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- After partnering with @ilisys for years, they chose us to launch their new website design http://t.co/KsOQYmju We're excited! 1 week ago
- Just your average set of Friday treats: http://t.co/C0VyQOXI 2 months ago
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Cameron is a founding member of Flint Interactive, a Melbourne based digital agency. Cameron has been involved in hundreds of web projects and currently holds the position of Technical/Managing Director. Follow him on twitter @cammanderson or view his profile on LinkedIn
Posts by camm:
- Use large product photography
- Include a “look book” or “shop by look”
- Provide decent filtering options
- Use drop-down listings of category/sub-categories
- Provide the option to list many products at once
- Tell the client how to care for their product
- Invest in good sizing information
- Describe the material used
- Provide a decent returns policy
- The power of free shipping
Hiring (the nightmare that it is)
June 17th, 2011Hiring (the nightmare that it is)
I’ll be honest, in times gone by, we’ve made some mistakes with the hiring process.
Numerous no-no’s!
For one, we haven’t been very good checking references – we’ve too often put faith in how the person has presented and their confidence in their skills.
We’re guilty of leading during interviews – indicating our ideas instead of testing candidate’s thinking.
We even gave a second interview to someone who showed up with a hangover! (Unsurprisingly, that didn’t really work out).
A lot of the issues we’ve faced are commonplace in small companies.
Attracting the right candidates and being good at performance monitoring has always been a little difficult. We’ve often hired around the demand of needing the position, instead of waiting to grow our business based on finding the cream of the crop. Where we’ve rushed the appointment, it hasn’t worked out.
We’ve too-often invested heavily in roles on good-faith alone instead of patience and persistence in the hiring process.
All of that changed this year. We had a couple of big wake-up calls that prompted us to action. We’ve changed our attitude towards hiring; diligence and patience is the new motto.
Our fundamental attitude has shifted – we now accept having to deal with the situation while we wait to find the right person – even if this means we have increased pressure in certain areas.
We’ve honed our interviewing process – ensuring we’re more thorough so that everyone is better off; The team is happier with the placement, the candidate more comfortable in the organisation, and Flint Interactive can grow on the back of a happy team in which everyone is doing a great job.
As I said, where we made these mistakes, it didn’t work out – but the team that we have at the moment is amazing and I have extreme confidence in their skills and abilities to deliver awesome sites.
This is about the team we have and a brand that is built on a healthy balance of hard work and team culture.
10 Online Fashion Store Design Recommendations
June 7th, 2011After working with the fashion industry for some time, I have decided to put a list of design recommendations together to help create more usable and better online e-commerce experiences for customers. Some of these apply to larger range fashion stores but the underlying principles apply to boutique fashion labels.
Here is a quick overview of some of the things to include:
Growing a Studio
June 6th, 2011We’ve grown over the years, starting from a team of 6, like a family, which everyone clearly had a role, and everyone sat together, having our morning chats and our friday fun times, to a reputable medium size agency. It has come with growing pains, and things that we had to try our best to hold on to.
Ideal location for a developer…
November 16th, 2010
Living and working in fitzroy/collingwood area is just awesome as a web developer – it just suits the ideal lifestyle of a coder. There are just so many areas to get decent coffee, pop into one of dozens of drinking holes around the area or have some amazing places for breakfast, like proud mary, rosamond, arcadia, cavallero etc. I would have to say that when summer comes around it is just awesome – most people either walk or ride into work, and the streets get busy out onto the streets from pubs.
Aloi Project
October 31st, 2010Cameron Manderson, the Technical Director for Flint Interactive, has been working on an open-source project called ‘Aloi Project’ as Lead Developer in his spare time. It is a PHP Web Application Architecture that is for building web sites and web applications, and is aimed at being a “ground up” advanced framework.
Flint currently uses a different PHP framework which it has developed its’ CMS on. Aloi project will eventually be the engine behind the CMS.
For those of you interested, you can follow the development through @AloiProject and following @CamManderson. Maybe you want to get involved?
Market day
September 17th, 2010
Site tours are fun, and this has to be one of our favourites. A few lucky members of our team visited the Prahran Markets, all in the name of research.
Over the coming months, Flint will be designing and building a new website for the oldest continuing market in Australia. We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to visit the market to get an insight into the history of a food institution in Melbourne as part of our discovery workshop.
We were introduced to key traders and they told us their wonderful stories about the market. They taught us the difference between quality and cheap produce and why it’s sometimes better to pay that little extra. The Prahran Market stands out from other markets because of their specialty goods.
After the tour, we were given some big shopping bags to fill up with goodies. It was only fair that we took back some cheese, olives, dips, baguettes and spreads back to the studio to share. Here are some photos of everyone enjoying the feast.
Teppanyaki!
July 16th, 2010The end of the financial year called for a celebration of a milestone. The team at Flint Interactive head off to teppanyaki inn in the city for some great food and drinks. We have recently welcomed a couple of new team members to the team, so was also a great opportunity for everyone to get to know each other a little more over a lively hot plate.
Work Health checks
July 15th, 2010Flint participated in the work health checks to offer a chance for the team to learn more about their health and risks of diabetes and heart disease. :-) some blood was shed to learn more about cholesterol and measurements and lifestyle discussed to develop risk profiles.
They are definitely worth running and getting involved in.
Afternoon of massages
July 1st, 2010The start of the new financial year was kicked off with an afternoon of massages, to focus on thinking straight for a big new financial year.
With a full studio, a bit of time out closed away from the studio with some relaxing music, sitting in the chair, while a magician works on your shoulders, back and upper neck was very, very welcome.
We are looking to establish a regular arrangement, so Flint contacted a local store selling massage equipment to see if they had any recommendations for a new small business starting out offering corporate massages. We thought it is best to support a local new business, and they were really really awesome!
Studio gets a pool table
July 1st, 2010Awesome! In addition to our studio foosball table (which has had some classic games), we have got a beautiful burgundy table, built by a local fitzroy family business on Gertrude street. So smooth, this is going to be used for some big nights. Good to get the team challenging each other!
