We wish to congratulate the Holst Group for the recent launch of the McQuaig.co.uk website to support the McQuaig Psychometric product set in the regional market.

Hat tip to Iain Chalmers for having struck out on a bold new strategy and above all for having followed through on the delivery of some new and great content. The amount of stuff created and the quality that has been achieved is quite astounding. The new material covers training manuals, videos, blogs and naturally, where we come in, the website!

You might be thinking, how can a web designer judge the materials? Well this is not hot air, we have used the McQuaig psychometric testing products and  recently the Holst Group invited us to follow the McQuaig Interpreter training. Paul Imre is now an Accredited Interpreter. Having followed the training course there was an added benefit in that we really understood the purpose of the website and we really hope that this added something extra to the result!

One thing is for sure, we really do see the funny side to this Christmas card that was sent by Iain’s team a couple of years ago!

Add a calendar!

Sounds complicated? Well, not at all.

One of our clients, iXREACH is always out and about, trotting the globe. How they have the stamina to do all this travelling and run a business is beyond me. Anyways, with all this travelling, it was only natural that they wanted a simple tool to keep their clients informed – a simple diary of events indicating the various events planned for each month.

Take a look at the image below:

This is in fact very simple to do:

1. Go to uncle Google
2. Open up a new Gmail account, which will give you a calendar
3. Enter your planned events
4. Click a few buttons to make your calendar public
5. Copy the “code” that Google provides to add to your website
6. Paste the code into a web page

And, Voila! Your job is done. Now, all you need to do is keep updating your calendar, and your website page will display the new events you have lined up for the year.

If you attend exhibitions, conduct training courses, give talks etc. – then this little tool is the perfect solution to help you communicate the news to your current and prospective clients across the globe. After all, your website is your biggest window to the world outside.

Now, do you need a little hand in getting the window nicely glazed and polished? All you need to do is give us a tinkle on the old dog and bone. (Translated for our international clients as – “call us”!)

We were first asked to quote for the NHIC website back in 2005 and finally we got there in 2011. It goes to show that business is not about being a “flash in the pan” and one must have an element in longevity in business.

We wish the NHIC all the best in their major role for pushing sustainability in the home improvement sector.

Paul Imre was invited to the lunch and he was “blown away” by the venue and could not resist taking a few snaps!

On a cold winter morning in 2003, Paul Imre sat in a shed and opened a worn, well that is a lie; he opened an unused copy of the yellow pages and started dialling the numbers of local companies to find out if they had heard of the internet and whether they could see the need for a website for their business. And not surprisingly, the good majority were unfamiliar with the whole idea of the internet and were rather dubious about plunging into new waters. Quite understandable, though we didn’t think so at that point.

However, we persevered and our efforts brought in the dividends when a few farsighted entrepreneurs agreed to find out what the new marketing idea was worth, and entrusted the fledgling IMRE to perch them on to the growing marketplace of the worldwide web.

We worked hard, we surpassed expectations, and before we knew it we had a very happy client base spreading the word, giving referrals and bringing in new clients eager to make their presence known on the web.

The thing with referrals is, unlike other forms of marketing, you can literally end up with clients in any location. For instance, most of our clients are in the Thames Valley region of England. We have some that are a bit further away- in places such as Cornwall and Newcastle. But thanks to the good word put in by our happy customers, we can now boast of an international client base, with a New York based company and a client near Bordeaux in France, figuring among our list of loyal clients.

Now, to our great surprise we were recently contacted by someone in Hamburg who was quite happy to fly over and meet us.

Quite naturally, in the first meeting some questions were asked:

• Why come all this way to see us? There must surely be someone who can help you back in Germany? Would it not be easier to work with the locals?
• The answer was quite simple. We have tried that. But we know you will be able to help us.  (That was on the back of non-equivocal recommendation. “Use IMRE” -they know what they are doing!)

So there you have it, power of recommendations and referrals. We did not need to enter in a long sales process or try to convince anyone of anything. You can’t take these situations for granted, that would be stupid, but you are on another level. In a scenario like this the expectation is that things will happen, and they did.

