web design

yes, we do web design...
but so do so many other people...
are we different ? sure !
let us take a little time to explain why.

The internet has been around for over 10 years now, and no longer do we need to explain to customers what a website is and what it can do. What we are finding now though, is that with Facebook, Twitter, Email Marketing, RSS, Search Engines and all the other technologies, people are now a little unsure as to where they should be concentrating their efforts. The answer - simple - everyone is different.

We talk through with you the details about your business, they way you like to work and what your customers like, expect and desire from you. From there we put together a strategy to meet your budget and adapt to your changing needs to help meet and exceed all these points.

Once established, we are finding that people are discovering the benefits of taking a good site further, and utilising "webapps". Find out more about web apps here

web applications

so what is the difference between
a website and a web app then ?
and why would I want a webapp ?

In the traditional sense, a website is used to inform visitors about a company, service or other information. People tend to "consume" this information in the way they would a brochure, leaflet or letter. As the capabilities of web browsers and associated technologies have improved, the boundaries of what you can do with a website have grown. Websites have started to interact with the visitors, providing information from other sources, allowing them to login, customise the site, view and work with information specific to them. As these websites grow, from static material towards more interactive solutions for the visitors, we in turn move into the "web application" area.

Take for example your electricity supplier. 10 years ago, they may have talked about what services they provide, list tips and advice, information on tariffs and list numbers for you to call and a contact form for you to send them a message. It is now common practice for all these types of sites to allow you to log into your account. Once logged in, you can view usage of electricity, submit meter readings and other options. All this is available because the provider has linked their "back end" data on your account, billing and usage information to their website to allow you to view this information in an easy to understand way.

These capabilities are now becoming available to small businesses in the same way as the large corporate businesses. Allowing customers to login to your website, view account information, previous orders and even build new orders are all features that most businesses can consider. Such a service can provide many benefits to customers, allowing them to work outside of your core business hours, reduce your customer support overheads and even provide information and reports to them that your current systems may not support.

We have been building sites that provide these features for well over 5 years, and worked with many bespoke in-house systems, enabling businesses to propagate this information via their sites.

If you think your business and customers would benefit by working more closely together using your site, give us a call or drop us a line and we can provide more information on how we can help

contract work

are you in-house or an agency ?
need a little extra capacity,
or some magic pixie dust on a project,
we can be a resource for you to call on...

Outsourced Projects
From working on outsourced projects where your agency may be overcapacity, or lacking the skill set in a specific discipline. If required, we can work within your team internally or externally to complete the project, meaning you maintain a close relationship with your client. Some clients prefer to be open and “pass” the project onto ourselves and project manage, and again this is something we are happy to do, and of course, provide the highest level to you and your client.

Training
For some teams, there may be an element of work that you have been struggling with or outsourcing regularly, and have decided that you can take on in-house. In these cases, we can train your team to carry out that work themselves. In some cases, we will prepare templates for your staff to use and the training to amend them, and from there they can then carry out a number of roles that you may currently be paying for external agencies to do for you. Such activities as email marketing, image manipulation, leaflet design and content management are all areas where we have enabled customers to take control of their own resources, giving cost savings and greater flexibility.

Consultancy
In some cases, there may simply be a request for advice on direction or how to solve a specific problem. For these situations, we can take a look at your project and provide suggestions on how to progress, examples of how improvements can be made, or indeed develop the code or design to directly meet the need. If there is anything you think we can be of help with, and would like to sound us out, then just give us a call. If we can help, great, if not, in many cases we can suggest an alternative company or product that you can investigate that may suit the situation better.

Skill Set For reference, we have a vast amount of experience with the following technologies

  • HTML, CSS, Javacript (inc HTML5 and CSS3)
  • Classic ASP, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, MS SQL Server
  • Email Design and Marketing