May 4 2012

Football fans in Belgium and around the world can now enjoy the new website of the Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA). BelgianFootball.be was created by The Reference, a Ghent-based full-service digital agency, and part of the Emakina Group.

A site to experience today’s football

The Royal Belgian Football Association exists since 1895 and represents all football clubs in Belgium. Each football season, the Association organises no less than 300,000 football matches for 2000 teams. Its ambassadors, the Red Devils, represent it internationally, attracting a lot of web attention. The Belgian Football Association has been active on the web for many years with the site footbel.com (included in the CIM Metriweb reports). Players, from the highest to the lowest leagues, and their supporters, use this site extensively. But they’re not alone. The site is also commonly used by referees, trainers, clubs, board members, stewards and volunteers, sponsors etc. A match is a lot more than 22 players on a field running behind a ball… As a full-service digital agency, The Reference convinced the Association of their web approach in synchronicity with the further professional development of the sport in Belgium.

Caught the football bug? Build your own website!

The project posed some interesting challenges. The new RBFA website had to accommodate large traffic volumes, while delivering massive amounts of information to the entire football community.  Thanks to the smooth integration with the RBFA’s databases and its existing backend, you are a click away from all information on teams, upcoming matches, and more!

To make the web experience fun and user friendly, the site features a dashboard, where visitors can create their own pages. Each of them can pick her or his favourite team, be alerted of cancelled matches, view filtered news items, and enjoy many other personalisation features.

The new site was built using Drupal 6, with an extensive system of dynamic blocks. Content editors can thus create and adapt information efficiently and with high flexibility, significantly reducing the time laps needed for information to be published.

Anja Cappelle, managing director van The Reference concludes: ‘We are very proud to have created this very lively information channel for the Belgian football fans and their Association’.

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Feb 17 2012

Emakina is one of the big winners in the Interactive Media Awards, with 2 ‘Best in Class’ and 4 ‘Outstanding Achievement’ distinctions. The jury of this worldwide contest follows the highest standards of excellence in web design and development and honours individuals and organizations for their outstanding achievement.

The Interactive Media Council (IMC) who created the awards is an international association of leading web designers, developers, programmers, advertisers and other web-related professionals.

International Crisis Group and Evolta City, Best in Class

The ‘Best in Class’ award is the highest honour bestowed by the Interactive Media Council.

This year, Emakina’s The Reference receives the prestigious award for the International Crisis Group Website. The project successfully combines the serious nature of this worldwide organisation with its dynamic, open communication style, while emphasizing ICG’s values and strengths.

Panasonic Evolta City, a project by Design is Dead also received this highest honour, in the category  ‘Community’. The collaborative social media game brought together players from across Europe to build the biggest Zero CO2-emission City on the World Wide Web.

The jury declared both winners excelled in all areas of the judging criteria and achieved a perfect or near perfect overall score. Both sites represent the highest standards of professionalism, compliance, impeccable planning and execution.

Four Outstanding Achievements

The ‘Outstanding Achievement’ awards are the second highest prize bestowed by IMA. Emakina was selected four times out of the international pack of competitors.

The Schweppesonality campaign won in the ‘Lifestyle’ category. The Schweppes brand is working on a global rebranding, together with Emakina. Schweppesonality is an original activation campaign about the fans of the brand and their charismatic, unexpected and inspiring personalities, true Schweppesonalities.

SamsungWorld received the award in the category ‘Community’ and ‘Consumer Services’ website.  This new online meeting point for Samsung clients channels all opinions and discussions on Samsung and its products towards one, dynamic environment. Visitors exchange ideas and discover promotions, goodies and news items, in a tailor made CRM system.

50 Lawyers last but not least is the winning campaign for Test-Achats, in the category ‘Professional Services’. In a web centric campaign eco system, consumers were invited to file their complaints online and share their experience in social media. The original campaign showed TestAchats/Test-Aankoop lawyers in a military training camp, preparing to fight for the rights of their consumer clients.

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Feb 7 2012

The Reference kicks off 2012 in full swing, with a new logo and new website. The full service web agency located in Ghent grew rapidly in recent years, both in size and services. The new corporate identity shows the company clearly wants to keep this momentum going. So it’s not without pride the new logo, a corporate movie, a completely revamped website and a corporate web app are presented to the world.