For us the entire dynamics was very interesting. The client was clearly on top of their game, moving at lightning speed in a fast moving industry. The most impressive thing was that they were operating in English. A few things arose in communication and there were a few minor concepts that needed explanation. But, apart from that we had everything we needed from the client side- attention, responsiveness, and when we asked them to consider options they would and come back with the answers or a pleasant “we don’t mind”, do what you think is best!

Needless to say, the end result was great- branding that the client is getting a very good response on and a website that has lifted them and defined them clearly in the market.

Alles Klar!   (….. and we know when to say this.

We often get asked by clients to design logos, brochures, packaging and all manner of print items. We could do this stuff, but we don’t. Why?

Just ask any graphics person, or print management person or I.T. supplier how they got on with creating websites!  They have all had a go. How hard can it be?

The graphics dudes use the same tools, they love the vector, the layers, the clever fonts etc and then they find problems with browser compatibility, fonts go walkies, the page they designed on their mac suddently can’t be seen on a mobile device …… in short after a couple of projects, the move into web seems far too much like hassle. And guess what? They give up.

The IT chappies approach it from a different angle. HTML is simple code for babies right? They can get databases to sit up and beg and will sell you a VPN in the process. They might handle the techie bits quite well, but will bamboozle the client with terms to the point that the client gives up. In general the graphics come in quite poor and the end result just doesn’t cut the mustard.

What about the expansive marketing dudes? Actually they are pretty good at this stuff. They know how to talk to clients, how to get the right messages, how to position the company and the offer. We like marketers and actually do partner with them.  Their usual weakness is “detail”. Let us build an airship and fly to America. Just a couple of details.  Remember the Hindenberg and Hydrogen ?

So that is why we don’t get into logos and brochures and packaging. Our stuff needs attention to detail, rapidly changing technology, keeping the marketing guys grounded, reminding the graphics guys to keep things “simples” and reminding the IT guys that backups, whilst not sexy, are vital.

What we do requires experience on many levels. These project management cartoons are actually very very relevant.

http://www.projectcartoon.com/create/

So very simply, we do web design and development. We also hook you up and into the that fancy social media stuff because your website is the backbone to your marketing activities.

We felt our logo was getting a bit old. At the time, back in 2007, we felt that the future was “video” and that it would be huge, so during the logo development phase we hit the idea of “play”. Not long after we had launched the new site and the new logo we started to see a lot of logos with the play triangle, especially in Microsoft products. But it was too late. It took us forever to launch and we have had to learn to live with it ever since. At the back of our minds, we were always going to do something about it and then 4 years passed us by in a flash. Must do something, must do something and as usual client projects took priority.

This time, we wanted something more original, something more us. We engaged Trevor Baker and asked him to get on with it. Actually, the new font came quite quickly.

The brand device took a little bit more time. We wanted something that would encapsulate our business and you can see what we tried a few combinations. The devices were clever, but where was the “us” thing we were looking for?

It was a bit like recruiting in terms of putting in a massive effort to end up with 3 candidates that are average. It takes so much energy to arrive at a certain point. You should tell all three to go, but you end up trying to justify which of the “OK”s will do.  Then there are the consequences of having to do it all over again.

Trevor came back in and we had a brain storming session. Questions like these were asked:

• What do we do?
• What are our values?
• What do we want?

As you can image, we help our clients with these types of question, but for ourselves we were stuck. In the end, I think we came up with:

• We help our clients get on the web
• We help them navigate through all of the web related technologies
• We like to make things simple.  (Ah  back to the “hit play button and it happens” concept)

So off went Trevor with the ideas of direction, arrows and some sort of compass. As he was working on a compass graphic, he realised that he had drawn “www” in a circle . A bit more tweaking and he had an arrow. And that was it.  The w, w, and w were all leading back the the  ”play” arrow. At that point we knew the journey was over.

http://www.xtranormal.com/

A pretty daft question to ask at this point, right? Well, not exactly. If you were to quickly google for a definition of a website, you are most likely to hit upon something of the sort- ‘a website is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed relative to a common Uniform Resource Locator (URL), often consisting of only the domain name, or the IP address, and the root path in an Internet Protocol-based network. Whew!

