Arena Flowers’ Sam Barton on web design and development
Online florist Arena Flowers has had quite a lucrative time since its launch in late 2006.
The site says it generated £2m in revenues in its first year, helped by a strong focus on SEO, a bespoke e-commerce platform and a Facebook app that provides 15% of its traffic (albeit at lower conversion rates).
Here, head of design and development Sam Barton talks about its web strategy and plans for the future.
Q&A: David Heinemeier Hansson explains Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson - named Hacker of the Year in 2005 - talks about the web development framework's growing popularity among businesses (including E-consultancy - we have a new Rails-powered site under development) and the problems of managing an open source community.
OpenStreetMap lands first commercial partner
OpenStreetMap (OSM), the open source mapping project, has secured its first commercial partner by linking up with property search engine Nestoria.
The move will see Nestoria displaying OSM’s user generated maps alongside its property listings – a boost for the project as it seeks to gain popularity among third-party developers.
TechCrunch launches UK site
I’ve just returned from holiday where I did my best to stay completely away from any technology other than my camera (for good reason), and am getting back into the swing of things nicely.
One of the pleasant not-so surprises on returning was the recent launch of a UK TechCrunch site which is focused on UK Web 2.0 and mobile startups.
Jeff Bezos invests in 37Signals
I nearly fell of my chair this morning when I read that 37Signals have taken on outside funding, but after reading a bit further I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re actually in a very, very sweet spot…
Tim O’Reilly and four big ideas about Open Source
If you’re interested in what’s happening on the Web at the moment (driven by open source technologies), then taking a moment to listen to Tim talk about the challenges to the Open Source model will probably be useful.
Holiday shopping forecast 2009: a lot like 2008, with more coupons
The NLA explains why it is going after the news aggregators
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
