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How Secure Is Your Website?

TOP TIP THIS WEEK:
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and it will keep your internet connection secure, allowing you to browse the web, pay for e-commerce products and transfer funds with ease. This information you put online could be anything sensitive or personal which can include credit card numbers and other financial information, names and addresses.
Next time you are browsing the internet, look out for https:// next to your website domain. HTTPS (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure) appears in the browser bar when a website is secured by an SSL certificate.
At LFI Creative, we recently had a client come to us, stating that their website was not secure and was loading slowly. We were asked to install SSL, monitor their website activity and transfer the system to us. Within two weeks, we were delighted to hear that they had received new revenue through their website and this will lead on to further business for them.
We are more than happy to secure your website to keep you safe from threats – Contact us to find out more!
Web Design Scotland
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Black Friday

Black Friday Statistics in the UK in 2022

Black Friday is a recent tradition in the UK, after Amazon started to offer Black Friday deals to British shoppers in 2010.

The tradition of Black Friday shopping dates back to 1960s Philadelphia, when tourists would start their Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving, causing a sudden increase of shoppers in the city to give business to the shops. 2022 marks the 12th year of Black Friday shopping in the UK – so how are we preparing for it? How early do shoppers start planning for Black Friday? And how much did the pandemic affect Black Friday over the past two years?

Black Friday Britain: Everything you Need to Know

  • UK shoppers start searching for Black Friday deals as early as July!
  • Amazon, Halfords, Molton Brown and AO are the UK’s top Black Friday brands
  • Covid-19 seems to have had a negative impact on Black Friday’s popularity, with average monthly Google searches for Black Friday-related terms dropping by 39% between 2019 and 2021.

How Early Do Shoppers Start Preparing for Black Friday in the UK?

Black Friday deals are a fantastic way to go Christmas shopping and it’s likely that many people save their Christmas budget for November.

  • People in the UK start searching for Black Friday as early as July, 4 months before Black Friday deals begin!
  • Black Friday anticipation really starts in August, when monthly searches jumped up from July’s figure of 29,480 to 47,380.
  • People in the UK seem to show considerable interest in late Black Friday deals, searching 61,900 times for Black Friday-related queries in December 2021.

Which Brands Are Most Popular Amongst UK Shoppers on Black Friday?

Rank Brand Total Google searches made in the UK in November 2021
1 Amazon 90,500
2 Halfords 18,100
3 Molton Brown 18,100
4 AO 18,100
5 Hotel Chocolat 14,800
6 Mulberry 14,800
7 Samsung 14,800
8 DFS 9,900
9 Vivienne Westwood 9,900
10 Smyths Toys 8,100

 

  • Amazon is the most searched-for brand in relation to Black Friday deals, accumulating a total of 90,500 Google searches in November 2021. That’s 5 times higher than its closest competitors.
  • Next up are Halfords, Molton Brown and AO, with an average of 18,100 searches being made for each brand alongside the term ‘Black Friday’ in November 2021. That puts bike hardware, fragrances and electronics among the most sought-after Black Friday products online.
  • Hotel Chocolat, Mulberry and Samsung seem to be the third most popular Black Friday brands, adding chocolate, fashion and phones to the list of top Black Friday products.

How Did the Pandemic Affect Black Friday? 

The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021 drove many UK shoppers from the high street to ecommerce shopping due to lockdowns and illnesses. It’s reasonable to assume that the online culture of Black Friday shopping was impacted by this – but how much, and in what way

  • Interest in Black Friday seemed to peak in 2019, when people in the UK searched an average of 418,507 times per month.
  • During the pandemic of 2020 and 2021 the volume of Google searches for Black Friday reduced significantly compared to previous years, experiencing a drop of 39% between 2019 and 2021.
  • The biggest year-by-year decrease was between 2019 and 2020, when Black Friday searches dropped from 418,507 down to 280,045.

Did the Pandemic Have an Impact on Black Friday Spending? 

So how much does the UK spend on Black Friday deals every year? And did this change over the pandemic?

  • The average Black Friday spend in 2021 was £275, £25.67 less than the average spend in 2020.
  • In 2020, the average Black Friday spend nearly reached £300 (£295.67).
  • That’s an increase of nearly £50 (£44.47) since 2019, despite interest in Black Friday deals appearing to decrease between 2019 and 2020.

The total amount spent on Black Friday increased from £5.6 billion in 2019 to just under £6 billion in 2020. 

  • However, this figure dropped by over a billion between 2020 and 2021, falling from nearly £6 billion down to £4.8 billion.

Black Friday is a great opportunity to stock up on items and Christmas gifts in the run-up to the holiday season, especially on a budget. For more ideas about the types of Christmas gifts to buy on Black Friday, contact LFI Creative for your corporate gifts needs.

Web Design Scotland
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Zip Files

Zip files can be used for a lot different things. File compression, encryption, split archives, and more are all just a few clicks away once you understand the different things that zip archives are capable of.

