News & Blog

Merry Christmas and a very prosperous new year!

All our team would like to wish our clients a very merry Christmas and prosperous new year!

Our office will be closed from today until 9am on Tuesday 3rd January 2012.

All our servers will be continuously monitored 24/7 and we have staff on-call should there be any issues. If you need to contact us during the closure, please either leave a message by calling our normal number (messages are automatically emailed to on-call staff) or visit our support page to raise a ticket.

We've had an exceptionally busy year and are eternally grateful to our clients for their continued support. Thank you!

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Why we use our own custom web platforms...

One growing market for us is online retail business owners switching from sites built upon open source software.

In this article we discuss some of the issues facing clients who had online shops based upon such software and the problems they have faced before deciding to move to us.

The brand new 2Dcommerce Facebook Catalogue App

We're pleased to launch a Facebook Catalogue for Diva Dogs, stars of Sky 1's "A Different Breed"!

To find out more and have a Facebook catalogue of your own, please contact our team.

We're Hiring! Read on to find out more...

Web Marketing

We are looking for a highly motivated and organised individual to expand our current web marketing team.

The right candidate will be be able to bring marketing strategies to life from the initial planning through to completion; creating reports and plans of action to further enhance website performance. A good understanding of search engine optimisation and what makes a website rank well is a must.

2D Product Photography, and why product photography is important

A well known and old saying states, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” this is never more true than when trying to convert visitors to your web site into paying customers. Clear, crisp and high resolution images for use on your online shop increases sales and lends credibility to the products for sale, as well as to the company selling them.

Le Mans Run website updated with 2DCMS

The Le Mans Run team required a website which was exciting and appealing to car enthusiasts whilst organising trips to the worlds oldest and greatest 24 hour endurance race in Le Mans, France. Each year the team travel with up to 30 other cars including Ferrari's, Lamborghini's and Aston Martin's and the infamous 'Gulf Bus' from London to Le Mans in an adrenaline fueled 5 day adventure, and 2011 was to be no different.

Using 2Dmedia's simple yet effective CMS, the team have updated the site with latest news, date's and prices for the 2011 run whilst maintaining the style and experience on the site with minimal effort. The site also features the teams latest twitter updates via an automatic feed which combined with the photo's and videos updated through 2DCMS keep the site fresh and up to date.

Using Stock Photography

Tasteful use of professional looking images can really bring a website design to life and help to emphasise your key selling points. Of course, that's not to say there aren't some advantages to being in a position to take all of your own photographs or design your own images, it could be a good way to show customers your work environment and get to know your company better. However, when it comes to high quality professional photos to show off your company’s product domain, or to give a little bit of flare to a text heavy area of a site, not everyone running a business owns and knows how to use an SLR camera with expensive lenses combined with a good working knowledge of Photoshop or Illustrator.

Jason jumps from 12,700 feet for 'Help for Heroes'

On Tuesday 8th March, our lead designer Jason jumped (and successfully landed!) from a plane 12,700 feet over Salisbury Plain to raise money for Help for Heroes. The tandem skydive with the Red Devils comprised of a 15 minute plane ride to reach altitude, followed by a somersault out of the plane and a 43 second free-fall, travelling at an average of 125mph. A few minutes later, his feet were back on terra-firma before promptly collapsing and kissing the ground in relief. 

To see some comedy faces and a petrified Jason, you can watch the initial jump and freefall here -> Watch the skydive!

The jump raised just over £1,200 for the charity which supports our soldiers wounded in service to our country, well done Jason!

New site for Southern Reclaim Brick Merchants

One of our favourite websites this month was created for Southern Reclaim Brick Merchants, it's a small brochure site with a product gallery built in allowing customers to browse the range of different stock available.

The site is built on 2Dcms, allowing the client to easily update pages and add new stock.

Colourful additions to our new office...

The new 2Dmedia office in Rivenhall is taking shape, as demonstrated here by Jason and the newest member of the team Will relaxing in our new GIANT bean bags.

We've not had much time to relax though, January has proven exceptionally busy with a wide range of new projects being booked in, including several quite large projects taking full advantage of the latest version of our online shop platform. We're excited to launch these new sites - keep an eye on the Our Work page for the latest releases.

Happy New Year 2011

Happy new year!

As you may know we moved over Christmas so our new address applies from now on (the address is at the bottom of our site). Our phone numbers remain the same.

Now is the time to be putting your ideas into action, to book a meeting (and get a little tour of our new office!) please call our team.

If you're using MailOrderWorks, don't forget to update your VAT settings - see this page for guidance. If you have a website that lists prices and you need them updated (and related text about VAT) please contact our team.

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, for now, all the best for 2011.

