User Experience-Focused Web Design Makes Hireimmigrants.ca a One-Stop Help Center for Employers November 30, 2011 — TORONTO, ONTARIO — Toronto-based digital marketing agency Kobayashi Online has redesigned Hireimmigrants.ca to provide a user experience that guides employers through the process and benefits of recruiting, retaining and promoting skilled immigrants. Hireimmigrants.ca is an initiative of ALLIES (Assisting Local Leaders with Immigrant Employment Strategies), whose mission is to support local efforts in Canadian cities to successfully adapt and implement programs that further the suitable employment of skilled immigrants.…
Author: Brent Kobayashi
Design, Layout, Functionality: the Basic Elements of Web Experience
A great webpage is more than just the product of good code. Think back to the last time you navigated a website and found the information, product or service you were looking for. [Updated January 2018] If this was a positive experience, chances are that a lot of thought went into creating a site that looks good and provides you with what you want in the simplest way. This type of site uses design, layout, and functionality to create an…
Kobayashi Online Supports Cut-A-Thon and Toy Drive
Kobayashi Online is proud to be a supporting sponsor of Donato Salon + Spa’s Cut-A-Thon and Toy Drive for SickKids this weekend. Kobayashi Online handles many aspects of Donato’s Web presence, having created their eCommerce website and integrated blog, as well as a custom email gift certificate solution. A successful charity campaign needs to have a strong online element, and for this latest campaign, Kobayashi Online added a Cut-A-Thon pop up ad to both the donato.ca and donatoacademy.com websites. The…
Around the Office: Urban Type, Meta Data, Grooveshark’s Blues, more
Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Want your content to be found online? Wayne wants you to know about an HTML standard that can be understood by the major search engines. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! have all agreed on schema.org as a universal way of providing meta data (or microdata) elements within HTML. This means you can…
6 ways to become unlikable: Is your Facebook Page alienating your friends?
Facebook Pages are great for keeping your company’s fans updated on the latest developments, promotions, and information about your company and industry. Visitors who click the “Like” button on your Page will be able to see posts from your Facebook Page when they access their Facebook timeline. “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t necessarily apply to a Facebook Page. Even if it does, your fans will grow tired of your Facebook Page if being a friend doesn’t benefit them.…
Around the Office: WordPress Security, Patent Peeves, Encrypted Searches, More
Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Roberto found out a few ways to thoroughly secure a WordPress-based site. Some tips include never using the default “admin” user name, installing the WP Security Scan plugin, and protecting the wp-config.php file. Choosing a secure password is also important, so pick something better than “guest”. Daveed is interested in the…
Around the Office: Beezix tips, footnoting the Web, sharing trends, more
Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Imagine if the Internet were peer-reviewed. Daveed found a project this week, hypothes.is, which is designed to let you easily slice through misinformation online. Hypothes.is is seeking funding to create something like as a browser plug-in for Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome, which will support comments on all Web pages. Hypothes.is…
Design Focus: Better Place’s online home
The site for electric vehicle technology firm Better Place happened to be so stylish and well-organized that we thought we’d feature it on Design Focus. It’s a clean and focused corporate website that shows a progressive, professional, and practical company — exactly the image an engineering firm would want to present. And it incorporates a lot of design, marketing and SEO features that make the site notable. It also incorporates the content management system WordPress, which makes updating content easier, and…
Five reasons why your business should make a Facebook Page
Since Facebook introduced “Facebook Pages” in 2007, a wide array of organizations, businesses, celebrities, and brands have been using them to broadcast information to those “followers” or “fans” who choose to connect with them. Having a Facebook Page has garnered considerable buzz in the marketing world, but it does require some effort to have a successful Page. One of the cornerstones of our online marketing philosophy is that your reputation is built through all interactions you have with customers and potential clients.…
Around the Office: Google’s comment crawling, the business of themes, more
Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Roberto found Sawyer Hollenshead’s tips on building WordPress themes as a business to be a great resource for developers who are considering getting into designing themes around the WordPress content management system and blogging platform. Among the important takeaways was to build a solid user base by prompting whoever downloaded his…