So – what was I going to have to do for my free mince pie? Just abseil off the roof of Princesshay in Exeter … dressed as Santa. I knew my kids would love it so I jumped at the chance – and as it happens, – so did many others – there were Santas everywhere! Young, old and lots of different sizes. The last time I abseiled was in the Army, during basic training back in 1989 so I was hoping that my old bones and extra weight wouldn’t be too much of a problem and as it happened … it all went rather well.

An extra bonus was my good friend Michael Blake deciding to join me the day before the event – and my lovely wife treating me to a last meal of my own choosing in Carluccios, prior to the event.

The event was fantastic – really organised. We booked in, picked up our Santa suits – and headed to the staging area. After a quick intro to the ropes and fitting of harnesses etc, we headed up to the roof … 12 Santas in a lift, heading for the roof is quite a surreal sight. Once on the roof it was up a ladder, clip on and away you go. Job done.

Next year they are moving the event to Drake Circus in Plymouth which I am reliably informed, is a little higher. I really hope that I get to do it again as it was great fun and we raised £12,000 for the children too – which can’t be bad thing, can it?

From the off Pete knew what he wanted and it was very much in line with my style and way of doing things. Once I’d convinced him to get a professional photographer on site to do his work justice, we had all the ingredients for a beautiful portfolio website. Shelly Lovegrove took the photos and I am sure you will agree that she did a fabulous job.

My muse (and wife) takes credit for the colours and I immediately started playing with a really simple idea for a logo and brand. I have a problem with doing anything if I don’t think am going to produce a 100% perfect job and I will freely admit that illustration is not my thing. I was tempted to outsource it to make sure this site ticked all the boxes, but at the same time I really felt that I was inside the head of my client to such an extent that – I just ‘knew’ how he wanted it to all end up as far as look and feel. So … I did it myself – and it turned out ok. I know it’s simple, but that’s how I like it and the rest of the site really unfolded from this central point.

Thanks Partner

When I got the logo how I wanted I contacted my new partner Andrew Lathwell who is the real deal when it comes to Graphic Design and asked him to mock up some images of the logo to show how it would look on Pete’s van and as expected, the results were fantastic. It is little touches like this that put my clients at ease, when they realise that they are dealing with professionals.

I could do it all myself but in my opinion, you should stick to what you do well and build partnerships with other professionals that are the best at their thing and then bring it all together. A happy client is a client for long time!

Responsive Design

This is the buzz phrase of the moment – Responsive Design is all about designing your website to work on every and any platform. As a designer you have to make sure that your website looks the same on every PC and Mac – as well as every combination of browser, new and old from every provider – Mozilla, Opera, Safari and of course – good old IE. Well, as if that wasn’t enough – we now have to try and work out how to make the website work on iPhones and iPads too! This website is my first site designed on a whole new framework using HTML5, CSS3 and responsive design. I don’t want to get techy but in essence it involves creating a site just 320 pixels wide to work on an iPhone or any smartphone and then growing the site inch by inch and adding functionality and content as and when you believe it becomes appropriate and/or supportable.

Have a play and by all means get back to me if there is a device on which this site doesn’t look right, all feedback is essential to making sure this is flawless.

The last touch was adding the title boxes to the project pages and I wanted to add a splash of something here – turned out it was just a case of using a script font and trying to give a sense of the project in a snapshot, I think the script contrasts well with the formality of the site.

Going forward

This website will always be clean and maybe projects will come in and out, but I am sure that we can find a way of growing the portfolio, maybe even adding a news section – but I am also aware that Pete wants to keep it clean and unfussy. This website has a very specific role (as a ‘second base’ for people to visit after an initial meeting or quote) and I think it will perform it extremely well.

You can view the live site here: www.jandpturner.co.uk

The website is built on the very latest version of wordpress and uses a theme from ‘Karma’. From there I used a couple of accent colours from the logo created by one of my favourite graphic design partners Michelle Lovegrove and set about creating a really clean layout to make sure I stayed true to the core values I have as The Pig Farmer, – those are: fresh, clean, easy to navigate website design.

