My week working with the Web
First impressions
Not really knowing what to expect at Blix, I was nervous when I
arrived at a meeting with Dominic two months ago. However, as soon
as I was introduced to the office and the small work-force that
were guided by Dom and Nigel, I could tell that Blix was very
different to the company I did my Management Shadowing at, Offshore
Electronics. Dom gave me the impression at the meeting that
there was little hierarchy, which I think was reflected in the
layout of the office. With everyone being within a couple of metres
of each other, it was easy to ask questions (especially in my
case!) and to communicate ideas with the other parts of the
team.
What I wanted from the week
A couple of months before I applied for my placement, I watched
a
video about coding in schools (or the lack thereof), and
decided to pick it up as a small hobby. Coincidently, Dom
recommended the same site that I had been using to learn some Web
fundamentals, so I knew that I would be able to apply and improve
my coding knowledge at Blix. I was also introduced to all the
departments at our meeting briefly, such as SEO, which he explained
managed companies "web presence", so I was interested to learn
about all aspects of the job.
What I got from the week
Considering my target of wanting to learn more about coding, I
succeeded by going in with a solid knowledge of HTML and a small
amount of CSS, and coming out with a solid knowledge of both HTML
and CSS, and a small amount of jQuery and JavaScript. With this
knowledge, I could (for the most part) understand why Josh wrote
the code he did for the website I was designing for a client
throughout the week. I found learning about how much effort has to
be put into something as small as a button lighting up when your
mouse hovers over it and fading again when you take it off
incredibly interesting, and left me wanting more.
Whilst Ben may have been made fun of for running the SEO (Search
Engine Optimization) side of things, I found myself drawn to his
work for the aspect of looking at behaviour in the market, a module
I'm looking forward to in Management at university. I was mainly
interested in all of the variables that Ben had to consider when he
tried to make a company "stick-out" on the Web (including his own), from
the more obvious things like relevance to the search term, to the
title and h1 values of your content in your website, to how many
other websites link to your website. I had no idea that there were
so many things that Google takes into account when deciding on your
position on the page. Speaking of which, a few interesting
statistics that Ben threw at me were that the #1 result on the page
generally takes around 35% of the traffic, and the top 3 combined
take 60%.
Hopes for the future
My week at Blix was a real eye-opener into how marketing and
advertising works on the Web, and I sincerely hope to become more
involved in it at university, or even over the summer. There wasn't
one part I didn't enjoy in my whole week here, because I was
constantly learning new concepts about the job as a whole, whilst
being around a team that was willing to answer any questions I had,
as well as providing a relaxed and entertaining atmosphere.
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