Diversifying into new technology

Atkinson Electrical (South East) Limited is a family-based business in the Medway region of Kent in south east England. Their traditional business has been domestic and business electrical installations, working with domestic customers as well as local housing associations.

More recently, the business has identified solar panel installation as a growing opportunity, and decided to take the business a new direction while at the same time retaining the core electrical work which has served them well over many years.

New direction

As part of the new direction, they realised that a critical element of publicising their new interests would be their on-line presence. Up to now business had been generated by traditional methods – networking, word of mouth, appoaching new customer direct – but now something different was required.

Technical features

Search engine visibility, mobile phone capability and a professional-looking design were important items on their wish-list. And all that on a tight budget.

Needless to say, Nick Prior Designs was able to help Atkinsons with everything on their list. We tried a couple of designs out before settling on the final look and feel, and we developed some search engine optimisation tactics to ensure the new site stood a good chance of climbing up the search engine results for a business in a very competitve marketplace in a vry competitive area.

The Brief
The challenge for Nick Prior Designs was obvious: get Hilary Burrage on-line as a social commentator. What was less obvious was how to present the wide range of ideas in a coherent manner so that readers could identify the various interests, and follow up on them.

The Approach
In the first instance, Nick Prior Designs designed and built a traditional weblog. Based upon Movable Type, the weblog simply presented a range of articles in a hierarchy of categories. They were sequenced daily so it represented a daily journal of ideas.

The intention was simply to get Hilary on-line, and then to review the site after visitors had found her and made comments. This first phase also provided an opportunity for Hilary to put some shape to her ideas herself – what structure made most sense for her own purposes. The sheer breadth of the material made this a particular challenge, one which I’m not sure we have concluded yet.

The Outcome
The site is now live and visitors are warmly welcomed! Phase 2 is already on the drawing board, and I suspect Phase 3 will follow shortly after that. The intention is to review the way visitors use the site and reflect that in the way new material, and existing articles are published. We’ll explore with Hilary whether her needs are best served with a daily Journal or, as we now suspect, with a more formally structured website that still enables formal and informal interaction by her readers.

This approach is made possible by the close consultancy-based working relationship Nick Prior Designs has with Hilary. While it would have been possible to define everything about the site up front, we would have needed to spend much time reviewing possibilities in isolation from the material, and in Hilary’s case the material is vitally important.

You can find Hilary Burrage’s website here at www.hilaryburrage.com.

Want to know more?
If you would like to know more about the approach Nick Prior Designs
takes with professionally orientated, content-rich websites, contact Nick Prior by email, or telephone on +44 77 67 23 81 88.

Website: Dr Keith Kahn-Harris

Dr. Keith Kahn-Harris gave us a brief: a clean design and make it easy to keep updated. And by the way, a list of recent changes on the front page.

He needed to move on from his original site which no longer truly represented his current interests.

One prototype, a few adjustments and 10 days later, the site went live. We used WordPress to create a completely flexible site consisting mostly of static pages which Keith can edit himself. If and when he decides to turn any one of the those individual pages into a series of articles, he’ll be able to do so with a single line change in the setup.

Of course we added in RSS subscription buttons, multi-level menus, contact pages, site search facilities, Twitter integration and a bunch of other nice features. It provides Keith with a platform he can develop further as his interests grow.

“I like it v. much”, he says, “pleasure doing business with you!”

Take a look at Keith Kahn-Harris’s website.

Website Complete Performance

Nick Bishop at Complete Performance approached Nick Prior Designs with a challenge. He had a sound business proposition and some great stories as collateral, but he needed a website up and running within 5 weeks.

Now, that’s not much of a challenge, but Complete Performance also wanted us to support them by building the website while they were out getting business in. Again not much of a challenge, but there’s more.

They wanted a professionally designed site with a clear modern style. They also wanted to be able to take control of the content themselves once the site had gone live. And they wanted it to support their networking activities by reflecting current issues in Business Performance Management.

The Approach
We’re always up for a challenge, so we took the job on.

Creating the basic design for the site was reasonably straightforward, and using the Movable Type environment meant we were able to complete the information architecture very quickly.

The real challenge was the content. Nick Bishop sat down with our marketing team and we worked out between us how we would convert Nick’s strong stories about his experiences in Business Performance in the Financial Sector into compelling case studies.

In the end, we created a suitable template so Nick and his team could take a similar approach in future, writing case studies and news features in a standard way to minimise the time taken to keep the website fresh. We also ensured that the stories would get written in a dynamic way, enough to motivate a business manager to pick up the phone.

The Outcome
The Complete Performance website went live in August 2005. It immediately attracted much attention and praise from Complete Performance clients for its clear layout and design, and the interesting nature of the client experiences and news features.

The longer term will tell us whether the website will have the intended result of raising Complete Performance’s profile in its target market places, but the initial feedback has been resoundingly positive.

Nick Bishop told us, “We really appreciated not only the delivery of the website to meets our needs and expectations, but we felt we benefited enormously from the consultative approach Nick Prior Designs took during the development of the messages in the content of the site. As a result, the site has hit the ground running for us and we have a great basis for building on”.

You can see the Complete Performance website here