This definition does pretty much sum up what a website technically is. But it is hardly a very enlightening description to a non-IT guy who just knows that he needs to have a new website to get his product across to the masses of potential customers, past all the expensive marketing gimmicks of teeming competitors.

For instance, let us take the case of a leadership consultant coming in for a catchy website for his consultancy. To him, the definition of a perfect website would be a great piece of design work with a fancy logo wired into a page describing the courses they have on offer, and displaying a few conceptual images exuding intellect, to make sure it hits the right note.

Well, what he has in mind is indeed a website from the surface. But not all of what a website is really about. A website is in fact a thin veneer sitting on a shed load of technology. Though people just glaze over at this point, there happens to be a heck of a lot of Marketing and IT that needs to be stuffed in place while doing up this package!

The web thingymebob can be simply described as a clever blend of IT, Marketing and Design- a neat lil package deal. But, beware! If you are not careful while choosing the deal you might just find yourself stranded halfway along the journey with your glittering package. The ticket has to be one that gets you the whole way!

It is pointless to dwell on a fancy design to do it all for you. An attractive looking home page or a cart load of intellectual content is not all that it takes to catch the fleeting attention of a potential customer. The crux is to ‘make sure that the average Joe Punter finds your site appealing and convenient enough to take the time out to at least go through what you have to offer’.

As far as old Joe is concerned – the image of a serene, kadhi clad Gandhi or an imposing golden eagle in flight on a leadership consultancy home page is not reason enough to linger over it longer than one with a simple maze of squares along the corner. Not as long as there are better things that appeal to him on the other one! The whole thing is about deftly reeling in his fleeting attention before it gets hooked on to some other link that echoes back to him in his kind of language.

This is where the marketing people come into the scene. Before deciding on whether to put in the Mahatma or a sceptre or a square on the home page, the marketing team is called in. They put their heads together, circle out the potential audience, decide what would best appeal to them and come up with some clever strap lines.

No, it is not time yet to whack the whole thing over to the designer and call it a day! The all important IT part is still to be taken care of.

Thanks to the recent developments such as good CMSs (Content Management Systems) from wordpress, you could say a good part of it comes stuffed in bags (figuratively). But then, all is not done. You still have to get the right clasps in place to secure the bag and hold it all together. Without the right clasps and clips, it wont be long before you find the whole thing leaking out in a messy puddle- with hackers squeezing their way into your website and the website coming crashing down before you know it.

And most of the time, this is the point when the not so sexy part of making a website- ‘the back up’- suddenly begins to appear consequential. And, the responsibility of it all? You guessed it right…right on the shoulders of the owner of the website.

To cut a long story short, there is a lot more to a good website designed than a flashy home page. Now if you would like to have it straight out of the horse’s mouth in layman terms…just take the time out to give us a quick call.

You see, the thing is, we keep getting the same issues and the same old questions over and over again. The whole point of the last few blogs has been to blow away as much of the fog as possible in a direct manner and tell you what the whole thing of designing a website is about, sans the complicated technicalities and the jargons. I don’t know if it is the effect of having been in France for too long, but I don’t like the dilly dallies. Just straight talking! Take it from me; it is not without reason that they call the French the ‘franks’.

And, this is the time to add in those extra bits – a wee bit of news, a link to twitter perhaps and maybe a helpful little search box on top.

Once that is taken care of, it is time for our post-its to make their entry. A few dotted lines, a bit of scissor work…pretty much like ol’ Blue Peter…and we have a rough skeleton of the new concept shaping up.

Now then, don’t you expect to get all the things right in the very first go. You might need to move things around a bit, and maybe even start from scratch again! And then of course, there would be the stake holders all along, itching to add in their two pennies worth.

Anyway to cut a long story short, after a few sketches, and some rework you will find yourself in a position to tidy things up. Adobe’s fireworks is what we use for this. They have a nice set of tools and you can easily export to a PDF file. We usually ping these out to clients to show a tidied up version to confirm meeting notes and ensure that all issues were discussed.