Christmas opening times

We're moving into our new building over Christmas, so we'll be closing our office from 1pm on the 24th December (Friday) and reopening at 9am on 4th January (Tuesday).

Our office move will have no effect on our servers, these are all located in secure off-site data centre facilities (Heathrow and Central London) so your website, email and so on will work as normal.

All our servers will continue to be monitored 24/7 with staff on call to deal with any critical issues. As usual, to report a problem please either use the support form on our website or call the office number (01376 388 150) and leave a message (voicemail is emailed to on call staff).

We wish all our clients a very merry Christmas and prosperous new year. Thank you for your continued business and we look forward to working with you all in the new year. 

Our Lead Designer Jason Stone gets featured on Creative Boom

Jason, our lead designer, has been featured in online design mag 'Creative Boom'. We always love to see our staff getting recognition for their work! Read the full article to find out more... 

The Clubhaus

The Clubhaus is an online shop with a unique and modern design to give the brand a slick, accessible image. Behind the scenes it's powered by the award winning 2Dcommerce software and fully integrated with MailOrderWorks for real time stock control and efficient order processing - essential for any growing internet business today.

La Mack London

La Mack London are a new fashion brand offering a collection of stylish waterproof ladies designer raincoats and rainwear. With the likes of Davina McCall wearing their range on the latest series of Big Brother, it's clear the range will be a massive hit.

WhyBuyNew

WhyBuyNew sell a huge range of both B-Stock and new DJ equipment. As their business grew they needed a powerful system to manage their stock and warehouses effectively along with improving picking and dispatch processes in order to cope with ever growing order volumes.

Garden Gear

Garden Gear are a specialist online retailer of products aimed at gardeners. From their website and Amazon, they sell a wide range of quality tools, equipment, gadgets and accessories with all their orders processed by our mail order system, MailOrderWorks.

Bambolina

Bambolina have been using MailOrderWorks, our mail order management software, for some time alongside their existing website, developed by a third party. They approached us, enquiring about our online shop platform and its ability to integrate seamlessly with MailOrderWorks, allowing real time stock control and order processing without any manual data entry.

Featured in Web Designer magazine

Jason, our lead designer, is featured in this month's Web Designer magazine along with several of our client's websites. We're really pleased to see our team getting recognition for their work, well done Jason!

2Dgroup T-Shirts Contest

We have a new set of 5 t-shirts, all with unique ‘geeky’ slogans on the front, and our shiny 2Dgroup logo on the back. The different designs are: “I see dead pixels”, “”, “I’m not anti-social, I’m just not user friendly”, “I’ll try being nicer when you try being smarter” & “hard work nevers kills anyone - who’s supervising”.

But it gets better! You can win your own unique t-shirt with a slogan of your choice, the more steps you complete the more chance you have of winning!

Press: Braintree and Witham Times

Sam (Managing Director) was in today's Braintree and Witham Times, they reported on the entrepreneur award he won at the Colchester Business Awards.

Special Offer on fully branded Newsletter template design

For this month only we are offering our newsletter design service for just £199! Newsletters are a great way of keeping your customer base in the loop when it comes to important news, special offers or any other information you might want to communicate.

The package includes a fully branded newsletter designed and ready to send using our powerful email campaign software.

Contact us for more information or to order.

An exciting start to 2010

It's been an exciting start to the year, in addition to the brochure sites under construction we're currently working on 8 new online shops, all based on our award-winning eCommerce platform. We're looking forward to launching these, not least because of some of the exciting new features we've created - including a new navigation system that makes finding the right product much easier than browsing through extensive categories. Keep an eye out for them on the 'our work' page.

Weather - varying opening times

Due to the current weather conditions many of our staff are finding it increasingly difficult traveling to the office. Because of unpredictable travel times our opening time may vary from 9am and should the weather worsen we may also be forced to close early.

Most of our team have access to their email and our phone system from home so we'll continue to operate as closely to normal as posible. We appreciate your understanding.

Christmas Holidays

We would like to wish all clients a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

During the Christmas period our office will be closed from 3pm on Wednesday 23rd of December 2009 and will open at 9am on Monday 4th of January 2010. All servers will continue to be monitored 24/7 with engineers on call throughout this period. To report faults or for critical support, please use our Client Support form.

2Dmedia win 'Business Innovation of the Year 2009'

We're pleased to announce our latest award, presented at the Colchester District Business Awards for our innovations in eCommerce, specifically our integrated online shop and mail order management package that offers centralised order processing and stock control for multiple sales channels, including real time online shop integration.

eCommerce system updated

After 6 months development we're pleased to roll out the first set of sites using our new eCommerce platform, integrated with the latest version of MailOrderWorks, now in version 6. The new platform adds a range of features and is even more flexible, allowing us to produce effective online shops that are tailored to our clients needs.