Red Ant Design and Build enables businesses to fully realise their digital brand vision through a combination of creativity, intelligence and a strong strategic approach for long-term results.
We work with you to ensure that we provide high-quality, leading-edge content which fulfils your business requirements – from page layout to form design to full eCommerce functionality. We are skilled at ensuring each element of your online presence delivers measurable results.
PC, mobile, tablet - we're accustomed to using a variety of different devices when we go online. Responsive web design allows websites to adapt to their 'surroundings' - but is it the ideal solution? Our design expert weighs up the pros and cons
Posted: 08/05/2012
It might look great, but does your website really work for your users? Here are six practical tips for improved user experience from our UX expert.
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Our Search expert has taken a look at Google's most recent changes to its search algorithm, and reviews what they mean in practical terms.
Posted: 02/03/2012
Two of the UK's largets public bodies have launched revamped websites this week, stimulating a great deal of user feedback - Red Ant's UX expert gives his considered opinion.
Posted: 02/02/2012
Back in February 2011, we discussed the Advertising Standards Authority’s plans to extend its remit to cover company websites and business content on social networks. Almost a year on, here’s another look at the legislation and how, if at all, it has affected the development and management of websites and online promotional material.
Posted: 17/01/2012
Google is making changes which will reset the boundaries for a private web. Our search expert looks at what this means for the SEO community.
Posted: 01/11/2011
It's the end of the website as we know it - we take a look at what that means and how it will affect businesses in the future.
Posted: 01/09/2011
They say a picture paints a thousand words - and the stories told at the photography event of the year were fascinating, touching, moving and inspiring.
Posted: 09/05/2011
We feel privileged to have been invited to the photography event of the year - it's a key feature of the World Photography Festival which comes to London from 26th April, and is open to everyone with a love for this evocative and expressive art form.
Posted: 21/04/2011
Red Ant developer Mike Rodda is always up for a challenge - and the Exmoor 30-30 is definitely that...
Posted: 04/04/2011
Search Ant Sarah Theodorou recently attended the NMA Live Developments in Search event - this is her overview of what was getting everyone talking. UPDATE - response from Microsoft's Cedric Chambaz at the end of this insight.
Posted: 07/02/2011
At the end of 2010, we looked at emerging consumer trends and how they might affect brands in 2011. In the first of a series of articles, we take a closer look at one of them – online status symbols.
Posted: 05/01/2011
Random Acts of Kindness, Urbanomics, Planned Spontaneity - we look at some of the most interesting predicted consumer trends for 2011
Posted: 21/12/2010
‘The Connected Kingdom’, Google’s in-depth report on the UK’s internet economy, has made headline news. And it only takes a quick glance at the figures to understand why.
Posted: 05/11/2010
Internet World provided the perfect platform to Richard, our chief geek (also known as Technical Director), to get down and dirty with some research and development.
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In this article, I'm looking at website membership and how user experience can be adversely affected by poor design. By way of examples, I will be referring to two fictional (at the time of writing) websites; 'Flip Flop Fitz', an online shop selling fashionable flip flop footwear to customers in the UK and 'Bobblebook', a worldwide social-networking site for fans of bobble hats, beanies and berets.
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At Red Ant we pride ourselves on standards adoption, I also do so personally – if a job is worth doing then it is worth doing right. To that end there are a number of proponents at Red Ant that look at web standards and best practice including accessibility, usability and user experience.
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Quite often we web designers tend to jump straight to the technicalities of website design when talking about the nuts and bolts our industry. The rest of this rather long post (taken from our upcoming digital strategy white paper) will hopefully explain some of the areas we talk about from a slightly higher level
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Firstly, sorry for my terrible pun, secondly; what a turn up for the books? Or maybe Yahoo & Bing setting a 10 year search deal is just a surprise that wasn't really. I’ll be keeping a very close eye on the news on this one, but for now, a few of my thoughts.
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Colour can say a lot about your business and it is important to recognise the impact it has upon your brand.
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This is an extract from Red Ant's white paper 'Planning and creating a digital strategy'.
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As digital experiences and technologies become a larger part of our everyday lives, consumer expectations are gradually becoming bigger, faster, richer and more and more personalised. Within this morphing landscape no digital technique is ever set in stone and in order to keep up with these expectations, companies and brands need to adapt.
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From Wikipedia: A desire path (or desire line) is a path developed by erosion caused by animal or human footfall. The path usually represents the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination.
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Keep it simple. It sounds so easy, yet in an age where the face of business shows over many mediums, it is much easier said than done. Your brand is the face of your business and, ultimately, it is important that whenever your brand is seen, a connection is made between the style and the name. This is essentially the theory, but how do you put this into practice?
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Usability is not an exact science. Nor is it a magic formula that can be applied in minutes to transform your website into a money making machine, sending conversion rates through the roof. It is, as Steve Krug writes, "a matter of common sense". Observing this basic common sense approach can ensure your site is communicating its purpose effectively.
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When I first started working as a print designer some 9 years ago, print work was the focus of design agencies, and web departments within these firms consisted of one or two people at most. As my career has gone on, I worked through a faze where seemingly out of nowhere, the web departments started to spiral and outweigh the print teams, to where we are now, which is an industry that boasts specific agencies for online and digital work.
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Usability is about the functional and practical success of a product, such as a website, from the perspective of its user. A website with good usability is easy to learn, efficient at its job and doesn't present the user with more of a challenge than is necessary. Usability doesn't always mean simplicity; sometimes detail and complex interaction is exactly what the user needs. Usability is an important consideration in any project but it is ultimately just one small part of a user's experience.
Posted: 09/02/2010
So you employ the best web designers and programmers to build you the biggest and the best, all singing all dancing, with bells and whistles on, website that can possibly be built. You launch it, sit back and wait for the visitors to come, and they don't!
Posted: 04/02/2010
Websites do not exist in the physical world. We see them as pixels on screens or projections. We have this space where we have seemly limitless boundaries or restrictions. The only restriction is our imagination but a vast amount of websites use elements either like for like or the ideology associated with it from this Cartesian space.
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This year will be my 15th year working professionally in and around the Internet (nearly half my life and I feel it!), and as much as directors aren't supposed to admit to having heroes (Ian Botham aside), I would like to introduce a professional that I greatly admire, Grady Booch.
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Making the perfect cuppa is a formula to follow, pour boiling water over a tea bag in a cup. Stir, add milk, sugar, remove tea bag, stir once more and drink... but is it really?
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What to consider when developing and initiating a digital strategy
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Web services are a means for one application to talk to another, and this is an overview of how they work.
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"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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Well-designed websites have accessibility built-in and don't make a big deal about it - the simplest solution is often the best.
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Over the past 6 months we, as consumers have seen staple high street stores such as Woolworths, Currys and a few others hand in their liquidation papers and fall by the way side, limping from the wrath of the credit crunch.
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Measuring the value of your investment in your website
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Developing a website with accessibility in mind not only maximises your market but has the added benefits of easier maintenance and greater support for search engines.
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We are excited to announce and release a new whitepaper from Red Ant addressing Planning and Creating a digital strategy. The paper covers digital strategy from putting together initial aims, targeting audiences to ideas generation and evaluation and just a smidgen on areas to be considered for build processes.
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We're up for Mobile Solution of the Year!
Posted: 20/04/2012In a dazzling ceremony which took place at the luxurious Grosvenor Hotel, Park Lane, the Red Ant team spent the evening rubbing shoulders with the likes of Google, BP, Warner Brothers and Channel 4, then took to the stage to collect their trophy from the BBC’s Kate Silverton.
Posted: 26/03/2012
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