Keep reinventing yourself

The Reference, part of the listed Emakina Group, launches its new corporate identity.
Anja Cappelle, Managing Director of The Reference: “As a full service internet agency, we follow the latest trends and technologies up close. We need to, in order to offer our clients the best possible service. Your visual identity affects how you are perceived in the market. We find it important to keep reinventing ourselves; our own communication should radiate this idea. Our new corporate identity also symbolizes the major evolution our company is experiencing. The dynamic team of The Reference has grown to 85 web specialists. And they deliver a vastly increased range of services to our customers. So it was high time to zoom in on our own brand, for a change… we’re proud to share our new corporate identity, website and corporate film. ”

A more robust logo, continued in the house style and agency reel

The new logo of The Reference underlines both literally and figuratively the company’s dynamism, its leadership and professional approach. Motion is increasingly important on the net, so a company reel had to be part of the launch. The brand new video illustrates the birth of an idea. The images tell how creative thoughts should be nurtured and how the experts at The Reference add extra dimensions to them, molding them into success stories, together with their customers.

It’s not just Web, it’s (Y)our Business

The agency reel found its permanent place on the new site, developed with Alterian CMS. A clear structure and navigation path help the visitor to quickly discover the expanded services of The Reference. Each page consists of a “fast track”, with the essence at a glance, and a “read more” option, digging deeper into the content. The site proves social media and traditional web pages can reinforce each other: each screen is locked with context-sensitive tweets from various contributors. Numerous cases illustrate the proven experience of the agency. This expertise is also shared in 10 specialized training courses, now underway.

 
Also for mobile users

The Reference chose to unlock its website for iPhone and Android users, by way of an intuitive web app. With simple swipes and taps, the visitor explores all services, events, jobs and cases.

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Jan 23 2012

Starting on February 10th, The Reference is organizing 10 events on different digital subjects. As trend watchers, innovators and opinion makers, they believe it is important to share their insights with customers. Experts of The Ref are happy to provide you with their knowledge and to discuss the best practices of all things digital. You can choose the number of events you want to participate in. Customers of The Reference, Design is Dead and Emakina get a discount of 10%. If you register for all sessions, you receive the same discount.

The series of events starts on February 10^th with “Is social media part of your business”, where you will learn to make the correct strategic decisions in the social media landscape.

On March 2^nd, David Roose will explain you everything there is to know about “Measuring Business Goals with Google Analytics”.

“Strategic SEO for Marketing Managers” will be addressed on March 16^th. You will be guided in getting SEO on-board in your organization.

One week later, the 23th of March, it’s David Roose’s turn again for a workshop “Slicing and dicing with Google Analytics”. He will tell you everything about measuring more with custom code, configuring your accounts and profiles, and lots of other things!

On the 27^th of April, it’s time for Social again: “Social Strategy through Social Listening”. Tom Muyllaert will unveil the best free and paid listening tools and he will show you what you can learn from listening to conversations.

May 4^th is all about “Hands-on SEO for Webmasters and Copywriters”. In this workshop you’ll learn step by step the best methods that will help you to find the best possible keywords.

“Professional Link Building Strategies” are talked about by Nikolaas De Geyndt and Isabel Van Ruykensvelde. They will train you in how to strategically approach your link-building. The date for this event is May 11^th.

Mobile and tablet fans can have their say on June 1^st. Thomas De Vos, our mobile expert, will show you what “Mobile and tablets can mean for your business”. iOs? Android? Windows Phone? Web Apps? HTML5? Hybrid apps? There will be no secrets left when leaving this workshop!

On June 8^th you’ll learn everything about “Conversion Optimization”. Your website might be doing well, but experts of The Ref will help you to make it even better by striving for ultimate conversion.

And last but not least: on June 15^th Bart De Latte will introduce you to “The power of Search Engine Advertising”. He will show you how to analyze and interpret your results.

You can click the links if you are interested in attending one or more events. To subscribe, just fill in the form that you can find on the website. Should you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to contact Vicky Van Daele (vvandaele@reference.be)

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Jan 13 2012

Belgian marketing is clearly going digital, a new study by Emakina’s agency in Ghent, The Reference, indicates. 150 decision makers of digital marketing initiatives in Belgian companies participated in the survey.

In 2012, Belgian marketers will focus on social media marketing, mobile sites and monitoring performance.

Their main challenges will be to turn data into actionable insights and creating sufficient return on investment. Companies that claim to be leading in terms of digital marketing are planning to invest significantly more in social media monitoring and social/ mobile advertising.

This study indicates that the future of marketing is digital, with 20 % of marketing budgets already allocated to this domain and further growth ahead despite the crisis.The social media hype and the rise of mobile internet are still going strong and will continue. It also shows that a main challenge ahead will be to find the right expertise to get the job done.