This is where we introduce the concept of a grey box. The image below is the same stuff as the sketches, just tidied up a little.

The grey box process in fact relies on open thinking. We might easily get to the design at this point. You can almost see it, can’t you? But then this is the stage where feedback is all important. Take the time out, make sure all angles are covered and you have gotten in all that you would want, and the effort will definitely pay off at the end. These are the critical initial stages. People are at their most creative, ideas are flowing and no one is bound by limits of nice looking designs that rail road you into one way of thinking. Above all, costs are low. If you don’t like how things are going, you simply bin them and just start all over again. No hassle there.

Now when you finally have the rough sketch, go home, show the wife, the kids, anyone you like. (And, when it comes to the comment part, remember the wife’s bit is not to be discarded lightly! They might not be the ultimate authority on web site design or eMarketing. But that is one important source to be relied on for strong opinions of what a site should be like, and what designs are cool. Squeezing out a few minutes in between the baby’s nap and the day’s washing for a quick recipe from Jamie Oliver’s cookery blog, while whisking through eBay and netmums – count on them for some practical opinion on what a quick surfer would want from a site.)

Time for a quick PC disclaimer! The third party opinion does not have to be limited to ‘the wife’ alone. It could be your partner, your mum, your dad or a web savvy neighbour- just about anyone. Basically what we are saying is this – show people. A few extra pairs of eyeballs to spot flaws that you might have missed – a great internet thing called ‘crowdsourcing’. Well, this opinion bit is not based on any solid survey or poll, just anecdotal stuff that was discussed in the office and has been testified as quite an effective tool.

Are you still there with us on this?

• No? Good luck, we wish you well.
• Yes? We really are going to get on! Call us.

P.S. Did you spot the ol’ post-it note in the grey box? It managed to stick on this far. Bet you the designer will get rid of it in the next stage!

Post tip1 and pre tip2

Right, you gave me all that twaddle about post-it notes. Point taken Mr Owner, Director, Marketing manager, IT dude who has just inherited this web thing. But incidentally my competitors are right now shelling out fortunes on their new websites. Ahem…I hear Jones and Jones diggers are spending nothing short of 50K on their new one! All I know is I want a new website, and it simply has to be the best in the industry.

Well, all of the above have actually been said to me, apart from the word twaddle. Ha, I bet this is yet to figure even in the Enriched Teen’s Vocabulary Edition!

Coming to Scissors, paper, pens and post-its… I know they don’t exactly sound like the newest in technology, and doesn’t really come across as the best piece of professional advice in the age of Twitter and the iPad.

But, surprisingly the entire process is actually quite thorough and looks something like this:

• Simple tools such as post-it notes to capture, check requirements and priorities
• Initial sketches / grey boxing to echo back
• Click-able prototype to confirm that we are going to deliver something that was wanted in the first place
• Design
• Build
• QA / Test / Training
• Go Live

The technology and techno babble in fact comes in only later. We can’t possibly “give you” a website at the very outset. We don’t know your business, your clients or your products. Our job at this point is just to get you talking. We could put on a German accent, use a desk lamp and turn a bright shining light on to you. “You vill talk”. Now, before you get the politically correct police on to us… we don’t do that and we love Germany, especially Heidelberg.

The point we are making is this. A process is needed to capture all the requirements. There will be a lot of sorting, rejecting and change of focus. When the client takes the post-its out of our hands, we know that we are onto a winner. The client is engaging, they are starting to own the process. They are starting to build the site. That is exactly what we want, a partnership approach that will lead to a win-win scenario.

If you think you don’t have to be put through all this hassle for a new website, let’s be honest, we know you could spend 50 quid and get your site done in Mumbai or Jakarta. Heck, you can even go to WordPress.com and get a site for free! (and sometimes that is the right thing to do.)

I hope you are still there with us after all this? Good, in that case we are going to get on quite well and I see a winning website shaping up in the horizon.

Hmmm, this stuff works for Social Media also?