might be well worth it if the project doesn’t go well.

I truly wish my friend luck with his website.

Posted by Tim on February 4, 2010 | Comments (0)

Micro Rentals

In a little over a month, my girlfriend and I will be moving from our downtown apartment into a suburban home in North Edmonton. I’ve never actually owned a property and have always enjoyed the freedom from the necessity of maintenance that renting offers. If there’s a problem, I simply call my landlord and they come out and fix it free of charge.

Ownership is different though. For example, I’m about to inherit a lawn and garden which must be tended so I need to buy a lawnmower. Except I really don’t want to buy a lawnmower because it is extremely likely that every other property owner on my street already has one. Do we ALL need one? I contest that we do not.

I’d estimate it takes 30 minutes to cut the average lawn. With a bit of organization, maybe 15–20 lawns could get cut per weekend. Lawns need cutting at most once a fortnight so one lawnmower could cut 30–40 MORE lawns than if it only cut your own.

So what if you rented your lawnmower out to the other residents of your street? Say charge them $5 per cut. A decent quality petrol lawnmower costs about $300 so you need to rent it out at least 60 times to make your money back. That sounds a lot but the lifetime of a decent mower is at least 10 years so you’ll only need to get 6 rentals per year. Manageable I think.

The concept’s extensible too. Here in Canada home owners are obliged by law to clear the snow from the pavements surrounding their properties. I’m British so the concept of a ‘snow blower’ is completely foreign but here they’re relatively common. I think it would be great if I could casually rent a snow blower for a few bucks and save myself a lot of shovelling, particularly as I have a corner lot, bah.

I’m calling this concept ‘Micro Rentals’. Now, let’s discuss why this is a great (or downright terrible) idea.

Posted by Tim Fletcher on January 19, 2010 | Comments (2)

Lift on Venture's Fast Growth 50!

2009 was an exciting year of growth for Lift – staffing, space, clientele and revenue. We experienced so much forward movement, in fact, that it landed us a spot on Alberta Venture’s 2010 Fast Growth 50 list. Needless to say, we’re honoured and thrilled to be among such glowing company – all innnovative, enterprising businesses, determined to not only keep themselves afloat during last year’s downturn, but actually emerge from it thriving.

But the train doesn’t stop here. We have every determination that 2010 will be no different. In our first week back after the holidays, we added another team member, began a renovation project to once again double our space and dove into a fresh line-up of exciting projects for clients with whom we feel privileged to work. Let’s just say we optimistically plan to be on the same list this time next year.

Posted by Kristi on January 6, 2010 | Comments (0)

How I deploy static sites

We’ve all heard over and over about how we should be keeping things under source control – and for important sites, you probably do. But what about static sites? Do you keep them under source control, or do you just edit them manually?

I’ve recently been busy moving some of my own static sites from one server to another, which has given me a good opportunity to examine my own server (mis)configuration. With that in mind, I think I’ve now found the best way(for me, at least) to deploy static sites.

First off, create a source control repository for your site. I like Git, so that’s what I used:

Once that’s done, create the folders that you need for all of your site’s files(I like conf, logs, and public):

At this point I tend to create whatever configuration files I need, and store them all in conf. I also like to create empty log files and keep them in source control, so that anytime I do a fresh deploy of my site I also get blanked log files.

Once your configuration files are set up how you like them, and you’re happy with how your local version of the static site has turned out, it’s time to deploy. Commit your changes to your repository, and then log into your server so that you can check out the code for your site. Once that’s done, all you have to do is check out your code and symlink some config files:

With that done, restart your server, and…you’re good to go! And anytime you need to update your site, you can make all the changes locally, commit them, and then just update it on the server. (I wrote a script that retrieves any new changes, and then restarts the servers it needs to)

Posted by Luke on December 14, 2009 | Comments (0)

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