The slideshare presentation gives a detailed overview of the trend in websites, traffic, social and mobile.

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Nov 24 2011

Over half a million apps to choose from…which ones would be smart to upload to your smartphone or tablet?

In their latest issue, Knack and Le Vif magazines present the Top Applications for smartphones and tablets in the Belgian market. Belgium being the complex market it is, the list of course is different in the Dutch and the French version…

Out of the jury of five members two experts came out of  Emakina Group companies. Emakina’s Chief Visionary Officer Brice Le Blévennec felt right at home in helping to create this special. Mobile Competence Center Manager Thomas De Vos from the Reference in Ghent also let his light shine on the mobile apps.

So with their colleagues they went to work and made a list of criteria, a selection of categories and then each added their favorites.

Our mobile experts  shared their knowledge in this large constantly evolving field of different kinds of Operating Systems : iOS (iPad, iPhone), Android, Symbian (Nokia), Windows or RIM (Blackberry).

Thomas De Vos of the Internet company The Reference says an app must be to the point, relevant and fun. Also, it should avoid superfluous functions.”Keep it simple; when you start it up you have to be able to do right away what it was made for. App makers tend to pile on functions with updates, but these should stick to the essence of the application.”

The list combines international favorites such as Flipboard, Foursquare, Dropbox and Plants vs Zombies with local gold, like TV Overal, Radio.be, Resto.be, KBC banking, Taxis Verts and Electrabel.

Wether you are ‘the connected senior executive’, ‘the organized teacher’ or ‘the active retired person’, wether you’re living a business Lifestyle, interested in entertainment or food, the two specials guide you to the must have apps.

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Nov 10 2011

Today is usability day. And Emakina can be proud to announce that The Reference, a company of the Emakina group located in Ghent, is the big winner of yesterday’s Usability Awards 2011.

The new website of Infrax, a client of The Reference, won 2 out of 3 first prizes in the awards, making them the star of the evening. It won the First prize in the category ‘General public’ and the ‘Non-profit and e-gov’ category.

The jury composed of experts in usability, created a shortlist of 10 finalist out of 95 user-friendly websites that entered the competition. The public could then choose their preferred usability site.

Over 3000 votes were cast, giving Infrax the clear ‘thumbs up’ with ¼ of the votes.

In the categories non-profit and profit, the jury also evaluates the selection and gives points on 8 criteria. They assess the quality of the homepage, overview and detail pages, navigation and search functions, forms and content, copywriting and the overall impression. Here again, Infrax won the first prize, in the category ‘Non-profit and e-gov’.

The internet agency from Ghent, The Reference, created the new site for the network manager, with the help of AG Consult who were in charge of testing and fine tuning user friendliness.

Infrax clearly chose from the start of the project to make usability a key objective for their new website. A strongly ‘task based’ approach insures the user at one glance finds the right documents, linked to the online visit, for the specific needs related to electricity, gas, sewers or TV connectivity.

The clear home page and topical pages make the site an easy and pleasant tool for any client. By respecting standards and building in horizontal resting points and ‘jump to links’, the site was made even more to the point and intuitive.

Infrax is a collaboration between Interelectra, Iveg, Infrax West en PBE. Infrax manages the good use, maintenance and development of all public canalization related services (gas, electricity, cable television and/ or sewer systems) on the territory of a large number of communities in Belgium.

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Jun 28 2011

Emakina’s The Reference team scored a great hit, with the brand new Colruyt Collect and Go app for IPhone. After its launch last week, the app became an instant winner on the App Store. It immediately reached the number one spot and the reviews are excellent, making the success complete.

The application further increases the usability of the popular webshop.

The app starts with your choice of your Collect & Go pick-up point. Currently there are 120 Collect & Go’s in Belgium and one in Luxembourg. Once selected, the system automatically adapts its product range to the information of the local shop.

With the application, you  can  make your shopping selection when and where you want. And your IPhone can also become a barcode scanner, recognizing the Colruyt brand portfolio immediately. It’s easy to create your shopping list. In no time you can add items to your cart by scanning them, selecting them from lists or by typing their names in.

The Reference is now preparing an android version of Collect & Go.

Fresh and fast, the Collect and Go IPhone app

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May 19 2011

The agency Emakina has been selected by Facebook to join the Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant program (PDC). This program helps pair brands and organizations with the most qualified developers and resources to build advanced, brand-building Facebook Platform integrations.

