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Archive for the ‘Company Information’ Category

A Busy Website Design Company is a Company in Demand

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

choosingdesignerWhether your website designer is a local developer or part of a big national company, one of the important factors that you should take into consideration in your search for the right website design company is how busy they are; the size of their order book. This can actually be a double edged sword because on the one hand a busy website design company may have to quote longer lead-in times, but the activity does of course indicate that their services are in demand. If their services are in demand, the logic is that their product must be good. Based in Norfolk we know there are lots of super companies around but it should be easy to find the best developer for your site?

There are certain cases where a big order book or the long lead-time a busy website designer quotes can be misleading. If this apparently busy website design company is a relatively new start up for example, the clientele may not yet have had the time to evaluate the designer’s performance, so look out to make sure that there is a client list that you can follow up to interrogate. Any local developer, Norfolk or beyond should be happy to assist as they want your business.

A short order book, and a therefore rapid response time could be a sign that nobody wants to use them, or it could simply mean that they are very fast and efficient in keeping up with things, either way the presence of testimonials and following them up is again an invaluable process and one that perhaps should not be rushed but done methodically if you have the time.

Any local developer or designer would tell you that design is not something that should be hurried and a busy website design company will not only know this, but will stick firmly to their guns and refuse to be hurried. This is actually good brand marketing in progress and whilst at times this sort of attitude can be very frustrating, it speaks volumes for their integrity, and if they won’t allow other projects to get rushed along they will not permit yours to be rushed either.

A busy website design company that holds to this principle is worth their weight in gold. It should however be made very clear through the tendering process just exactly what their lead times are, and at that early stage you have the opportunity to question this and to perhaps seek permission to even talk to some of their current project owners for real-time feedback – see our testimonials article for assistance with this part.

Any sort of design work is a process where there will be discoveries along the way: new suggestions about the best way to lay a site out, or how to arrange the navigation etc. which is all part of developing the best product for your business. A busy website designer may even adopt a new technology in the process of fulfilling your design, to stay at the forefront of website design and to ensure that they offer state of the art product. It would actually be very annoying if your website were to just miss out on a new innovation simply because your chosen local developer couldn’t make time to incorporate it.

They do say that patience is a virtue, and in the case of good website design this is very true. Don’t lose sight of the fact that your website is your shop-front. Once it’s out there in cyberspace you need it to do an effective job for you. The “window dressing” is key and fashions change, as do new technologies, and in order to stay at the cutting edge you will want to incorporate these changes in your website. A busy website design company will be busy partly because clients return to them again and again for these state of art or fashion updates; another thing you can check out amongst their client list be it Norfolk, London or anywhere else.

In the majority of instances, a busy website design company is a good design company; it’s a local web design or graphic design company with integrity, with flair, and with dedication. If and when you find one, stick with them for the best site that works for your business.

Choosing the Right Website Designer

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

choosingdesignerChoosing the right website design company is one of the most important decisions that any business takes. Your website is in effect your shop-front and just like any conventional shop-front your window dressing needs to be top drawer in order to catch the eye of those passing window shoppers and tempt them inside. Even when people know of your site and are visiting to check out your business offer the look and feel of the site is all important, so when you are selecting the website designer to design you a professional website in addition to offering a number of optional extras like search engine optimisation (website marketing), here are a few points that you should consider.

Firstly, have a peek at their website. Does it look like a professional website? Remember that as well as being your “shop-front”, your website also represents your image, your brand, and it determines how people perceive your business. Your brand image is all important. If it looks like a professional website (neat, tidy, discrete functional, yet classy) it instils confidence in the visitor. If the website design company’s own website displays all of these characteristics, you can be sure that they fully understand these important fundamentals of website design, and that you are more likely to end up with that professional website look and be proud to conduct professional seo or website marketing on it too.

Read through their general business offer and their mission statement. Does it sound business like? Does it tell you how they go about their business? Does it tell you their ethical approach, how they interpret their client’s ideas and aspirations? Does their website carry a list of testimonials of companies that have used their services? Do they welcome you to contact those companies for performance reviews on their work? What you don’t want to see is meaningless hyperbole that has simply been reeled off as fluffy sales banter. You want to see substance, purpose, industry knowledge, industry experience, and a professional website ethic.

On the functional, practical front, how does their site perform? Does their website form up on the screen promptly when you first land on it? How does it rate on site navigation? Are the options laid out clearly? Is it easy and fast to move from page to age? Do they use latest cutting edge technology, such as video streaming? All of these points are important because this is how you want your own site to function. Your potential website designer’s website is their shop-front. They know that that is how you will judge them. Only select them if they can tick all of the boxes 100%.

