Tag Archive for 'web design'

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The Cobbler’s Children – Time to Refresh our Identity

Published on September 22, 2009 in Brand and identity, Design and Web. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

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.

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!

Web Site Statistics – A New Twist

Published on September 17, 2009 in Unusual and Web. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

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.

Building Web Traffic and Business Too

Published on September 16, 2009 in PR. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Once upon a time, everyone loved Flash animations, and the thing to have was a big animated sequence on your home page to entice everyone into your site. (We did a wonderful one for Mezzanine Management – a floating and revolving logo on a black background – but it took a long time to load!)

Nowadays, businesses need to know that if someone just visits the home page of your site, there will be something there that tells them very quickly what the company does, who its products or services are designed for, and why someone in their target market might want to read further.

These days, its all about targetting and measurement, and if possible, having your clients and potential clients come back time after time, maybe by giving privileged access to certain information for key individuals.

They won’t do that if your web content is flat and uninteresting; if your news section hasn’t been updated for six months; if your contact information is out of date. Yet all of these things still happen.

A web site should be like a magazine, not an inscription on a stone. The content should change regularly, and be interesting too. Why should I read this page? Should be the first question you ask about your site. Why? Because that’s what every visitor will be asking too. (Inflexion – see the post below – is a great example).

Web Design – Keep Your Options Open

Published on September 15, 2009 in Web. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

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: , , , , , , , , , , , .

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.

Impressive List of Supporters

Published on August 10, 2009 in Design, Marketing, PR and Web. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

The Making BrITain Great campaign, initiated by MicroFocus and their PR agency Brands2Life has attracted an impressive list of supporters for their technology and jobs manifesto, published on July 21. If you’re involved in technology, you can leave a comment or add your name to the supporters list at their web site www.makingBrITaingreat.co.uk Wild West designed the manifesto and the accompanying web pages.

The Tip of the Iceberg

Published on July 31, 2009 in Corporate and Web. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

The home page of the Indicus Advisors' web site
Looks like a very simple little web site, doesn’t it? But the web site we created for Indicus Advisors is a little like the wardrobe door that leads to Narnia in the CS Lewis books; there’s a whole lot more than you would imagine behind that simple entrance.

The reason is that Indicus want to give information primarily to a select group of investors and potential investors, and to be recognised as a member of either group, you’ll need to apply to Indicus for a password which will give you access to the privileged areas in the site.

If you invest in one fund, then your password allows you access to information about it. Invest in more, and your password opens up more doors.

A site like this demands care in its creation and in its maintenance too. But it can pay important dividends (figuratively!) in building important links between a company and the people who really matter in the market.