Engage Interactive Blog

We’re delighted to announce that we’ve won the account for Paramount Restaurants to redesign the websites for Chez Gérard and Brasserie Gérard.

Chez Gérard, a contemporary yet traditional French gastronomic experience, is first inline for the Engage treatment . We’re looking forward to some extensive *ahem* ‘brand immersion’ visits so we can start bringing the brand to life online.

We’re just commencing work now, so keep a look out over the next few months for updates and launch news.

The time has come for us to expand our lovely little team to accommodate some of the great new work we’ve got lined up. Therefore, we’re looking for a fantastic design & build person to join us. For the full job advert and details on how to apply just click here.

If the job perhaps doesn`t quite match your skill set but you know someone who’d be perfect for the role then please send them this way – or just re-tweet it if you’re feeling really nice using the button below.

Thanks for looking and good luck to all applicants! Closing date for applications is the 16th August.

We’ve had some great feedback on the Giraffe site since it launched last year, culminating in our Webby award nomination, and then a little request from .net magazine landed in our inbox….

Lots of people have asked us about the Giraffe site, indeed some ‘want one just like it’ (only to be dissapointed when told it might not be the best solution for their funeral home). So we were only too happy to share the love when .net magazine approached us asking if we would like to fill up three of their finest pages with how we built the site, including screenshots, a tutorial and a Q&A.  Obviously we were happy to oblige (hey, its free advertising!), and a thousand words later (and a bit of editing of our rubbish jokes by the .net team)  it was sitting on the shelves of the local newsagent.

So if you fancy a bit of light reading grab yourself a copy and tell us what you think – it’s our third contribution to the magazine now, and as hardened fleet street journalists we can take the criticism!

It’s been a while since we blogged, mainly because it’s been a really busy few weeks and we’ve also had iPads to distract us. But the drought is over as we’ve got lots of news coming up including some fresh faces in the office and a few exciting new projects in the pipeline. So, without further ado lets get cracking and unveil the new site we’ve just launched for LIVESTRONG® FITNESS and the Indoorcycling Group (ICG)

What they said…

“Working with the worlds most inspirational philanthropic brand, the development of this program has required us to work with partners that are as committed to the cause as much as being commercial focused. It is on this merit and the sheer level of expertise and energy they bring to a campaign that I sincerely thank the team at Engage for their hard work to-date and their commitment to our on-going projects. Engage have been instrumental to the design and development of our www.IC-PRO.org education platform for fitness professionals across the globe. ”

Gary Warren, Global Product and Brand Director

Initial discussions about the site kicked off back in January, and from these meetings it became obvious that this project was going to require some pretty cutting edge coding to pull it off – which was fortunate because that’s kind of stuff we love!

The front end of the site is just the tip of the iceberg here, as it’s behind the scenes in the instructor area where things start to get a bit special. Housed here amongst the HTML5 and jQuery goodness is a whole online education portal where instructors wishing to teach the LIVESTRONG® Fitness I.C.E programme can log in and learn how to deliver their classes purely through online content delivery comprising of a mixture of text, training videos and even interactive games. This interactive course then culminates in a series of timed, online exams which instructors must pass before then can become an officially accredited LIVESTRONG® Fitness I.C.E trainer (complete with online printable certificate to prove it!)

There’s really too much to try and cover in this little old blog post, so I’ve pulled together a little screencast to give you a quick peek at things. (It’s HD, so expand it for the best viewing experience)

Currently, the site has been rolled out for the US and UK market, with the rest of the world due to follow shortly. Initial reactions have been great, with many heralding the training element as a revolution in online learning – which is nice!

Click to launch the site (Only US and UK territories are currently active)

Recognised as the leading international award honouring excellence on the Internet – we’ve always quite fancied grabbing ourselves a Webby Award (plus it looks like it’d make an awesome paperweight) and today we’ve found out we’re one step closer – having reached the final 5 in our category for the site we designed and built for Giraffe Restaurants.

Press buzz…

“The only award show for Internet sites that matters.”
- The Los Angeles Times

“The index of success in the global new media scene.”
- The Guardian UK

“Celebrate sites that pave important paths to the internet’s next phase.”
- The Wall Street Journal

So what does this mean?

Well firstly, it must mean we’re doing something right as the nominees have been whittled down from thousands of entries which comprise some of the best sites in the world (their words not mine!) Also, if we are lucky enough to beat off the stiff competition and grab first prize we get to attend the glitzy award ceremony held in New York – which would be absolutely awesome to be perfectly honest. We’ll just have to cross our fingers for that one though!

What’s next?

Well the restaurant category has two awards up for grabs – one for the site deemed to be the best by the judges panel, and another award for ‘people’s choice’ which is basically voted for by you guys. Now I’m sure you can now guess what I’m going to say, and yes, you’re right – we would really appreciate your vote!

Having gone through the voting procedure myself, I realise it’s a bit of a ball ache as you need to sign up first – but if you do choose to persevere and give us some love, then you can get that little warm feeling inside, like when you save a puppy or eat soup. Simply click the button below to kick things off – and thanks for the support!

Voting has now closed – thanks for all the support!

How links are treated on websites is usually dictated by the nature of the link (e.g. external links are traditionally opened in a new window) This can often cause confusion for less web-savvy users as they are suddenly faced with a new page containing unfamiliar content. We wanted to try and improve this process, and so came about ‘tBlank’.