Finally you also need to ascertain that they know what they are talking about. Do they understand SEO (search engine optimisation), and will they build it into your site as a matter of course. This is something that you need to discuss with them as it will not be obvious from merely visiting their website. SEO is the process by which your site is ranked by the big search engines like Google and Yahoo. Search engines use “spiders” to crawl the internet looking at sites and ranking them within their markets, so that when web “traffic” is searching for the sorts of goods or services your website fronts, your business is one of the first to be listed on the search engine reports. In theory, the higher your search engine ranking, the more visitors your site will attract. When your professional website is designed, a good website designer will build in certain compatible features that make it easy for the search engine spiders to find your site and to be able crawl all over it to extract the information that they are searching for. If your site is properly SEO’d, it will win you more business.

We’ll publish some more articles in this series in the coming days that will give you more information on choosing your website design agency.

New Creospace website goes live

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

webdesignAfter many hours of toil and sweat, some shed blood and even a few tears we’re pleased to publish the new version of the our website.

Whilst the old website served us well, it was looking a little tired. Plus it didn’t lend it self to our new wider service offering since Colin joined us and it was a little bit on the narrow side too. This new site has addressed all these issues and given us lots of room for future content.

If you were familiar with the old website you’ll immediately notice the look and feel of this new site is somewhat different. We’re really keen to  demonstrate to prospective clients who require new contemporary eye catching designs that we are the company for them, as well as those who require the corporate look of course.

We appreciate design is very subjective and it’s impossible to please everybody but we welcome your feedback , good or bad.

Creospace crosses the Border

Friday, May 15th, 2009

We are very pleased to announce a further expansion and the appointment of Colin Gray to the board of Creospace limited. This is coupled with the opening of a new office in Dundee which will allow for further expansion of our business over the coming years.

Colin joins Creospace limited as Creative Director having successfully run Pixels Ink graphic design agency in Dundee for nearly 3 years. Creospace will continue to use the Pixels ink brand in Dundee building on its reputation for excellence and client care.

The clients of both businesses will be able to benefit from a wider range of services including high end website design and development, logos and brand identity, print design, and much more.

"Having worked with Colin for nearly 3 years now it was clear that both our businesses are perfectly aligned for working together. We share a common tradition of excellence. Our wide ranging skills and unrivalled service enable us to deliver a clear benefit to both new and existing clients. The opportunities are very exciting and this development is an important expansion for Creospace.” said Gary Dickenson, managing director of Creospace limited.

Gary continues … “With our already excellent reputations for quality and value in the marketplace together with the blend of expertise we can now be relied on as a leading one-stop-shop, but at the same time maintain our existing reputations as niche experts.”

Colin Gray, founder of Pixels Ink said "The opportunity to expand the existing Dundee operation by joining Gary and the Creospace team makes perfect sense. We are now much better positioned to be able to provide the best solution to each and every client a core philosophy of Pixels Ink. The new creative challenges and the opportunities to expand are tremendous.”

Creospace incorporating PixelsInk

Experts in website design and online marketing solutions, logo design, graphics and creative services, database driven website development, website applications, business administration systems, CRM, ERP, marketing brochures, flyers, business stationary.

Partnering with you to help your business grow.

For further information please visit www.creospace.co.uk and www.pixelsink.co.uk

Creospace's regional based search engine results

Monday, May 12th, 2008

People often ask ‘Well if they are so good at getting people high in the search engines why aren’t they high up themselves’ and that of course is a very good question. After all proof of the pudding is in the eating isn’t it?

Since our new site launch back in February we have been using our own expertise to make sure our own site gets good results for the keywords that we think will get us the right sort of business we want. That is both regional and national work for the services that we offer.

Of course to get prime keywords such as ‘web design’ , graphic design’ etc up on page one for a national search we are in for the long haul and it’s simply not reasonable to expect results in such a short time. Besides through our networking and existing client base we already get recommendations from across the country for our web design service and more, in fact we even have clients around the world. What we don’t have are many clients in our own county of Norfolk.

So what we have done is concentrated our SEO efforts on a regional basis for Norfolk. Regional results can be often overlooked and can be a very lucrative source of business form search engines so never forget to get optimised for your region if it’s appropriate to do so.

Ok so as it stands today here’s where we stand in google and where we were before.

Norfolk Web design

Before:Page 2 17th – Now: Page 1 3rd

Norfolk copywriting

Before: Nowhere – Now:Page 1 1st (uk search page 1 4th)

Norfolk PR

Before: nowhere – Now: Page 1 5th ; Bear in mind this is not our main business.

Norfolk Admin

Before: nowhere – Now Page 1 3rd; This is for our adminstration systems.

Norfolk SEO

Before nowhere – Now page 1 3rd

So as you can see our hard work and expertise is paying off and getting good results. We’re continue to monitor and improve some others we’re working on as well. Over time we’re sure that those reults will improve as it does take time and patience to get good seo results.

If you are interested in improving your search engine placings for regional results then get in touch and we’ll see what we can do for you.

NB: Google positions may vary from day to day