I’ve been looking forward to blogging about this site now for several months, and I’m delighted to say that after much blood, sweat and tears, the Customer Essential website is now live <drum roll please>.

We have loved every moment of creating this website because of the freedom and encouragement that MD, Liz Machtynger, has given us to create something really special for her. Liz has had the foresight to realise that just because she’s working with corporate organisations, it doesn’t mean that she needs to strip out all semblance of her personality. And that’s really, really refreshing.

This is going to be a bit of an epic post because I’d like to take you on the Customer Essential rebrand journey and show you just how we’ve taken Liz’s brand identity from stark and soulless to emotive and engaging.

Here’s Customer Essential’s original website.

I don’t want to knock it too much; but you can see the dramatic transformation between the “before” and the after. The stark colours, clunky logo and overbearing passion flower do little to create a feeling or warmth or professionalism. Let’s just say it was time to move on…

We’ve already talked about creating the logo and stationery here. And the new logo was an important turning point in Customer Essential’s journey. In fact, since using their new logo on their email signatures and using their new style PowerPoint presentation for their proposals, the company have had a 100% success rate with proposals, and have even had to turn two clients down as they were too busy! Now that’s what I call a result.

But back to the website.

Creating a design with so much emotion, that really communicates the essence of the business, didn’t happen overnight. Initially we had discussed designing one page for Customer Essential which they’d be able to take to a web developer (one of the team has a family connection) for construction. To keep costs low we had spent half a day creating a smart (and much improved from their existing site) design. And here it is…

Now for many businesses this would be fine. It looks smart, it’s well structured and it has some clear calls to action. Liz was somewhat of a dream client because she accepted that this was a good design for the time that she had invested; but she wanted more, and was prepared to invest more to enable us to get there.

I hope you’ll agree that the investment has paid off.

The new design has heart and soul. It beautifully sums up the company’s integrity, passion and quirkiness. And yet despite encapsulating the true soul of the business; it still has credibility and professionalism. But getting there wasn’t easy.

I for one, found it very difficult to overcome the idea that the company works with customers, and yet we weren’t showing any people. And the reason for this was quite simple: it’s hard to find images of people that don’t look like “stock photos”. Both Flourish and Customer Essential wanted to create a look and feel that was better than corporate stock photography. We wanted to create an emotive reaction; and so the idea of journeys came about.

Through the brainstorming session we identified the “heart” of customer essential and developed this idea of journeys through nature. Each of the Customer Essential team are very Autumnal, with strong connections to community, history, academia and the outdoors. This really comes across in the style of illustrations and the photos we’ve used.

People often ask me where the frog came from on the contact form – quite simply it evoked such a positive reaction in all of us during the brainstorming that we couldn’t not use it! It felt like the perfect quirky mix of intelligence, earthiness and results.

I think you can really see how the mood board has come through in the final design.

Personally I love the welcoming and warm welcome, and the way that the images guide you around the site.

And I think the illustrations Chloe and Rob have created add a nice warm and approachable touch.

The fabulous Matt Pereira took photographs of each of the team, which look just stunning, and importantly approachable and professional at the same time. And Rob created “pinboards” for each team member with their favourite things (including their favourite music, which is a big passion for the group).

The site has taken a long time to conceive: in both the planning and the execution and build. And Liz has ensured that she has invested properly in this to get the very best outcome. Already the branding is paying dividends and I’m excited to see how the new website helps the company grow moving forwards.

Actress-turned-photographer Sarah Winterflood approached us a few months back to help her create a website with a more “grown-up” feel.

Sarah has recently got married and moved out of the Big Smoke to Esher and was looking to build up her photography business. Her current website is fun and funky, but we both felt that a more slick, professional image was required for her corporate site. Having thrown herself in to networking locally, Sarah was keen to have a website and set of stationery that really helped her communicate confidence and professionalism to her potential clients.

Rob has kept the design very simple and sleek, letting the photography take centre stage. The colours are more “grown up” than Sarah’s quirky ‘other’ site and cool throw out menus keep everything interesting and cutting edge.