As a Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant, Emakina will continue to integrate the newest developments from Facebook, (functionality, applications, etc.) into the communications strategies they develop for their clients.

Before naming the agency as a member of the PDC program, Facebook examined various campaigns and applications developed by Emakina and assessed their skill in integrating Facebook technology into their communication strategies.

Emakina demonstrates real ambition in their social media strategies, developing solutions that integrate with Facebook, notably for Schweppes, ING, Powerade, the Route du Rhum, or for Buffalo Grill, with geolocation couponing using Facebook Deals.

Brice Le Blévennec, president of the Emakina Group, said, “We anticipate the arrival of a new generation of web & mobile applications, which innovate using the social graph – the mapping of all relationships between individuals. Being chosen by Facebook as part of the PDC program is a privilege which enables our agencies to work closely with one of the most dynamic and innovative companies in the field of social business. We’ll have access to best practices and product guidance from Facebook, which we’ll use to propose the most innovative solutions in social marketing to our clients.”

For more information:
http://developers.facebook.com/preferreddevelopers

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Apr 11 2011

Since Makro, the international market leader in self-service wholesale, started cooperating with The Reference in 2010, the Ghent web agency has not stood still. After thorough strategic preparation, the construction of the first Makro Belgium online webshop began last year. In just four months time, Makro and The Reference have developed a refreshing, surveyable, functional and well-functioning online shop.

Hundreds of thousands of Makro customers have been consulting the well-known ‘Makro folder’ on www.makro.be intensively to prepare their purchases. However, now they can really shop online at www.makroshop.be.

Makro immediately offers two themed shops: the Office shop with all office equipment the professional customer is looking for and the Garden shop where all customers can choose from an extensive assortment of garden sheds and log cabins. Home delivery of garden equipment and reserved parking spaces complete the online service. This is only the beginning, as Makro is further developing its online assortment every day. The technical realisation of the webshop came about with Microsoft .NET 4.0, supported by the Sitecore framework.

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Feb 26 2011

The Phare Conference, which took place this Thursday 24, was a big success, speakers were all very inspirational. The event brought together renowned specialists from all over the world, presenting intriguing and surprising ideas on the future of the Internet. Brice Le Blévennec gave a presentation about trends regarding to e-commerce, media, marketing, agencies, the web ecosystem and the new mobile frontier. See you next year and thanks to The Reference for the support.

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Nov 5 2010

And it happened … They hit the world where it would hurt the most ! Chaos ensued, the world became a different place, everything was about survival, flashmobs became ancient history, one single thing was in the mind of human kind : “Error 404″ … they had destroyed the Internet !

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Nov 3 2010

KBC strengthens its multichannel approach and explores the possibilities of the mobile Internet. The bank and insurance company works with The Reference to define and implement its mobile strategy. It has now launched its mobile website.

The mobile version of kbc.be immediately reaches a large target group. M.kbc.be has been optimized for Android and iPhone users. The attractive interface offers the information that is most relevant for mobile surfers. This also includes a handy office locator that takes into account the location of the user. You can immediately see which branches, agents or ATMs are close by. On top of that, you can use the mobile site for a number of simulations. You can very quickly and efficiently consult the conditions for a mortgage or consult the rates and instalments for other types of loans, such as loans for cars, motorcycles, green investments, … If you hesitate between taking a loan or saving money, you can immediately see the differences between both options. And, last but not least, it also offers a number of important telephone numbers, such as Card Stop, the Telecenter etc.

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Nov 1 2010

The Reference is finishing a new touch application for Gazet van Antwerpen, one of the newspapers of media company Concentra. Local news is visualised on a map and can be read via a simple touch movement. The deadline for this exclusive is the opening of the Antwerp book fair this weekend.

The local news is immediately visualised on four giant touch screens. Not only do you read what has happened, you also see where it has happened. You can have a look at the news on a satellite map, explore other news items, or use the search function to discover what has happened in and around the ‘Bouwcentrum’ where the book fair takes place. The news that touches you… and that you touch right back!

Gazet van Antwerpen gives you yet another reason for visiting the book fair between 31 October and 11 November. You can find their stand in hall 2.

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Jun 30 2010

It looks like it’s going to be a hot summer at our Ghent agency The Reference. New clients and interesting projects are coming on their way.

To meet those growing expectations The Reference is recruiting 13 (thirteen) new employees: six developers (.Net, Java, PHP/Drupal, iPhone/Android), a web business analyst, two sales/account managers, one project manager, a gifted graphic designer/HTML expert,… Complete profiles and descriptions can be found here.

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