File compression is an incredibly important part of the digital workspace. We can send more data at faster speeds than has ever been possible, which is why ZIP files are such a popular tool for businesses all across the world. ZIP is a widely used archive file format that’s used to compress one or more files together into a single location, reducing the overall size, and making it easier to transport the files. a ZIP file is a way to store or transfer data in a more efficient way. However, it’s not the only way to compress files, so be sure to look at the different compression options to work out the best archive file system for your needs.

Contact us find out how we can help you in a digital environment!
#digital #design #business

Website Design Aberdeen
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Always pay for the best professional you can….

Always pay for the best professional you can….

I had a chat with a client the other day, a good person who wanted to do his own logo. He showed me what he had done and to be honest it was pretty amateurish, but he knew this and asked “what do you think of it?”..I said “do you want me to sugar coat this or be honest?”. I basically told him that “you get what you pay for!”. When I’m looking for a service you can do yourself, it will usually cost you in the long run. He totally agreed with me and by the end of our conversation comparing his skill to another that will do it cheaper there is always someone will do it cheaper.

Why use an agency like LFI Creative? You get the benefit of not only a fresh, new design but the expertise that comes with having a creative team of people on hand to help you navigate digital marketing, advertising, and branding elements of your business.
The benefit of having an agency to help you with your corporate brand is significant and will show in the long run for your business and brand.

Most of us on LinkedIn are professionals and when I read posts, I know pretty quickly if they are focused individuals and are professional and that will they do a good job for my clients when I refer them, as it will come back to me if the work is done badly or not in a professional manner.
#creative #branding #business #logo #professionallogo #help #people #team #marketing #designagency

Logo Design Aberdeen
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BMP – Did You Know?

The BMP format is an uncompressed raster file designed to display high-quality images on Windows and store printable photos.

Although you may see this format occasionally referred to as Device Independent Bitmap (or DIB), a BMP file stands for bitmap and is commonly pronounced bump. Microsoft originally developed the BMP format for its Windows operating system to maintain the resolution of digital images across different screens and devices. It can store two-dimensional images either in color or black and white. In the 1990s, Microsoft developed the BMP file format to allow image data to be displayed independently of Windows devices. Why did this matter? Once the files could be viewed on different devices, the new BMP format — which prevented images from becoming blurred or distorted — removed the need for a graphics adapter.

For many of the same reasons that BMP files are great for storing photos, they’re also a good option when you want to print intricate, full-color photos. Unlike JPEGs, which compress image file data, BMPs don’t lose data each time you edit and save them.

BMPs are generally large, uncompressed files. They are great at handling detailed, high-quality images, but at the same time, this them harder to share and store. JPEGs, on the other hand, are easy to share or use on websites because they’re compressed into a smaller size. But each time you compress a JPEG, it will lose some of its image data. Discover more differences between BMPs and JPEGs.

Banner Design Aberdeen
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Haughton Arms Stationery

? EXHIBITION ANNOUNCEMENT ?
We are delighted to supply our friends at Haughton Holiday Park with with Business Cards, Flyers and Pop Up Banners for their exhibition at Love Touring this weekend.
Be sure to see them at P&J Live this weekend from 28th – 30th October.
https://haughtonholidaypark.com/
#exhibition #holiday #aberdeen #caravan
Logo Design Aberdeen
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PNG – Did You Know?

The PNG file format is widely used on websites to display high-quality digital images. Created to exceed the performance of GIF files, PNGs offer not just compression, but also a much broader and brighter color palette.

PNG is short for Portable Network Graphic, a type of image file. It’s particularly popular file type with web designers because it can handle graphics with transparent or semi-transparent backgrounds. The file format isn’t patented, so you can open a PNG using any image editing software without the need for licensing.

PNG files, which use the .png extension, can handle 16 million colors — which definitely sets them apart from most file types.

PNGs are the next evolution of the GIF format, which had already been around for eight years when PNGs first launched. GIFs had several drawbacks, like requiring a patent license and a limited range of just 256 colors, which didn’t keep pace with ever-improving computer screen resolution. To avoid these issues, PNG files were made patent-free and included a significantly larger color palette. PNGs, as opposed to GIFs, are a single-image format — they don’t support animation.

Designers often use PNG files for logos. That’s because the format supports transparent backgrounds, which means designers can layer logo files on different backgrounds in a way that looks natural.

Logo Design Aberdeen
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PDF – Did You Know?

Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. Each PDF file encapsulates a complete fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, and other information needed to display it.

PDF was standardized as ISO 32000 in 2008. The last edition as ISO 32000-2:2020 was published in December 2020.

PDF files may contain a variety of content besides flat text and graphics including logical structuring elements, interactive elements such as annotations and form-fields, layers, rich media (including video content), three-dimensional objects and various other data formats. The PDF specification also provides for encryption and digital signatures, file attachments, and metadata to enable workflows requiring these features.

Adobe Systems made the PDF specification available free of charge in 1993. In the early years PDF was popular mainly in desktop publishing workflows, and competed with a variety of formats such as Common Ground Digital Paper, Farallon Replica and even Adobe’s own PostScript format.

In December 2020, the second edition of PDF 2.0, ISO 32000-2:2020, was published, including clarifications, corrections and critical updates to normative references.[13] ISO 32000-2 does not include any proprietary technologies as normative references