Having wrestled with writing her own copy, Sarah also commissioned us to write the copy which is much harder than you think. Writing about yourself, in a way that sounds persuasive and compelling, but doesn’t make you cringe inside as you worry about how boastful you’re being is no easy task. We’ve also made sure that we’ve kept the “we’s” to an absolute minimum, instead focusing on what the client needs.

Personally I love the strong magenta which keeps things feminine without being girly. And Sarah and I both love the star – which sums up her personality perfectly!

Jenny Edwards runs Solutions 4 Stress. A stress management consultancy based in Surrey. I first met Jenny at the Esher Women In Business network last summer, and in February Jenny approached us to help her swizz up her website and create some promotional literature for her business. I wish I’d taken a screen grab of her old site before the new one went live, but hindsight is a wonderful thing!

Jenny’s old site did little to portray her experience, professionalism and dedication to helping people overcome stress. The colours were harsh and the imagery, whilst ok, hadn’t been executed in a way that made people feel relaxed. Chloe redesigned the site using some of Jenny’s suggested images and much calmer, softer colours. The light, bright images and the rounded fonts give a feeling of approachability, whilst still maintaining a feel of professionalism and trust.

With a little guidance from Flourish Jenny rewrote the text on her website to focus much more on the client and the solutions she was able to offer. She also made sure that every page had a call to action. This week Chloe has also created these gorgeous leaflets for Jenny to be able to take to networking events with her and really resonate with her potential clients.

What do you think? I feel calmer already!

I’ve begun to wonder whether small businesses are getting too het up on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) at the expense of the rest of their marketing strategy.

Don’t get me wrong, getting found on Google is important. But is it important enough to pin all your hopes, dreams and marketing budget on? I mean, are people actually going to Google for your product or service? And when they do, will it revolutionise your business?

A close friend of mine runs a retail company. She invested several thousand pounds last year in an SEO company who promised to get her to page one of Google since he’d done the same thing for two of her competitors. Given that she sells product online it seemed like a sensible thing to do. She has a nice looking website and although there are many improvements that could be made, the site looks good and is converting visitors at the moment.

A year later (and several weeks of nailbiting disappointment whilst she was blacklisted as he’d left the server open and some Chinese casino hackers had put dodgy code in her site) she is finally on page one of Google. And she told me that she used to think that this was the holy grail. That once she was on page one of Google her business would skyrocket. Well she’s getting an extra six hits a week. In what she does that’s not translating into significant sales to make the process worthwhile.

My feeling is that she should be using social media: blogging, twitter and facebook, to drive more traffic to the site. All of these things are free, but time consuming. There are also plenty of things that we could do to her site to make it more sticky and process visitors through it more effectively.

My experience is that small businesses regularly invest huge chunks of money in getting their sites optimised, without looking at the fundamentals.

I was talking to one business owner who was number one on Google in his particular niche… but he had an 80% bounce rate! He was loathe to have anyone touch the site because he didn’t want to fall off the bottom of the search engines. But the design of his website was putting people off, and that’s before he’s thought about the sales structure on there.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t optimise your site; but I do think that before you start paying for people to visit it you should make sure that every last element of your site will do everything it can to convert visitors. And I think that’s the missing link for many small businesses.

If you sell a product that people can buy online, then yes, optimise away. But only once you’ve got the rest of your house in order.

Start with the design. Is it engaging, arresting and attractive to your potential clients? Does it do you justice? Then take a look at the copy: objectively as a human being (not as a search engine). Writing for search engines is all very well, but it’s boring to read. And what you must remember is that once people get to your site they’ll need to be interested in what you have to say.

How about the way your website guides potential visitors to take action? Is that clear? For example, if you want people to buy a particular lawnmower this month, have you asked them to? Have you signposted them around the site?

What’s your imagery like? Naff stock photos or something that’s inspiring and represents your business well? Do you have an easy way of capturing peoples data, via a contact form or newsletter sign up box? Are you doing all you can on social media to bring traffic to your site?

