🇬🇧 WordCamp Whitley Bay 2024

The wise man built his house upon the rock and all that; foundations are key. The success of a client/agency relationship starts with the curator of these relationships, you. You have to be a cornerstone in whom they trust.

In her 20-minute talk, Mollie will share her insights on how to build lasting client relationships. She will offer her top tips for account strategy and growth, drawing on her extensive experience in the field.

At the last WordCamp Whitley Bay, we heard about Joe, who went on a trip to the seaside and came back to find his site gone, his hosting company a victim of ransomware. Nine months later, we are going to revisit Joe. I hope he is doing alright!

Almost everybody relies to some degree on some form of content marketing. We do market and keyword research, and we try to spot opportunities. We build landing pages and write articles to try and boost our rankings, optimize our ads, get traffic, and convert visitors. So what happens when that stops working?

It’s time to ask hard questions about the value of our content. What purpose does it serve, when the internet is drowning in generic, AI-generated articles, when search is ‘ambient’ and keyword-less, and when Google has no incentive to crawl, index or rank our websites? How will brands compete for attention in solved query spaces, when search engines neither want nor need our content… when they can just synthesize content from what they already know?

Born in the North East, Greggs is now one of the nation’s favourite food to go brands, renowned for being both fun and fun-loving – but what’s it like to write code for them? When the pandemic hit in 2020, we rapidly accelerated our multi-channel development strategy and, because of this investment, our numbers have grown exponentially. Our culture and values are what makes Greggs, Greggs and as we grow, we keep these at the heart of every decision we make. This talk will look at how we keep the good vibes rolling – while simultaneously fostering a culture of collaboration and fun, specifically within the IT & Business Change department.

What do we really mean when we talk about “high-scale” sites or projects? What’s the difference between performance and scale? And why are some multi-million projects slower than your 5 minute side project?

Using lessons learned from real-world experience working on enterprise projects and running a host serving billions of views a year, we’ll explore the problems and decisions that drive these projects and the trade-offs that are made. We’ll also look at techniques to tackle these problems and how they’ve worked in practice

What do visions of cakes have to do with storytelling? Not much, but you’ll remember the title, and half the battle is already won. 

WordPress businesses face a unique challenge in delivering concise, clear, and consistent narratives that will charm, convince, and convert. Gianna will be diving into how brands can develop their case studies, content marketing, and social media presence, and providing straightforward strategies that even the most reluctant storytellers can build from.

We will run through our launch process for onboarding an Amnesty websites, covering some of the common gotchas when launching a site, we have so far launched 45 and counting so we hope to share a thing or two.

Born in the North East, Greggs is now one of the nation’s favourite food to go brands, renowned for being both fun and fun-loving – but what’s it like to write code for them? When the pandemic hit in 2020, we rapidly accelerated our multi-channel development strategy and, because of this investment, our numbers have grown exponentially. Our culture and values are what makes Greggs, Greggs and as we grow, we keep these at the heart of every decision we make. This talk will look at how we keep the good vibes rolling – while simultaneously fostering a culture of collaboration and fun, specifically within the IT & Business Change department.

Technical content can be challenging to write.

It often calls for complex ideas to be conveyed in clear language, and yet the result must be easily digestible by an audience that doesn’t always have a strong relationship with the written word.

In this session we’ll dive into different types of technical content, and how to identify whether you’re writing a tutorial, a blog post, a reference document, or a book.

For each content type, you’ll gain insight on how to address your audience, and how to structure both the content and the process to deliver it efficiently.

Whether you are blogging for a technical audience or writing technical documentation, this session will advise you on a clear process, suggest structures you can use yourself, and give you the confidence to “ship it” as your technical audience would say.

How to check if a site is accessible for people with a disability, when you are not a developer or web savvy designer? For example if you want to check if there are accessibility issues in your own site. Or when you need to choose a web agency and you want to check their work.

In this workshop Rian will explain how to test for: colour contrast, meaningful content sequence, heading structure, link text quality, and keyboard navigation. 

She will teach you how to use automated test software in the browser, like Axe and Wave. And she will try to answer any question you may have about web accessibility .

Bring your laptop and learn how to test for web accessibility yourself.

This talk is for everyone who wants to learn how to quickly test a website for accessibility.

List of settings and browser tools to install beforehand:

Install the free add-on HeadingsMap to view the heading structure:

• HeadingsMap for Chrome
• HeadingsMap for Firefox
• HeadingsMap for Edge

⠀Install the free add-on ~Axe Devtools~:

• axe DevTools for Chrome
• axe DevTools for FireFox
• axe DevTools For Edge

⠀Install the free add-on WAVE for various browsers.

If you use a Mac: Setup keyboard navigation for the Mac and in Chrome and Safari: Enable keyboard navigation: ~How to activate keyboard navigation on MacOS~

Mastering the fundamentals of digital design is pivotal for achieving marketing success in the digital age.

Drawing from his agency’s wealth of experience in user research and UX design, Scott Jones will introduce you to the 7 essential web heuristic categories that every designer, developer and marketer should be versed in.

Through a mix of theory and real-world application, you’ll gain actionable insights into enhancing navigation, building trust, optimising forms, and much more.

Equip yourself with the knowledge to refine your digital touchpoints, engage your audience more effectively, and boost conversion rates.

In this talk I’ll go through the 10 things that every developer should first do – from securing their content to making sure they keep in touch with their user’s needs.