The photography is stock and I have had it for years and never used it but I wanted to use images that were relevant but not distracting, to make sure that the viwer stays ‘on message’ whilst having no doubt that Sales Optimisation is a professional and focused company. In essence, david Breen has the same values as me and that makes life a lot easier because I know what is important to him and what he wants people to ‘feel’ about his company.

There is also a secure area of the site where David can login and add hidden pages for clients. From here his client can login securely and download documents and content added for their eyes only.

Working with Max was straightforward and organised. There were no dramas, total flexibility. Creativity was high, suggestions and being led by him was welcomed and forthcoming. all in all a good experience at a sensible, value for money price.

There will be more websites linked to David in my portfolio, I have no doubt about that and I very much look forward to the next open brief. David provided his feedback on our profile page at WWDC, please click here to see this and others.

View website: www.salesoptimisation.org

Meanwhile – I stayed in touch with Martin Hansford, Trev and the trust. Just recently, as a reward for the pro bono projects I have done for the likes of the Nile Crocs and Mbale elephants etc; the TRT decided to let me have a go at their own website – which I have been nagging them about for some time. Result!

As I was in the process of moving RuckinRugby over onto WordPress, I thought this would be a great opportunity to get stuck in and I designed the whole TRT website around a bespoke wordpress theme. I experimented with some new plug-ins, a new navigation tool and a widgetized sidebar, all of which I think have turned out well.

Over the next month we will really hone the nes updating and distribution services built in to this website and I hope to add a full report here once that is all running smoothly. I am aiming to get a really comprehensive approach to the social media channeling but with the absolute minimum of fuss – using things like Ping.fm and Dlvr.it to do the hard work. We will see.

You can see the website live here: TagRugbyTrust.co.uk

Have a look at it and let me know what you think, – I really like it.

So – the site was very old and pretty awful, there was absolutely no META info and the coding was very bloated with a lot of inline css … plenty for me to work on. I decided to start from scratch and work on a WordPress platform for the news section as they had requested the ability to update this part themselves. I have recently done a couple of builds completely on WP and I think I will move this over in a few months just to make all editing easier.

I wasn’t quite sure where to go with the colours on this site but I knew that I wanted to clean it up (it was a mess) and make it all very easy to navigate. You have to be careful with ‘funking’ up websites in some cultures and genres, and I reckon I have gone about as far as I dare with an Industrial Cleaning outfit from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I hope the News section proves to be easy to use and that they use it more because of this, I will also be checking what result my coding has on their SEO too!

Following a quick consultation we chose a main ‘stock’ image and I went to work. Louise will provide more personal pictures as and when, but the image we chose is professional and makes it clear that Wagalot Walking are open to caring for most kinds of domestic animals.

My new ‘web builder’ package means that a new company like Louise’s can get online for just £99 set up and £3 a month hosting and maintenance. This provides a single page website, domain name registration, email and webmail hosting and of course – our fanatical customer support. As it was we also added a ‘services‘ page and ‘contact‘ page. With the ‘web builder’ package you can add any amount of pages as and when you want – at a set price per page, most pages costing around £35 to set up and an additional £1-2 per month to host.

As part of the package I have set Wagalot up with a 100% valid code website that should perform well in Google, even with it’s limited content. I have also added them to Google places which will help boost local search rankings too. I hope Wagalot enjoy a lot of success and look forward to adding a page of ‘testimonials’ and photos soon! Check out the website now at www.wagalot-walking.co.uk and if you would like a professional website for your company, why not give me a call – details on my contact page.

There are still many small businesses here in Devon that have absolutely no online presence at all and I find that fascinating; particularly as they continue to spend money placing advertisements in local newspapers stating little more than a phone number and their company name. Why not have at least a static one page website to display information that you cannot physically ‘fit’ in your tiny, expensive newspaper advert?? Who knows.

Meanwhile – what about Social Media Optimization/Marketing? Many of these small businesses who claim an aversion to the web, will be happily using it for social networking purposes via Facebook, even Twitter – so why not use these free services for business? After reading ‘Here comes every body’ by Clay Shirky last year, I was hooked and I have been continually reading and learning about social media networks ever since.