I’d be looking at all of these elements well prior to search engine optimisation. What do you think though? I sense this might be a little controversial!

What do you think of Elizabeth Cairns’ shiny new blog? We designed and built her site in February, and were delighted when she asked us to swizz up her blog design last week.

Here’s Elizabeth’s old Typepad blog.

It’s full of compelling posts, but there are a few design obstacles which get in the way of instant enjoyment. First up, the multitude of colours, fonts and font sizes make for challenging, and somewhat distracting, reading. Secondly the font. Elizabeth has more about her than stolid, safe Verdana suggests. Georgia is much more up her street! It’s also hard to identify the blog or engage with it because of a lack of images.

Elizabeth asked us to help create her a more engaging blog that reflected the true essence of Amovita. The natural world is a big part of both Elizabeth and her business, so the Autumn leaves in the header were a logical choice. The Autumnal colour palette is very reflective of Amovita’s values and core principles and that’s where the inspiration for the rounded corners, the teal and the warm gold came from.

As we’d already built Elizabeth’s website, installing a blog was a relatively quick process. There are a few things that we’d like to add to in terms of design over the coming months, but I think it’s a dramatic improvement from where the blog is, and we look forward to it helping Elizabeth’s business to flourish!

As a brand champion and fan of fonts first, and web designer second, I’ve always been frustrated about the lack of (reliable) font choice when it comes to designing websites. After all, just how much fun can you really have with Arial, Verdana, Times and Trebuchet? (I’m already sounding like I need to get out more…).

So you can probably imagine just how excited I was when I got this email from Font Shop announcing the arrival of 30 (yes, 30!) web safe fonts. And I’m sure that it won’t be completely reliable, won’t work across all browsers, and will most likely just give the likes of most of us a headache. But surely it’s an exciting step in the right direction?

I’ve had quite a few conversations this week with business owners confused about whether they need a blogsite, a website or a blog – or a combination of the two! And it can get pretty confusing – everyone you speak to has a different opinion, and here are my views.

By blogsite I mean a mixture of a website and blog. Sometimes that means a “stream of consciousness” mingle of web pages and posts; other times it might simply be a website with a blog integrated onto one page. The author will have one login and one “backend” to the system which makes it easier to manage, and of course, cheaper to create as you’re only designing and hosting one site rather than two. I have to say, I think that blogsites are rarely as effective as a seperate blog/ website combo.

I find them confusing and hard to navigate round at worst, challenging to engage with at best. Posts mingle with sales copy, and with just one link in the menu bar (usually entitled “blog” or “news”) it’s difficult (although not impossible) to dig back into the archives and really engage with the author.

By far and away the most sensible option is the website and separate blog combination. I really believe that websites should be neat, easy to navigate and focused on selling (not in an all out shouty way, but you’ve got to attract attention, create desire and ask for the order). Blogs on the other hand are all about positioning you as an expert, sharing knowledge and building relationships. Go too salesy on a blog and you’ll turn your reader off, fail to be salesy enough on your website and you’ll miss opportunities.

So the only sensible combination I can see is a website that sells and a blog that builds relationships. It’s rare that you can find a blogsite that mixes the two successfully.

Of course a blog and a website will cost you more (assuming you have them both professionally designed) than just a blogsite. After all, there are two sites to host, manage, design and construct. But they absolutely won’t take any more of your time to manage – why would they? You’ll have the same number of pages after all!

I have a website and a blog. And the two are so seamlessly linked (simply through a link in the navigation bar) that many clients thought that I had an integrated blogsite. But the clue is in the menu bar (as well as the completely different but complementary designs): click on the nav bar in my blog and you’ll be able to pull up all the posts on, say, branding. This makes my blog much easier to interact and engage with than a one page wonder within your website.

My vote will always be for the seperate (but linked via the navigation bar) website and blog. How about yours? What do you think?

Yesterday morning I hit the “go” button on the website. I took down the holding page, took a deep breath and launched the Flourish website.

