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.

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... 

... came to a head last night in Focus New Media's TP Tournament 2008!

Lots were drawn and as luck would have it, our two new directors ended up being in the same team.  Not a fair match we thought at first... that is, until Jim and I managed to run away with a scorching lead!

With questions ranging from the inventor of cat's eyes to the identity of David Chatto's mother-in-law it wasn't an easy game. 

The best thing I realised early on was that Jim is the font of ALL knowledge and I'd ended up on the right side of the board.  A runaway victory was had to the chagrin of our respective bosses - who we now know are rather weak on Geography questions!

With MD Simon playing impartial quizmaster, buying the pizzas and serving up the beers it was generally a brilliant way to spend a balmy Tuesday evening.

Watch this space for news of our newly formed pub quiz team!