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 >

It was clear that CookPrior had a wealth of material and experience to offer their website visitors. The problem was that the process for getting it onto the old website was so long-winded that they simply did not bother. Kevin Prior explains: “It meant we had to phone or email the website manager, and then we had to wait until they were able to update the site. We needed more direct control over the content ourselves.”

CookPrior approached Nick Prior Designs and requested a web site that had these features:

• Fast loading
• Easy to update
• Functional design
• Present files and other resources for download
• Provide a variety of ways for people to access the website information

The Approach

Nick Prior Designs responded with a website built on Movable Type, the content management system from SixApart. The robust editing features make it easy for CookPrior to update their site whenever they want. No waiting for a web consultant to do it for them.

It’s quick to load into a browser too – the use of current web development standards mean visitors don’t have to hang around waiting for pages to load into their browser.

The design is functional and has won many plaudits from their regular visitors. It makes information easy to find, different types of information simple to identify, and you don’t have to wade through acres of irrelevant content to get to the meat.

Nick Prior Designs also built in facilities for users to subscribe to the newsreader feed. Using features about to be built into
Microsoft’s browser, visitors can subscribe to regular automatic updates from the CookPrior website without having to remember to call at the site itself. CookPrior can get their message out to people when they want to communicate it.

Even better, they have had requests from other websites to include their material as syndicated content. CookPrior are happy their material can get promoted more widely without them having to do any more work to get it there!

The website now contains links to PDF files so CookPrior visitors can download useful reports for their own use. And if you want to buy one of the books CookPrior recommends in their Resources section, you can click on a picture of the book concerned and go straight to the relevant section of the Amazon website and click to make your purchase.

The Outcome

CookPrior explained recently to us what had happened as a result of changing the thrust of their website. The dynamic news section had resulted in an increase of visitors to the site, and sales enquiries jumped 30% in the first year of operation. Even better both revenues and profits had increased by about 10%, indicating that the type of business they are now attracting paid more than previously.

Cook Prior put this down to the effect the frequently changing information they publish has on their market in which they are
increasingly being seen as serious players and definitely to be respected.

You can see the CookPrior website at CookPrior.com.