After more than six months developing the brand: from selecting a name (that’s another story for another day) to developing the logo, choosing colours and rolling out the corporate identity, the website seems like the final step in making it all feel real. I’ve bought the champagne, ordered the cake and am looking forward to my first official day in business as Flourish!

I’m not certain we won’t tweak the design of this site. I for one think that the illustrations might be a little ‘plain’ compared to the homepage. And particularly for our ‘engaging’ brand, I’d like them to have a little more texture, a little more going on. But the challenge is that it’s hard to use stock images without them using cheesy. And you also need to have a theme. Now the obvious theme for flourish is gardening – and I love the images I’ve used on the homepage. But there’s a fine balance between metaphorical gardening images, and the whole thing looking like a seed catalogue! It’s a difficult balance…

So for now, partly because I’m exhausted, and partly because I want to see what the team think, I’m going to leave the website as is. We’re passionate about never missing deadlines, so I was delighted that I launched 24 hours early. And yes, if you look closely you’ll see that one page is waiting for content (the portfolio plugin I’d planned to use just didn’t work so it looks like we’ll need to code it by hand) but overall I like it. We do need to get the portfolio coded (and fast) but because our blog is so rich in case studies I felt it was ok to launch without it.

I’d love to know what you think about the illustrations. Are they too plain? Or do you think everything else (background and blog) are so full on that it’s nice to keep things simple? The jury’s still out for me, but I’m glad to have it launched. I’m off to slouch on the sofa with a cup of tea and a magazine.

Da dah! I’m really chuffed to be able to show you the new designs for Guildford based photographer Matt Pereira’s new blogsite.

We first worked with Matt about 18 months ago when we printed some stationery for him. He seemed to like us…

“It makes a real difference to come across a company / service where you are treated like a worthwhile person and not just another annoying customer – even if you do fall into the “detail attentive” category ” Matt Pereira

Matt also attended all of my marketing workshops last year, and it wasn’t long before we built up a good working relationship. And so it was perhaps natural that when Matt needed his brand developing and a new brochure creating, that he turned to the Flourish creative talents.

We worked hard on developing Matt’s brand from a stylish, but somewhat lacking in “heart”, image to something that truly reflects him as a sociable photographer.

The Brochure

One of the pages from Matt’s wedding brochures.

And another two featuring the textured paper and the swirls that add instant tactility.

Back to the blog…

Here’s Matt’s old blog. The colours are fine, but easy to switch off to. By using the textured paper we used in Matt’s brochures (below) we created a site with more instant engagement that feels more like a brand and less like a template. Rob also created a new style header (which if you visit the site you’ll see rotates so that you see all the facets of his business). We both already have items on the wish list for phase two, but I think it’s a huge improvement that is surely befitting of a top photographer.

Matt was keen that he have a full width to show off his gorgeous images, and I wanted him to have better typography. We also discussed functionality and were both keen that he move away from blogger (which for some untold reason I’m very snobby about) and onto Wordpress, which with all it’s design customisations and plugins makes for a much better experience.

I’m always a bit nervous when clients just ask me to supply them with a design so that they can create the site themselves. I worry that they won’t follow through with the details that we’ve so carefully thought through. But Matt has done us proud! He took our design and hand-coded the thing himself (in four days mind – that’s a LOT of coding time!).

And finally I couldn’t resist putting a few screenshots of some of the pictures Matt took of my family last March.

I feel like I may be bending the truth a little when I talk about doing the Wedding Community’s branding “this week”. The truth is that we started on the branding and the website design several months ago – June in fact! But we’ve been sworn to secrecy until this week. So it is with great delight that I introduce to you… The Wedding Community.

Now I’m not going to claim that we built the website – have you seen it? An absolute feat of web developmental engineering. No, we stood well back for that and let someone else build it! But we did create the branding, the look and feel of the website and helped them out a lot with their marketing plan.

I think it looks rather fabulous, and it’s very different to anything else that’s out there on the market at the moment. One to watch I think…

Oh, and if you’re quick, you’ll see that our very own Rob is featured as wedding of the month! www.theweddingcommunity.com.