aap³ creative solutions are delighted to announce the completion of the Southampton Football Club Online Programme solution. The creative team have custom developed the solution to suits the clubs requirements, and fans are already accessing the latest issues from all over the globe.

Matchday programmes in the past have only been available in hard copy and only available at the match itself. The Saints were looking for a way to deliver the programme online to those fans who could not attend the game, whilst also delivering the page turn experience that they would have in the stadium.

The programmes have opened up a new revenue stream for the club in market segments tha were previously unattainable for programme sales.  International and ex-patriot fans can now download the programme and take part in the matchday experience.  Closer to home, local fans can now download the programme up to 24 hours before the match starts, meaning that the matchday build up and anticipation can start much earlier.

The programme is already selling well and Saints are very please with the final result.  Saints Marketing Manger Chris Hayler comments, “A fantastic effort and a great final product!… On a personal note thank you so much for your dedication, diligence and overall pro-active approach in pulling this together.”

For more information about matchday programmes please get in touch.

Google Chrome has over-taken Firefox in browser popularity in the UK according to web metrics company Statcounter.  Google’s browser has been growing steadily globally, but has done exceptionally well in the UK reaching a 22.12% market share in July this year, clambering over Firefox’s gradually reducing 21.65%

So what does this mean for web designers?  Well hopefully we’ve all been designing website that are compatible across all browsers, but there are of course those websites around that are older that Google Chrome, or that don’t look as good as they could in the browser.

So who’s next?  Most web designers would perhaps hope to see the demise of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.  Old versions of IE are enough to make any web designer pull their hair out, but even the latest editions have their challenges for web development.

With 45.51% of the market share in the UK, IE doesn’t look to be going anywhere just yet, but surely if anyone can do it, Google can.

Interesting?  Why not read more about browser and device compatibility and website accessibility.

Doesn’t it feel like everything is going online these days?  Well the latest things that we’ve been converting to online formats are online matchday programmes for sports clubs.

Matchday programmes are traditionally in hard-copy, i.e. a printed programme only available at the match, on the day.  Many clubs are seeing an opportunity here to open up new revenue streams and target audiences that are unable to attend the match.

Combined with social networking tools, the online programme creates the match-day experience at home, in the pub or wherever you like with our new device-friendly programme viewer which is also compatible for Apple devices such as iPhones and iPads.

Often an untapped market for sports clubs is the ex-patriot or foreign fan-base.  The online programme viewer allows them to participate in matchday traditions, such as browsing through the matchday programme, playing the ‘spot-the-ball’ competition and even watching pre-match interviews on embedded videos.

If you feel that your club could benefit from online programmes, please get in touch with Anna Percival on 08452 300 189 or email creative[at]aap3.com.  Alternatively, read more on our online programme web page.

aap³ creative were tasked with converting the existing aap³.com site into our newly adopted CMS, WordPress.  As a brochure site, WordPress was the best choice for aap³.com as it allows extensive work-flow and auditing capabilities (allowing the workload of updating the site to be shared around the company) and superb integration with social networking tools and communities.

The transformation was relativey quick and encorporated a minor re-design to accomodate new advances in the web world and changes to company products and solutions also.

“Editing the site is remarkably simple now and I can control changes made by other throughout the site as well – helping to protect our brand” explains Marketing Executive, Michael Hollands.

Converting a site to WordPress can be a simple and inexpensive process.  Why not get in touch to discuss how thsi could help your organisation, and for a personalised quotation.

aap³ Creative Solutions are delighted to annouce the launch of our new website, built in our recently adopted open source CMS, WordPress.  Our new website is one of the latest of over 30 million WordPress websites online today!

Our new site has lots to boast about; firstly it validates as W3C compliant, secondly it is fully WAI (DDA) compliant, and finally we feel it represents us as an organisation and our values.

If you are interested in getting a website built in WordPress please feel free to get in touch!

Finally, we’d love to hear your feedback, please submit any comments via our contact form.  Thank you!

It is not surprising that companies across Europe are in a state of confusion over the new internet privacy law that relates to the use of ‘cookies’ on a website.

A cookie is a small piece of tracking code that is placed on a website to track the visitor and store some information about them. For example, when you return to some website you might see ‘Hello Bob’ and you might wonder how it remembered you without being logged in – this is the cookie’s work.

The new law introduced in May makes it illegal to use cookies without getting the user’s permission, although the law does not make it clear how this permission should be sought.

Internet companies such as Google and Facebook are likely to be very concerned as the new law could seriously affect their business which relies heavily on highly targeted marketing – which uses the dreaded cookie!

