Halfords – Building a bike, and more about how they work
November 23, 2019Halfords, who XperiaTyre have worked with in the past, have just been hit with a completely unfair fine. The famed car equipment and bike retailer has been ordered to pay more than £200,000 after an employee was trapped under heavy boxes which fell on him.
Halfords – who have a range of voucher codes here, a national retailer of bikes and car parts, was ordered to pay a total of £213,406.35 by Blackburn Magistrates’ Court for breaching a number of health and safety provisions.
The court heard that on December 11, 2016, a worker was working at the store on Mariner’s Way, Preston and he had been asked by the head supervisor to begin moving a conveyance of boxed bicycles from the ‘products in’ region to another area upstairs with the end goal for them to be collected.
A sum of 72 boxed bicycles had been conveyed to the store the earlier day and they had been stacked a few high on their thin closures. There was an assortment of sizes of bicycles, each weighing between 10-20 kg. No backings had been utilized to verify the bicycles or to keep them from toppling over.
Whist expelling a boxed bicycle from the stack, a portion of the cases fell advances onto different boxes, causing a domino impact, coming full circle in the worker being stuck to the divider by various substantial boxes. They fell on his chest causing him trouble with relaxing. He figured out how to call to a partner who liberated him. It was later discovered that the representative had endured a presumed broken rib.
An examination by wellbeing and security controllers from the chamber uncovered that there were various failings, including neglecting to embrace a hazard evaluation for stacking boxed bicycles; neglecting to give representatives suitable preparing in connection to boxed bicycles; and neglecting to satisfactorily control and deal with the load of boxed bicycles. It was found during the examination that the store was overloaded by 91 bicycles and the bicycle stockpiling regions were packed.
During the examination, well being and security controllers state they were misdirected by Halfords Ltd who revealed to them this was a segregated episode. In any case, further enquiries by the gathering saw this not as the situation. The committee said it likewise found that Halfords Ltd had not gained from past episodes in Hemel Hempstead, Letchworth Garden City and Blackburn, stores and had neglected to execute suggested control measures.
Mr Jonathan Laidlaw QC representing Halfords Ltd said Halfords had educated outside specialists to direct a full manual taking care of hazard appraisal, that Halfords had utilized another Group Head of Health and Safety, propelled another preparation program and had looked into its stockpiling courses of action and brought down the quantities of bicycles being put away on location. The court was additionally indicated proof that Halfords had diminished bicycle stock in all stores by roughly 65,000 units. Mr Laidlaw likewise said that the organization had a decent wellbeing and security record having never recently been arraigned for wellbeing and wellbeing offenses since the organization was shaped in 1909.
In his comments, District Judge Clarke said that Halfords had significant wellbeing and security frameworks in places yet they had not been completely clung to, in that they were demonstrated to be deficient during the occasional period. He was worried by the way that the organization were delayed to respond to the conditions. Be that as it may, he perceived the degree of speculation by Halfords in chance appraisal and the manner by which they have handled this issue by sourcing outside specialists and auditing their stock administration systems.
Advantages of Mobile-First Design
The value of mobile has been apparent since internet usage on smartphones surpassed that of desktop computers back in 2016. Agencies such as Xpedia Tyre as well as our clients have revolutionised their websites. We have adopted a responsive design to cater for all devices. Some companies have even designed their websites as ‘mobile-first’, as the majority of their users are in fact coming from browsers on smartphones.
It therefore doesn’t take much convincing to get someone who wants a successful website to consider designing it in a mobile-friendly way. But will a responsive website be enough, or is mobile-only the way to go?
How Mobile Designs have Evolved
When smartphone-specific designs were first introduced, we could easily spot them as they were in effect separate websites. They were often hosted on a different directory to the desktop version of the site. For example, many websites had an ‘m’ prefix before the URL. this is why mobile websites became known as ‘Mdot’ sites to people in the industry. For example our website can be found at http://xpediatyre.co.uk/. However, yet if we had a mobile-specific layout for the website it would be accesses at http://m.xpediatyre.co.uk/. At the time this was a useful way of doing things because it meant that web designers could create customised designs for mobile websites. These designs considered the associated restrictions that came with using a website on a smartphone. However it was laborious from a designer’s perspective. And it was a constant battle to keep both the mobile website and the desktop version in sync with each other.
Responsive Design
Over the past couple of years, website technology such as CSS have developed to allow much more fluid elements. This means that blocks essentially float on the screen and adapt to the screen size of the device that we are viewing them on. So there’s no need to build a separate website for each screen resolution. The site itself would respond to the device using to view it – hence the term ‘Responsive’ web site.
The only downside to this is that the majority of reputable web designers preferred to stick with what they knew. So they would design the desktop version of a website as per usual. Then they would adapt it so that it responds to the screen sizes of various different devices out there. This meant that the way in which many websites were viewed on a mobile device turned out to be little more than an afterthought.
There were ways around this. Including and excluding particular elements, and telling each element how to behave with the others. But this didn’t really solve the problem. If mobile devices account for the primary usage online, then why are we not designing websites for smartphones first? And then adapted to fit around larger devices? This is where mobile-first design comes in.
Mobile First
When it comes to designing a website that’s responsive across all different browsers, there’s one key question:
“Do you create a desktop version and then strip it back to suit mobile devices, or do you create a mobile version with the essentials and then layer it up for desktop devices?”
There are definitely times when starting with a fully-functional desktop-friendly website and stripping it back would be appropriate. However for the majority of projects (including ours), we prefer to progressively enhance the websites from the ground up. This means that we start with the essential foundations, and then layer up for the various larger devices.
Doing things this way means that you can focus on the core objectives of the website. And without us getting too caught up in the glitz, glamour and other exciting features that you can add to a desktop-friendly website. When you design mobile-first you can’t help but focus on what the user really wants. Also, it’s easier and less labour intensive to add to something than it is to create something and then strip it down again.
Mobile-first design improves the mobile experience for the user. It also means that all the items of the website have a core focus on usability and accessibility. As opposed to simply being the afterthought of a stripped-back, ‘acceptable’ version of an otherwise good website.
Some Pictures from the 2018 Social Media Conference
The 2018 Social Media Conference was one of the most successful yet, with a turn out of almost 400 people. We have been attending since 2016 and already it has grown considerable. It’s a great day out, packed with interesting and influential speakers and we would recommend it to anyone who is in the social media marketing industry. Here are a few photos of some of the highlights:
In between talks, trying to cram in those notes 
Typical Social Day conference antics 
The Xpedia Tyre girls 
Tom Sneddon’s talk about mobile apps 
Probably one of the most influential people at the event – Simon Deavey 
Our very own Jim Little up and speaking at at the conference 
Social Day 2018 In the end a great day was had by all (despite getting absolutely soaked while we waited outside between the conference and the dinner/dance). If you are a keen social media marketer, then we would thoroughly recommend that you attend the next conference. More details can be found on the official website at www.socialday.co.uk
