Quoakle gets a new look for 2015!

This is how you remember the Quoakle home page:

Now we are excited to be displaying the new look showing the different devices with which Quoakle can be found and used:

New website for RE Specialist, Roy Pitcher

Our latest project is for the widely experienced educator, Roy Pitcher. Roy is based in Alsager, the town where our director, Nigel, was brought up. Roy has been a school teacher, educator and trainer of teachers, author, consultant, inspector of schools and educational video producer over two generations at virtually all levels in the U.K. 


As a Christian teacher of religious education and pupils with special needs, he was concerned to find a basis for enhancing pupil attainment through multi-method approaches. When he became a teacher trainer he developed the concepts and practices that he describes in his new book "Jesus - a Master Teacher". Roy was soon to be launching his new book at the Christian Resources Exhibition in Manchester in October 2014, when he approached Nigel about helping him with a website.

Most of the content we were able to copy across from another site and place within the Quoakle "Mega Template" that Quoakle Web developer and designer, Stephen Holdstock, has created this year. New graphics were created and pages added such as useful links and a facility to help users purchase the book. Some of the content was re-organised to aid the user experience. 

The new website works well on all devices though is not responsive in the simplistic way that many sites now are. The JaMT website maintains the same website structure across all devices. 

To find out more about Roy Pitcher, please follow this link to Jesus - a Master Teacher.

Quoakle Websites Get A New Look

The Quoakle Team have been busy with all sorts of different projects for clients over the last few months and so have had little time for working on our own sites. However, last week Stephen began the upgrading process for a number of our own website templates.

First to receive the treatment was Community Pixels, a site that illustrates the breadth of our work, from Quoakle - the original graphical directory to Quoaklecards - the highly optimised one page website, and from Quoakle's Restaurant Directories to Churcham Website Design - the website that is a focus for our local, Gloucestershire clients.

The Community Pixels website now has a new deeper rotating banner on the home page (not shown). It also has an extending header and attractive mega footer with room for lots of important links. Quoakle's design team have gone for a smart grey for the mega footer with a bright, contemporary, light blue for the writing on the footer. As with all WordPress sites there are lots of options for sidebar or no sidebar and the use of widgets in various positions.

Next to receive a makeover was the actual Churcham Website Design website. Since 2008, Nigel and his small team have been developing websites for a number of clients in the village of Churcham as well as for clients in other parts of Gloucestershire. The Churcham Website Design site was launched to provide a local focus for the affordable and adaptable web solutions we are creating for local clients and local businesses of various sizes.

Stephen has now put this website into the same template as Community Pixels to give it a common look and feel. The mega footer and header use the same subtle and smart greys used on the new Community Pixels website. The overall look of these websites is now similar to Quoakle's Restaurant Directories, such as Swindon Restaurants and Hereford Restaurants and our popular UK Days Out directory - Great Days Out.

 Next is Quoaklecards ... still waiting for the upgrade.

Another Quoakle milestone ... half a million pageviews!

Quoakle's graphical directory has reached another great milestone ...  half a million pageviews!

Information taken from Google Analytics on Wednesday 9th April 2014 reveals that there have now been 583,436 pageviews since July 2007. Those visits were made by over 239,757 unique visitors to the directory!

Over 87.02% of visits to the directory were made by visitors who hadn't been on Quoakle before.

So lots of reasons to be encouraged by the progress that's been made especially considering the decision of the directors not to continue actively promoting the directory last Autumn and the related fall in visitors to Quoakle since September 2013. During this spring, however, visits are again rising without any money being spent on advertising the graphical directory. The latest figures from Alexa show Quoakle having its highest ever Alexa position as one of the top 2 million websites in the world at 1,761,851.

The Quoakle team looks ahead to the next six months with excitement and anticipation.

If you haven't been on Quoakle - the graphical directory yet, try it today, tell your friends and join the Quoakle-ution!

Great website developments using Google Maps

As a geographer and geography teacher, I have always loved maps.  So one of the most fun parts of developing Quoakle's UK Web Directory was designing the regions and working out how to organise the information from a geographical point of view using regions and counties ( and having to decide how to deal with new unitary authorities, ceremonial counties etc in a way that works for our users).

More recently as we have been launching a lot of new websites using the WordPress content management system, it has been fun to incorporate great maps using Google Maps. With the launch of the new Quoakle restaurant directories such as Oxford Restaurants  we have wanted to have a lot more flexibility in adding new pins or markers to our restaurant location maps.  Using the basic Google Maps was complex, so it was fantastic to find a really good plugin to do the job a few weeks ago!