The tBlank plugin is essentially very simple. When a user clicks on a link, a quick check is done to determine whether it’s an internal or external link. If it’s an external link a popup is then shown giving information about the link itself and also the option to either open the link in a new window, or the one they’re currently in. Their decision is then saved in a cookie and remembered throughout the rest of the website.

And that’s pretty much it! If it sounds like your kinda thaaaang and you fancy giving it a try, why not visit the labs page below for more information, examples and usage instructions.

So after 2 years of slowly outgrowing the old office, we finally bit the bullet, bundled all of our stuff into a couple of bin bags and made the big move. What followed were a few weeks of painting, shopping and cable tidying – but now we’re fully settled and enjoying our new Xbox space.

I’ve always placed great importance on work environment. After all, most of us spend more waking hours in the office than we do in own own homes – so creating a space which people actually enjoy spending time in is critical. Plus I genuinely believe that being in a creative environment is more stimulating – helping with the whole design process in a roundabout way.

We hope you like the end result anyway (pics below) and feel like it’s the kind of place you’d like to work in  – as I guess that’s the whole point of what we ultimately wanted to achieve. Also, on the off chance that you see anything you like, just leave a comment and I’ll let you know where we sourced it.

We’re excited to have been working on a new site for London’s hippest new Burger venue – Guerilla Burgers. We’ve been assured that no actual gorillas were harmed in the making of this tasty joint so you might even catch Sigourney Weaver chowing down if you’re lucky!

We’ve already got a holding page up so you can check out the menu and get involved ‘socially’ if that’s your thing, and are now working on the main site design so keep your eyes peeled for an imminent launch.

Finally, if you do head down to see what all the fuss is about – try to remember the house rules! (…and bring us a burger!)

• Rule #1 about the rules – don’t talk about them with your mouth full
• Rule #2 celebrate if you want but we don’t sing happy birthday
• Rule #3 music is at the volume we like – ear plugs available on request
• Rule #4 the customer is only usually right
• Rule #5 all you need is love – if the Beatles said it we believe it!
• Rule #7 if you don’t see it we don’t have it!

It’s been a while since we’ve posted anything over in the labs as we’ve just been so busy making new websites and winning awards that we haven’t had time to don our trusty white coats and googles and start messing about!

All that changes today with a quick look into Websockets with Javascript in Google Chrome (Sorry to all you designers out there – this one’s for the techy guys!)

Websockets are a part of the HTML 5 specification but have only so far been included in the latest version of Chrome (and more recently the nightly build of Firefox). To whet your appetite into what we think will be a significant new addition to a web developers toolbox – we’ve built a simple visualisation tool using Google maps.

In essence our little demo geocodes an address / town/ postcode and pushes the resulting longitude and latitude via a logfile and web socket to a Google map page, where we lay a marker in real time. We’ve also managed to use Node.js in our demo to which is also worth having a look at.

To learn more go ahead and have a look at the post and let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Some of you may have noticed that we launched the brand new site for Giraffe last week, but it’s never ‘truly’ launched until it’s been blogged about! So consider it official and stuff from this point onwards. Whoop whoop etc.

What they said…

“I can honestly say I have not enjoyed working with an agency as much as I have with Engage Interactive. Their approach, strategy and development of our new website has been fantastic. We all absolutely love the new website and are proud to have received so many compliments both from customers and other business leaders who are all really impressed with it.”

Juliette Joffe, Founder & Director, Giraffe

Now we’re pretty proud of this one as it’s the result of a lot of researching, thinking, planning and re-thinking to make sure we got it spot on (who said web design was easy?!) and early signs would indicate it’s paid off, with the launch having created a fair bit of internet buzz already.

Aside from the usual lovingly crafted code and graphics – the site’s also got some neat little touches in there if you take the time to explore a bit – with even more planned in the coming months. Behind the scenes, everything is ticking along nicely on our very own Engage CMS allowing the Giraffe team to completely control pretty much every aspect of the site from menu items though to new openings.

I’ll leave you to explore the site yourselves, though if you’re short on time (which is pretty much everyone at this time of year) when not let me point you in the direction of some of our favourite bits…

Hybrid search drop down

Finding your nearest restaurant has never been so easy (or accurate!) with our completely bespoke location finder. Built using jQuery and a lot of clever stuff, it allows visitors to simply choose a restaurant from a dropdown OR should you not have a clue where you are you can type in any street address, place name or even a landmark such as ‘Harrods’ or ‘Big Ben’ to find your closest location. This is especially useful in London  where many Giraffe visitors are tourists or day trippers who navigate simply via attractions rather than postcodes or areas.

Fully interactive menus

Strangely, many restaurant websites don’t really make a feature of the actual food and it’s hard enough for even the most technical of us to start salivating over PDF menu downloads.  So, determined to  give your taste buds a little treat we developed fully interactive menus which are completely browsable and come complete with an array of beautifully shot food images and featured dishes. You can see them for yourself by clicking here – but be warned – you’re going to get hungry!

…and then there’s still the shop, contact form, hug club and the homepage social media to mention!

We really hope you like browsing the site as much as we enjoyed building it. If you have any thoughts, comments, ridiculous Giraffe related puns or just suggestions – why not share them with us in the comments below? Thanks!