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 http://www.makro.be intensively to prepare their purchases. However, now they can really shop online at http://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.

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.

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 !

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.

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.

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.

What’s running behind the curtains of successful websites? The answer is simple: content management. Yet how can you manage online content in a cost efficient way and avoid the webmaster bottleneck? How can you manage web content in multiple languages? Or approve web content according to complicated communication policies? How can content management integrate with CRM systems, web analytics and search engines? How can you speed up content publishing and time-to-market of websites? Find out all of this and more during this Content Management Forum, an all-day event that will include a session by Philip Achten, our Technical Consultant at The Reference. He will explain how The Reference realized the intranet and knowledge base of Attentia based on Sitecore CMS with a taxonomy and facetted search. Register here.

KBC unfold its new tool to calculate your mortgage loan. The project was fully executed by The Reference, resulting in a very user-friendly tool. The result is a fresh looking application and it’s like child’s play to determine the sum you want to borrow and would like to pay back each month. After some basic input, you can start playing with two sliders to recalculate the payback period, the monthly repayment and the sum to borrow. It is a crystal clear and easy start to embark for a KBC Home Loan Invest. It is quite obvious that KBC and The Reference have made an extra effort to create an application that is fully focused on the ease-of-use. The interaction of the tool has highly benefited from using jQuery technology combined with a well thought and ergonomic design and wire framing.

How will interactivity manifest itself in the coming years? What will interactive marketing look like?  And what will it mean for customers and for companies? Whether you realize it or not the possibilities of interactive technologies for marketers are endless. The 19th Emakina Academy Session invites you to discover those possibilities and capture what could by the highlights of interactive marketing in 2015. During this Emakina Academy, you will:

Take a look into the future of interactive marketing. Discover an exciting future that interconnects everything, everywhere, all the time and erases the borders between the physical and worlds. Learn how mobile technologies will create unlimited possibilities for making interactive communication a new part of life. Know how to engage in an authentic positive word of mouth to raise brand awareness and drive direct sales through social shopping. Understand the connections between emerging trends and design thinking (graphic design, web design, or simply in design in general).

Register online : http://www.emakina.com/academy and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Our colleagues at The Reference just released the new corporate website of Bekaert, the market leader in advanced metal transformation and advanced materials and coatings. This platform replaces more than 30 former local websites and focuses on strengthening the Bekaert brand through a uniform and consistent communication at the worldwide level (CMS : Sitecore).

CultuurNet Vlaanderen specialises in cultural marketing and tries to give (more) people (more) appetite for (more) culture. Check out their new website by The Reference.

Our colleagues organise on 6th February a training on web-oriented copywriting techniques that can make your website more compelling, more user-centered and more search engine-friendly. A quick overview of the agenda: * Writing through the eyes of users

o How people read online o Demo eyetracking movies o Enhancing scannability o Text matters! * Interactive extras & exercises:

o Some quick-scan remarks on participants’ web site copy o How to write good titles o Make text shorter * Writing through the eyes of the robots

      o How do search engines read your website?
      o Meta tags
      o Important page elements for SEO optimization
      o Text formatting
      o Tools & Tricks

Info and registration on The Reference website.

Truvo has been rewarded with a nice Multimedia Innovation Award at the latest Partner Day organised by mobile operator Mobistar. The crowned project is the mobile version of the Golden Pages directory developed by The Reference in collaboration with Siruna. Check out the pictures of this event on the blog of our colleagues and have a look at the demo:

Our colleague Nikolaas Degeyndt from The Reference signed a very interesting article about the “why” and the “how” of Web Analytics in the latest issue of Media Marketing. Check out this paper in French or in Dutch.

Our colleagues at The Reference juste released the new website of Betafence, the world market leader in fencing solutions, access control and detection for perimeter protection. As an international company, Betafence was confronted with the challenge of publishing global content (i.e. main catalogue) on the public Internet with local adaptations in a cost-efficient way that stimulates synergies between subsidiaries. In addition to this business objective, Betafence also wanted an innovative website that provides a renewed brand experience and sets Betafence as a key customer-oriented company in its sector. The new Ajax-based interface offers easy access to products, by means of the new Specify-me tool, designed to allow specifiers easy download of either standard or bespoke Q40 specifications, product pages and technical installation drawings. Using Ajax technology in this application allows complex interactions on the same web page, which offers a desktop-like experience that strongly impacts the brand perception. At the content level, The Reference implemented the Sitecore solution as a multi-country, multi-lingual platform that allows to deploy multiple versions from a single data source. The UK version will be used as a blueprint for the other countries where Betafence is active.

Do you want to… …optimize yourself your website for search engines? …successfully advertise your products or services with Google Adwords? …interpret visitor statistics and learn how they are the driver for a more successful site? Then join our six training sessions organised by our new competence center Emakina/Perform.