Tag Archive for 'start-up'

Great design – It all adds up

Published on June 17, 2010 in Brand and identity, Corporate and Design. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

No matter whether you are a start-up operation just beginning to make your mark on the business world, or an established company with a brand to protect and enhance, the way you look is important.

And it’s not so good when your website (for example) looks great, but your corporate stationery looks second class. Or your product literature is great, but you’re let down by an outbound email. High quality is important and consistent quality more important still.

At WildWest Design, we’re proud to provide that consistency of approach. Because we’re not the largest of design companies, we have to be incredibly thorough about detail, (as well as providing the inspiration in terms of the big picture), because getting things right – from a business card or a powerpoint presentation to a corporate display or a product launch – really does matter. It means business for our clients, and it means business for us too.

Our bright and confident logo for Hatton Grange, a company providing specialist services to private equity and venture capital companies

Our bright and confident logo for Hatton Grange, a company providing specialist services to private equity and venture capital companies

Hatton Grange (see the story directly below) are the latest new company to launch with a new identity, new stationery and new website – all designed by WildWest. They join a growing list of companies working with WildWest, either for specific projects or on the basis of regular and frequent needs. You’ll find that list to the right of this story. Scroll down to the ‘Contacts’ section.

In total contrast to this project was our work for central Europe’s largest manufacturer of branded spirits. Stock Spirits neeed to document and control the use of their brand mark over different territories, and to ensure a consistency of approach in terms of corporate websites wherever their products are sold. WildWest designed and implemented a set of ten websites, many with two and three language versions.

Reinforcing brand consistency on an international basis - Branding defined and guided for Stock Spirits, Central Europe's largest producer of branded spirits

Different companies have different requirements, but our award-winning service can be important whether you have specific design needs, or you are concerned to have a service that will reinforce your product and service quality wherever you are visible.

What more do you need from us?

Published on October 20, 2009 in Brand and identity, Corporate and Marketing. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

We’ve implemented a new web site. At the moment, it’s a simple holding site – in line with our bold new look. You can reach it on our old address (www.wildwildwest.co.uk) or on our new one – www.designwildwest.com

The pictures which you view through the WW device are samples of our work – from the ribbons on the Barclays Premier League trophy, through to our web site for Stock Spirits.

It is just a holding page really, but you can check our address, view or download our (very smart!) new credentials document or (of course) link through from the site to this blog (and we’ll be updating our blog header very soon too).

If you would like to see more from us – either on the web site or on this blog – then please let us know. At the moment we’re debating what we feature on the web site – our past award-winning work, case studies on topics as widely different as corporate naming or annual reports, or simply the kind comments we’ve had from our clients over the years. Please do get in touch if you have suggestions or comments!

And if you’ve not dealt with us before, maybe now is the time to think about whether we can help you? As you’ll see – in corporate design, in web and electronic marketing, and in sport sponsorship activation – we have a pretty good track record. Why not go to our web site now and take a look at our brand spanking new credentials document? We hope it will convince you to get in touch.

Please bookmark our address now: www.designwildwest.com

Ecommerce – solution or stumbling block?

Published on October 6, 2009 in Web. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

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

Boost Web Site Traffic. Add a Blog

Published on September 18, 2009 in Corporate, Marketing and PR. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Blogs like this one aren’t difficult to set up. The difficult thing is to keep them updated regularly with news from your company. If you do manage to do that, though, you should see some tangible results and sooner than you might think too.

The web is an information medium, but it’s a news medium too, one where (for example) experts can provide very succinct nuggets of information (and we’d like to think that this is one of those!) which help to showcase your company’s capabilities and what it is good at.

That’s exactly the kind of content – continually refreshed and updated – that search engines love. Too often, web sites are treated like the annual report. ‘We did that months ago’ – people tell us, without realising that by failing to refresh and update content, they are losing potential visitors and more importantly, the business that comes with an understanding of your special expertise.

Wild West is a team of people – designers, programmers and marketing experts – all of whom can bring to bear particular expertise on issues that regularly face commercial organisations – from identity and branding, through to the creation of documents and web resources that will help the business to grow.

A blog is part of today’s marketing toolkit. Ignore it, and you might just be turning your back on business.

Blogs can focus on a specific aspect of your business, on an area of specialisation or something you are particularly proud of (like a sponsorship deal or a social responsibility programme). In fact, today’s blogging software is often enough to organise and publish all the marketing information that a smaller, specialist company may have the bandwidth to put out. That could mean that it might be able to do without the expense of a web site altogether, at least at the outset. Something to think about there, particularly for start-up companies!