Archive for the 'Web' Category

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If your website is just a touch neglected…

Published on January 20, 2010 in Unusual and Web. 0 Comments Tags: Alcentra, Duke Street, Indicus Advisors, Inflexion, information hub, investor communications, investor information, website.

Some web sites really don't do the jobs they were designed to do any more

We all know how it goes sometimes; your website just doesn’t get the love and attention that it should. And meanwhile of course, life can be passing it by.

Which would all be okay, if it weren’t so serious.

We have a lot of clients in investment and private equity for example, and their investors need to know what is happening to their money. The web and a properly designed website, can be a focus of this kind of activity – keeping investors informed about more than just the big picture, but maintaining information streams that are relevant (often personalised to) individual investors.

Quite simply, if you haven’t got these facilities, then some very important people might well go elsewhere.

The rusty cars that we at Wild West design are featuring in our new promotional campaigns should help bring more of this functionality to more new Wild West clients in the near future, while clients like Alcentra, Inflexion, Indicus Advisors, Duke Street and others are already taking advantage.

BNY Mellon and Alcentra site goes live

Published on January 19, 2010 in Finance and investment and Web. 1 Comment Tags: Alcentra, BNY Mellon, finance, Indicus Advisors, Inflexion, investment, investment bank, mezzanine finance, Satya Capital, senior debt, subordinated debt, website.

The investment portfolio from the Alcentra and BNY Mellon website

Alcentra are an investment company and, like some other leading investment and finance companies, one who have had a long-standing record of working with Wild West Design. Their new US operation is one which brings together the resources of BNY Mellon with Alcentra’s expertise to provide a new option in mezzanine finance. The new partnership will provide senior and subordinated debt and equity finance to mid-market companies in North America.

Read about the success of Alcentra over the years since its first investment (in 1999) at www.alcentra.com

Alternatively, and especially if you would like to find out more about Alcentra’s new collaborative investment venture with BNY Mellon, go to their brand new web site at the following address:

http://mezzanine.alcentra.com/

Alcentra was one of the first finance and investment companies to work with Wild West. Since then of course, they have been joined by many others, including Inflexion, Indicus Advisors, Satya Capital and Duke Street. They all appreciate our knowledge of this complex market and our ability to keep them in touch with the investors whose funds are so vital.

Management buy-out at Griffin Global

Published on January 15, 2010 in Brand and identity, Finance and investment, Unusual and Web. 0 Comments Tags: Alcentra, financial, Griffin Global, Indicus Advisors, Inflexion, logo, private equity, Satya Capital, web site, www.inflexion.com.

Private equity firm Inflexion lead another important transaction.

Not that their very smart and seemingly ageless logo has anything to do with it, but Inflexion, a Wild West client since they were taken private some years ago, have successfully concluded another important transaction. This time they have facilitated the management buyout of Griffin Global Group, a company that provides specialist travel services to sectors of the marine and energy exploration industries.

Inflexion Private Equity invests in businesses valued between £10 million and £100 million that display clear potential for growth, and operate within a dynamic environment.

Read more about Inflexion’s work in funding enterprise and the new generation of British business at their (Wild West designed) web site: www.inflexion.com

Wild West work for a number of private equity and other investment companies including Satya Capital, Duke Street, Alcentra and Indicus Advisors.

Ecommerce – solution or stumbling block?

Published on October 6, 2009 in Web. 0 Comments Tags: Activation, ecommerce, eshop, Marketing, start-up, Vintage Wine Gifts, web sales, web site.

Ecommerce (which means, if you’re in any doubt, buying and selling things through a web site or catalogue) can be a solution to the commonest of all problems – how do I get more sales? On the other hand, it can also be a part of the issue that you were trying to solve in the first place – that of the downward sales curve.

How can it be both?

It can be a solution only if you promote your new capability.

We’ve dealt with companies who sit back and wait when their new, ecommerce-enabled, site goes live. Google, they tell us, will do everything. Pretty soon, they’re back. How can I get my site up the ratings? And we have to tell them the basics of web wisdom – that a web site is (or should be) more like a magazine than a annual brochure; that a web site needs to be promoted if you are going to get traffic; that quality of service, quality of product, quality of communications are essential parts of the marketing mix.

If they listen (and invest too, as though this was a new branch of their operation), then ecommerce starts to become the solution they were looking for. They worry about it every morning. They check the statistics every day. If trends go the wrong way, then they do something about that.

If they don’t. it’s just a waste of money, time and effort, and in the end, that waste will drag a company down.

There are so many things that companies can do with and through the web these days. Don’t miss that opportunity.

Vintage Wine Gifts

Web Traffic – Slow Build Is Best

Published on September 30, 2009 in Web. 0 Comments Tags: Barclays, best practice, Blog, Indicus Advisors, Inflexion, Secerno, Stock Spirits, Web, web design, web site, web traffic.

Last weekend, we had our best day ever for web traffic by whatever measure we could find – hits, unique visits, downloads, sites. All were up, and if we’re pushed, we don’t really know why. What we do know is that on Monday morning, we had two very solid enquiries about future work.