The one we found was:   WP Google Maps
This is how Jean Galea describes it on the  WP Mayor blog:

The easiest to use Map Plugin! Create custom Google Maps with high quality markers containing locations, descriptions, images and links. Add your customized Google map to your WordPress posts and/or pages quickly and easily with the supplied shortcode. No fuss. no iFrames and super easy to use!

Key Features

• WP Google Maps uses the latest Google Maps API (V3)
• Super easy to use, no coding required!
• Create as many map markers as you need by simply typing in the address.
• Edit your markers with the click of a button.
• Google Maps Streetview supported.
• Define your own width, height and zoom level for your Google Map.
• Create a map in less than a 30 seconds!
• WordPress 3.0 friendly.
• No advertising or links.

Have a look at some of the new maps the Quoakle team have been creating:

Map of Oxford Restaurants 
Map of Cheltenham Restaurants 
Map of Gloucester Restaurants
Map of Hereford Restaurants
Map of Worcester Restaurants
Map of Days Out in Gloucestershire

Map of Christian Schools in the United Kingdom

Introducing the Quoakle's Restaurant Directories

During Autumn 2012, the Quoakle team began launching its new portfolio of Restaurant Directories.

The latest to hit Google's top page is Hereford Restaurants.

Building on the expertise gained through the development of Quoakle's easy-to-use local business directory, the team launched a series of restaurant directories in Gloucestershire and the surrounding counties. We used exact match domain names in order to be found easily on search engines such as Google. The following are the Quoakle Restaurant Directories now live on the web:

Gloucester Restaurants
Cheltenham Restaurants
Restaurant Oxford
Swindon Restaurants
Worcester Restaurants
Coffee Shops in Gloucestershire
Tea Rooms in Gloucestershire

So what's special about a Quoakle Restaurant Directory?

... It's quick and easy to use!
Drawing on ideas refined on Quoakle's local business directory, we wanted to create a restaurant directory with a clean, clear look, and a simple page layout. On a Quoakle Restaurant Directory, we want to promote each restaurant's brand through the prominent display of its logo as well as enable users to see at a glance exactly what they want ... and very quickly!

Our mission is to connect local people quickly and easily with local restaurants as well as helping those visiting an area to find out where to eat, as simply as possible.

... It's easy to find on Google!
Our website is consistently in the top 3 of Google on the organic listings (left hand side of the page).
Check this out by typing into Google the keyword phrase: "Gloucester Restaurants".
Using a memorable, exact match domain such as www.gloucesterrestaurants.co.uk is going to help us to make sure the website stays in that position.

... No reviews!
Lots of people are looking for reviews - so there are well known review websites. Other restaurant goers would rather hear what the restaurants themselves want to promote as their strengths - and that's what the Quoakle Restaurant Directories want to help their users to find out ... quickly and easily.

... No banner ads!
Maybe you don't mind banner ads, but our goal as Quoakle Restaurant Directories is to "do what is says on the tin" and not distract users with all sorts of other things they're not looking for.
So for example, if someone is looking for Restaurants in Gloucester, then that is what we'll present to them on our Gloucester Restaurant Directory.


Can any restaurant be promoted on this directory?
We are pleased to promote all restaurants in the Gloucester area which have a current, satisfactory or higher, food hygiene rating.

As a small, family-run company with a friendly approach, we look forward to working with restaurants as well as helping our users find great places to eat out!   Click here to get in touch!

Quoakle visits reach a quarter of a million!

I don't know quite when it happened, but some time during 25th July 2013, Quoakle's graphical directory reached a fantastic milestone ...  a quarter of a million visits!

As you can see from the stats on the left (taken from Google Analytics on Saturday 10th August 2013), there have now been 253,624 visits since our records began in July 2007. Those visits were made by over 200,000 unique visitors who looked at a total of over half a million different pages on the directory!

You can see from the stats that an average user looks at 2.11 pages and stays on Quoakle's graphical directory for over 2 and a half minutes. The bounce rate tells you that just over 60% of visitors just looked at one page then left the website.

Over 86% of visits to the directory were made by visitors who hadn't been on Quoakle before.

So lots of reasons to be encouraged by the progress that's been made. The Quoakle team looks ahead to the next quarter of a million visits with excitement and anticipation.

If you haven't been on Quoakle - the graphical directory yet, try it today, tell your friends and join the Quoakle-ution!