How to comply:

This is an extract from an FT.com article (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/033a2568-86f4-11e0-92df-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1RQeGplSt)

● Pop ups: Companies could display a small pop-up box on their websites asking users for permission to collect data. However, there are fears that internet users would be inundated with hundreds of pop-up boxes, making surfing the web virtually impossible. Internet retailers are terrified this would hurt sales.

● Tracking icons: Big internet advertising companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft, publishers including the Financial Times and the European Advertising Standards Alliance, have committed to a system in which an icon is displayed on any adverts that use tracking technology. Users can click on the icon for more information about targeting and can opt out of such tracking at youronlinechoices.eu. However, consumer protection groups are unsatisfied by the approach and despite some favourable noises, governments have made no definitive commitments to it.

● Browser settings: Internet browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer allow users to set some controls over what cookies they will allow on their computers. If these controls were more sophisticated and more people used them, companies might be able to assume users had consented to tracking based on what settings they had on their browser. However too few people understand browser settings at the moment for data protection authorities to accept this as a solution.

aap³ creative solutions will keep track of the situation and post again soon.

aap³ creative solutions are delighted to announce that we had taken a strategic decision to only build fully W3C and WAI (DDA) standard compliant websites.

Standards-compliant is a term often used in describing websites and web browsers relative compliance with web standards proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Although there is no perfect browser that seamlessly adheres to all standards, W3C compliance works to ensure better interoperability in the future.

In addition to offering future-proofing, compliance ensures that your entire audience can access your website, regardless of any disabilities or the device they are using to view your website.

To start with, compliance will be predominately delivered using our latest adopted platform; WordPress.  It is our intention that compliance will be rolled out across all platforms over time.

Read more about compliance on our compliance web pages.

aap³ have taken a strategic decision to adopt WordPress as one of our primay platform for website development.  As a PHP platform, WordPress adds a new dimention to our solution set, and enables us to integrate with 3rd party PHP based softwares and applications with greater ease.

Like our other adopted platforms, WordPress is also an open source CMS.  This year, at the SXSW conference, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg revealed that WordPress now powers 12 per cent of the internet, which equates to a massive 30.6 million websites worldwide built in the platform.  With these figures, there is no doubt that WordPress is the number one content management system.

WordPress originated as a blogging tool with little other functionality or purpose.  It has grown into a versatile, powerful CMS delivering the latest capabilities in a compliant and accessible format.

Rationale

We have chosen WordPress as our PHP platform due to the following:

• WordPress is Open Source
  This means that there are no license fees or setup charges for using the software.  It also means that there is no custom development tying you into using the same developer just because they are the only people who can understand their coding.  We want you to keep using us because we are good at what we do.

• WordPress is the most user-friendly CMS in its class
  WordPress won the Most Popular CMS in Technorati’s Top 100, as well as Overall Best Open Source CMS Award for the 2009. One of the reasons it has been so widely adopted is that it has a very easy-to-use, intuitive backend. WordPress’ plugin architecture and templating system are also well-known for being simple to customize and build upon as you need to.
• WordPress has a thriving community
  WordPress 3.0 (launched in February 2011) had 11 million downloads in the first 42 days it became available.  Millions of users are actively using and contributing to WordPress development to make it the best open source CMS available. WordPress is a solid platform for any large or expanding business to build on, and it’s constantly improving. A major benefit is that improvements to core security, bug fixes, and general upgrades will always be available to you at no cost.  With custom development, it is likely you would be charged for this.
• The WordPress Platform is highly extendable
  The WordPress plugin directory recently surpassed 100 million downloads.  WordPress has evolved into a sophisticated CMS that can handle any kind of multimedia, syndication, and social networking features that you see around the web on large sites such as Facebook and Twitter.  aap³ Creative Solutions have a lot of experience using the platform and are familiar with many of the plugins available.  This experience helps us to choose the right option for you as well as customizing them to your unique requirements.

• Compliance and Accessibility
  Using our knowledge and a variety of WordPress plugins, we can ensure that your website is fully WC3 compliant and adheres to WAI / DDA compliance.

To discuss how WordPress could be using for your next website, please feel free to get in touch.

We are delighted to announce the lauch of our latest web project for ABEX Power.  ABEX needed to refresh their brand and develop a cutting edge website to promote ABEX Power Components as a family company who strive to build close relationships with its customers.

Maintaining the colour theme and company typography, the elements team successfully met the objectives of ABEX by designing a creative yet informative site which is easy to navigate and accessible to all website users.

aap³ elements worked with ABEX to restructure their product offering, which is now easy to navigate through and gives key information to visitors.

aap³ have provided ABEX with a website that they can update regularly, by adding news articles and keeping their products and services up to date through and intuitive listings database.