blog.

It’s been three months since we helped Bristol City Council to relaunch the Go Places to Play website back in May, and our reporting tools tell us that the additional developments to the site have made it better than ever for its users.

The refresh was born out of the desire to make it easier for parents and carers to access information about parks and play spaces in their neighbourhood and to feed them information about play activities and events going on throughout the summer holidays and beyond.

With this in mind, we refreshed the design of the homepage, gave the site a clearer layout and built additional functionality such as the online park finder tool, enabling parents and carers of young people to locate the facilities closest to them. While we were all really pleased with the results, the proof was always going to be in the pudding. In this case, Google Analytics.

We track all sites we build with Google’s analytics tool, and measure each on a quarterly basis. Now the updated site has been live for three months, we’re in a position to report back! We have succeeded in increasing the number of visits to the site per day by nearly half, increased the time that people spend on and interacting with the site by a third and reduced the bounce rate by 20%.

The most popularly visited pages are the events calendar and the park finder, which is brilliant, as these were the key objectives earmarked at the beginning of the project!

If you’re interested in learning more about Google Analytics, or would like us to take a look at your web stats to make suggestions on how best to achieve your business objectives through the website, get in touch.

Had a great weekend at Bristol Harbour Festival this weekend - the weather held out (apart from a small down-pour on Saturday night!), there were some great acts and loads of stuff to do for young people.

Highlights for me included beat boxer extraordinaire Vid Warren, Kid Carpet (always good for a giggle) and the bizarre but incredible youth theatre production Run (on King Street on Saturday afternoon), organised by Bristol Old Vic's Young Company.

A couple of our clients were out in force too - namely Go Places Do Things and Go Places to Play, who were there to promote Play Day 2010 - taking place this Wednesday 4th August!

All in all, a brilliant weekend showcasing Bristol's talent, and best of all, it's completely free!

Thanks Bristol City Council - had a great time!!

If you're like me then you get very excited about the World Cup for a very short amount of time, and it's a great way to feel patriotic and part of something bigger than your daily life. 

So in honour of the possibility of England staying in the World cup long enough to give us something to shout about, here's my 4 favourite websites to see live scores (especially when you're at work during the matches):

No.1 : Yahoo Sport

Colourful and bright, this is a good option if you want photos and articles to distract you once you've glanced at the scores.

No.2 : Soccerway.com

Whilst the live matches are clearly laid out and pleasant to look at, the rest of the information on the page is a bit oppressive.

No.3 : Flashscores.com

Minimal and clean, this layout gives it to you on a plate...if you don't mind ignoring all the advertisements.

No.4 : Google.com

Last but not least, Google have been kind enough to reward anyone searching with anything relavent to the 'World Cup' the latest scores for matches on at the moment.  With a clear and instantly readable layout, good old Google have sneakily given us everything we've ever wanted....again.

Working with Bristol City Council, we relaunched their Go Places to Play website at the end of last week.

The updated site carries much more information for parents and carers of young people about Bristol's parks and green spaces, including the ability to search for the nearest green space to you through a postcode finder feature.

With many new parks and green spaces opening in Bristol throughout the Summer, try visiting the site to find your local play area. You might be surprised!

Today sees the launch of Portsmouth City Council's Play in Portsmouth website, to showcase play areas and adventure playgrounds across the city, funded through the Government’s Play Pathfinder project.

It was a great project to work on, and the site really reflects the principles of ‘play’; that it should be bright, fun and inclusive. Having worked on similar projects for Bristol City Council (Go Places To Play), we were in a really good position to understand their requirements and use our experience to deliver a site that not only looks great, but does everything it needs to.

One of the tenets throughout the project has been that: “Play is one of the defining characteristics of a good childhood and all children and young people have a right to play.” Judging by some of the big kids we have in our office, I’m not sure I’d limit it to just children and young people! Web developers like to play, too... 

The Children in Care Council’s (CiCC) RVoice website went live today, after a year’s hard work and collaboration between the CiCC members and Reconstruct, Bristol City Council and Focus.

We carried out a workshop with the CiCC members to establish what was liked & disliked for the look and feel of the site as well as the functionality and information to be included. They were a really pro-active group of young people and very easy to work with, which is why I think we've ended up with such a great looking site.

The CiCC members, including 16 year old Becca, who is the chair of the council, have been actively involved in contributing content to the site and the administrators have been busy adding and tweaking the text, images and files via their new administration system.

Here's what Becca has to say about the new site:

The website is amazing! Its got a really good design which we children helped design. It's got everything you could need to know about being in care on there, and most important of all - it's got My Blog! I'm very excited about having my own blog and it means that other young people can read all about what me and the Children in Care Council are getting up to on their behalf and what changes we're making in Bristol.

The site's live now, so please go and have a look - it will be launched officially at the end of March.

So the adventures of founder Mike Newing and his amazing round the world adventures continue.

Mike and Lynne headed north up Australia's east coast with trips to the Blue Mountains, Sydney (controversially described as "a bit of an urban sprawl"), Port MacQuerie (dolphins everywhere), Byron Bay (rain, rain) and Brisbane (more rain). After an emotional goodbye with some of the locals (see pic), it was time to catch the short flight to Auckland and head for the great outdoors of New Zealand.

NZ has taken the breath away with it's lakes, mountains, wildlife and a close encounter with a whale and despite some fairly wet weather, they're loving it. Although Lynne banned Mike from attending an international cricket match he wanted to go to.

Next stop Fiji, then Singapore, then.....errr....Heathrow......

As some of you may know, founder of FNM Mike Newing has recently started his trip of the Far East and the Pacific that won't see him return to the UK until mid April.

Currently sweltering in forty degree heat, we've heard he and wife Lynne can't help but raise a little smile at the thought of us buried under a bit of snow.

After a short stay in Hong Kong they're now just outside Sydney and have stays in New Zealand, Fiji and Singapore to look forward to. Yes, makes you sick doesn't it.

However Mike's already keen on the idea of a Hong Kong office and sent us the following photo as evidence that he's found the ideal location.

More news and photos no doubt to come.

As some of you may know, founder of FNM Mike Newing has recently started his trip of the Far East and the Pacific that won't see him return to the UK until mid April.

Currently sweltering in forty degree heat, we've heard he and wife Lynne can't help but raise a little smile at the thought of us buried under a bit of snow.

After a short stay in Hong Kong they're now just outside Sydney and have stays in New Zealand, Fiji and Singapore to look forward to. Yes, makes you sick doesn't it.

However Mike's already keen on the idea of a Hong Kong office and sent us the following photo as evidence that he's found the ideal location.

More news and photos no doubt to come.

Happy New Year from all of us at Focus New Media!

We hope you've all eaten and drunk a plenty over the Christmas period, and aren't to shocked at the prospect of returning to work after the longest Christmas break (according to the radio) in twenty years!

We would like you all to know that we're back and with a fully functioning team as of the 2nd, so please get in contact if you need us for anything.