Category: Development

Steve Jobs, Apple and Quoakle

Steve Jobs has stepped down as CEO of Apple, handing the reigns over to Tim Cook, Apple's COO. While Steve Jobs will remain involved in Apple as chairman of the company, he will no longer run Apple on a day-to-day basis. To celebrate the end of his career as CEO of Apple, we thought it would be good to publish a quote from Steve Jobs that really must apply to Quoakle!Steve Jobs on designing products:“Look at the design of a lot of consumer products — they’re really complicated surfaces. We tried to make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.” – Steve Jobs in an MSNBCand Newsweek interview, Oct. 14, 2006.It would be great to know what Steve Jobs... Read More

Half a million click-throughs and counting!

More good news from the Quoakle office! Over the past five years, Quoakle's graphical directory has made searching for local businesses quicker and easier for thousands of users. Since August 2009, Quoakle's innovative page layout and simple presentation of information has enabled users to connect with local websites literally hundreds of thousands of times. The most recent statistics from Quoakle's CMS reveal the passing of the landmark half a million click-throughs to local websites. With the current dramatic expansion of the Days Out and Leisure Directory, the Quoakle team is aiming to reach one million click-throughs within the next twelve months.

Quoakle launches 14 new Counties!

A year ago, on the 'Introducing Quoakle Video', director Nigel Steele said "Our aim is to spread right across every county in the United Kingdom". Last week the team made major steps in that direction with the launch of 14 new counties, from Cornwall in the south-west to Cheshire in the north-west. The first topic within these counties is Days Out and Leisure. Having observed Quoakle's rise to number one on Google for the search term "days out in Gloucestershire", Nigel took the decision to push ahead with this major expansion of Quoakle's Days Out and Leisure Directory. Soon users will be able to flick from county to county looking for great places to visit and family activities and finding hundreds of websites with just one click. Nigel is pictured above next to the newly launched Days Out in Cheshire page. The expansion into Cheshire was something which gave him particular pleasure, having been born in the Cheshire market town of Nantwich.

Excellent 6 month Google Page Rank results for Quoakle

Quoakle's innovative graphical directory reports great improvement in Google Page rank during the last 6 months. The page rank rose at least one unit on 37 "logo pages" and the highest ranked page is now Days Out and Leisure in Gloucestershire at Google rank 4.The chart below shows a comparison between Google rank for Quoakle pages as on December 23rd 2010 and then as on 23rd June 2011.

Forest of Dean Bluebells launch Quoakle Web Media’s Glorious Gloucestershire Film series

Today Quoakle launched the first video in its Glorious Gloucestershire series! The subject matter chosen centred around the beautiful bluebells in the Forest of Dean and was filmed a few weeks ago. The Glorious Gloucestershire series is Quoakle's first venture into the "world of moving pictures" and aims to promote the county of Gloucestershire, steeped in history and full of natural beauty, with its many fabulous tourist attractions. Popular with visitors from the length and breadth of Britain, as well as visitors from abroad, Gloucestershire has so much for the locals to visit too. Quoakle aims to make some the great attractions across the county more well known.   Thanks to Ben and Joe for their hard work filming and editing "Forest of Dean Bluebells".   Forest of Dean Bluebells - Glorious Gloucestershire  

Good News Centre – Newent – the latest Gloucestershire website created by the Quoakle team

The Quoakle team continues to offer a growing range of services to businesses across the Gloucestershire region - supporting local companies in the design, development and promotion of their own website.Having recently completed a website for the well-established garden services company, Greenfields (which is proving to be very successful), the next exciting project was the re-designing of its website for the popular Coffee House and Christian Bookshop at Newent, the Good News Centre.The project started with one of those "divine appointments" when Quoakle's head of Client development, Sean Cresswell, having just returned from a mission trip to India, got chatting to Centre manager Donna Clark. He happened to mention he worked for a Christian company that created websites and a very positive business relationship was begun.Nigel Steele, the project co-ordinator for Quoakle, couldn't wait to produce something really special for the Good News Centre having enjoyed many visits to the bookshop and coffee shop over the last twenty years.After initial research into the websites of other Christian bookshops and Coffee Shops across the UK, Nigel talked with Donna and agreed the style and feel that she wanted the site to have - a vibrant, welcoming and contemporary look. Graphic Designer,... Read More

Quoakle’s new website design services

During the last year the Quoakle team have broadened the range of services offered to businesses across the Gloucestershire region and now offer support to local companies in the design, development and promotion of their own website.One of the first projects was with the well-established garden services company, Greenfields. When Churcham-based Greenfields Garden Services needed a new website for their expanding business, they looked no further than the other side of the A40 to Quoakle's team of website specialists.Greenfields Garden Services was started in 1988 by Chris Snell, comprising of one push along mower, a few hand tools and a small van and now employs over 40 people with a large client base across the South West, Midlands and Wales.Greenfields original connection with Quoakle was when they became the very first business to advertise on the innovative online business directory in September 2006. Greenfields helped with the official launch of Quoakle helping to plant hundreds of daffodils along the A40 in Churcham. During the last year, Quoakle's website promotion specialist, Nigel Steele, has been providing advice and help at Greenfields' Kitesnest Lane base for a range of internet marketing activities.Greenfields managing director, Chris Snell, said "The internet is the way... Read More

Thank You!

During the summer holidays, the number of people visiting Quoakle has gone up by an excellent 30%!! We're really excited about this, and just wanted to say a big 'Thank You' and 'Keep going'!We are regularly receiving over 200 visits a day. As you can see from the image, the ongoing trend is definitely rising, which is extremely encouraging. Although Quoakle is seeing over 200 visits a day, this has actually amounted to over 21 000 visits to business websites this month; almost 1000 per day! We're really happy that Quoakle is continuing to promote local business quickly, easily and frequently!Days Out and Restaurant pages in Gloucestershire are the top two page listings, however there are a growing number of visitors across all the counties!If you'd like to advertise with Quoakle, please visit the contact us page on the website: https://quoakle.com/contact-us/.Thanks for your continued support! Enjoy using Quoakle!

Away Day!

Some of the Quoakle team gathered in a beautiful area of the county, in early August, for a team strategy prayer day!The day was great fun, revealing some good insight on ways forward, as we journeyed back to see where Quoakle has come during the last four years. We were all very encouraged to see what's been achieved, and very excited about what's to come in the future.Here are a couple of pictures!

Website navigation made easy!

Throughout the four years that Quoakle has been growing, we've made navigation a high priority - helping our users go from page to page quickly and easily, so they and you can find what you're looking for.At the bottom of each page, you may have noticed links to other topics in that county, but before now, we've not been able to travel from say, our 'Days out' page in one county over to another 'Days Out' in a different county. Well - now you can!Mark and Jeremy have worked really hard to create a drop down box, that will develop over the next few weeks, allowing all our visitors to travel from county to county and stay with a particular topic.Try it out now! Go to www.quoakle.com and choose your topic. I've been working a lot in the garden recently, so I'd choose Gloucestershire, then Gardening to look for local Garden Centres. I'm willing to travel a bit, and live closely to Herefordshire, and now I can 'Choose another County' at the top of the page, and instantly look at the Garden Centres available in Herefordshire!We're really excited about this new development and love using it. We're sure you will... Read More

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