The web is one of those places where hard and consistent work does bring rewards. It’s not so much a matter of shoving yourself forward all the time. It’s more a case of doing the right things consistently in order to get the results you are looking for.

This blog is one of those things. We hope that our new web site (coming soon!) will better reflect the quality of work which we do for clients like Secerno, Barclays Premier League, Barclays Spaces for Sport, Inflexion, IGP&I, Alcentra, Indicus Advisors, Stock Spirits and others.

Do return here whenever you would like to see more of our current work, or follow us on Twitter.com

The Cobbler’s Children – Time to Refresh our Identity

Published on September 22, 2009 in Brand and identity, Design and Web. 0 Comments Tags: branding, competitions, designwildwest, identity, microsite, PR campaigns, Web, web design, web site.

Things have changed since we founded Wild West Design in 1996. Back then, it was only just becoming important to have a web site, mobile phones were getting to be less like bricks, and web applications were just starting to be talked about seriously. The dotcom boom was still to come, global warming was just an idea and ecommerce was unknown.

In those days, the bulk of our business was display, corporate literature, advertising in print and direct marketing - with hardly an electronic communications tool anywhere.

Fast forward 13 years, and most of our business still comes from important business services companies, but electronic design and communication is something we do every day of the week.

We not only design and build web sites for companies, products, PR campaigns, offers, market research, competitions and sponsorship initiatives, but our clients often expect to use their web site and email to communicate to specific target audiences through data-rooms and private areas which we set up on their behalf.

It’s been a hectic time.

Now though, we’ve had the chance to catch up with our own web presence and identity, and you’ll see the new wild west rolling out over the next few weeks. We’ll tell you more as it happens.

Web Site Statistics – A New Twist

Published on September 17, 2009 in Unusual and Web. 0 Comments Tags: ecommerce, financial, investment, Marketing, private equity, report, sales information, Web, web design, web site, web statistics, web tracking, web traffic.

Putting privileged information on your web site, probably in a password-protected area, has advantages beyond treating special clients in a special way. Because each password is linked to a particular person or company, you can track very closely statistics like:

- how often did each one visit the site (if at all)?
- what files did they download? (and so what are the hot topics for that individual?)
- what pages did they visit?

These kind of statistics can be interesting when trying to assess how and why shareholders, investors, journalists and others behave as they do, and can be important for your sales and management processes, as well as providing valuable input to a sales team or marketing campaign.

Web Design – Keep Your Options Open

Published on September 15, 2009 in Web. 0 Comments Tags: content management, modX, open source, php, SQL, Web, web commerce, web design, web site.

Inflexion Homepage

Wild West is an unashamed fan of open source software, particularly when it comes to web design and to content management. Why? Because it allows the owners of a web site to have the maximum in terms of transparency and portability too.

Once upon a time the whole software industry was based on a ‘lock-in’ factor – choose one technology and you were effectively choosing a technology for a very long time ahead. And that base technology impacted, and sometimes heavily restricted, all your other choices too.

Now, with open source, that doesn’t need to happen. MySQL, PHP and other open source web enabling technologies are often better than proprietary systems, and allow greater interactivity with other systems – something which is often important in this age of web commerce.

Most importantly, open source technologies leave choices open and unlock the opportunity for best fit products improved by competition in the market.

Stock Spirits – Partying Around the World

Published on August 26, 2009 in Corporate, International and Web. 0 Comments Tags: blue lagoon, central Europe, cocktail, Czysta, Fernet Stock, limonce, Stock Spirits, vodka, vodka martini, Web, web design, web site.

Boznia-Herzegovina and Croatia will be getting their own Stock Spirits web sites later this year, reflecting how Stock sales (of brands like Czysta de Luxe vodka, Fernet Stock and Limonce) are expanding throughout central and eastern Europe. Wild West will be building these multi-language sites with the same stylish design as www.stockspiritsgroup.com and national sites for the Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. The corporate site for Stock Spirits also includes recipes for some exciting cocktails, from the classic Vodka Martini through to an exotic Blue Lagoon. To view them, just click on the button in the illustration panel to the left of each page.

SQL Injections – Is Your Site Safe?

Published on August 24, 2009 in Web. 0 Comments Tags: banking, database, financial, investment, password, private equity, Secerno, SQL Injection, web site.

We were alerted to the potential compromise of database information via the web when we started working with Secerno, a company whose business is database security. Basically, if there is the potential for user interaction through your site, then there is also a high risk that a hacker might ‘inject’ his own SQL code and download information that you would wish to keep safe – like passwords, clients, products.

If you are password-protecting databased information, (making it available via a closed user area perhaps) you may have locked the doors, but you will need to check that the windows are closed too. Damage from SQL injection is just one of the issues that Secerno helps protect against.

Wild West clients too, (including our various banking, investment and private equity clients) are safeguarded against this very prevalent form of attack. Read more here: http://www.secerno.com/?pg=SQL-Injection