A few years ago I designed a website for Tjeerd Hendel-Blackford, a fine furniture maker living in North Devon. He wanted to be able to show the whole world images of the fantastic furniture he was making, and understood that the best way to do this was via a website. The design was a long process and had a lasting impression on the clean, minimal approach to design that has become my signature. Tjeerd wanted a clean, simple site that would allow his images to stand out, but I worried that the lack of ‘content’ would work against him in Google …. not so. We continued to promote the website and work on building genuine, high quality inbound links and it worked, but I still wanted more and pleaded with him to add a blog. He resisted for some time but recently we went live a new WP blog and I am in the process of integrating this with his main website and replacing the in-built diary.

During the last few months Tjeerd came to realise that using social media networks and blogging, allowed him to build a ‘fan’ base and communicate with them quite intimately, without adding ‘messy’ content to his show piece website. Perfect. He now has a Twitter Page, WordPress Blog and Facebook page as well as a company page on Linkedin. All of these tools will help him reach more people in different social networks and drive them all to his website … which is what it is all about. The question is, as we get bombarded with invitations to join this that and the other social network – which ones do we join and how do we find the time to update them all with content.

Well, until this week I was suffering myself with this conundrum and I have found a solution, that works for me and that I intend to use as a model for my current and future clients. The following is a casual guide for any small business owner that might want to get their business ‘out there’ in the social networking arena – it is by no means definitive but it is a good start.

First, if you don’t already have one – set up a personal profile on Facebook. Once you have done this, add as many friends as you can and send email invites to people you think you may want to put in touch with your business. Once you have a personal facebook account, it is time to set up a page for your business by clicking here. It is pretty straight forward and you can upload images and your company contact information. From your new ‘page’ you can then send a message to all of your facebook friends, asking them to become fans of your business. If they do, it will be published in their news feed and this will be seen by all of their friends … and that’s how it starts. Facebook pages can be personalised with a little HTML knowledge and I recommend that you do this once you are up and running or drop me a line

Twitter.com is next, and again it is easy to set up an account, just follow the instructions on the website. You can advertise your ‘twitter feed’ and ask other users to follow your ‘tweets’ via your facebook account or email – just tell them your account name like mine is twitter.com/thepigfarmer and you’re done. You can use all kinds of applications to post tweets from your PC and phone and it is a good tool to send short messages about special offers or new products etc to all your ‘followers’.

Flickr.com is a website where you can upload photos for people to see. You open an account – again for FREE – and start uploading. Why? Well, once Tjeerd has uploaded photos of all his furniture to his Flickr account – he can add meta tags and descriptions that will be picked up by google and used in search results. He can also add feeds to his blog that will show his latest images from Flickr automatically – and even add a Flickr feed to his Facebook page … see how it all starts to come together.

For me, social media is about creating a ‘buzz’ – creating a ‘buzz’ around your product, or company or brand. Once you have created a buzz, people will network it and it will grow and all of this will help drive traffic to your online home – your website – your business. Twitter, Facebook and Flickr are just the beginning but they form a good solid foundation.

I work with small businesses every day, to help them build this online presence. A simple one page website, tied in to a co-ordinated social media presence need not cost the earth, but it really is worth doing well and this means having continuity, a unified message – all the things you have to think about when creating your brand before you even get started! If you have a small business and you have any questions at all about what you have read here, please just give me a call or an email – all of my details are on my website, I’m here to help.

Next: I’ll be posting tips on how to update all of your social media applications from one, simple dashboard!

Conrad has taken advantage of a new service that I have started, in a hope to attract new and small businesses just like his – I am offering a web-builder service whereby you can get online, with a single page website just like Conrad’s – www.cb-electrical.com – for just £99! I supply a domain name for FREE and it costs just £3 per month to host – that includes your email (with webmail facility) too. No more advertising in the paper and looking unprofessional with a complicated conrad457@hotmail.com email address – this is the beginning of a true online identity for any business.

Conrad, like any other businessman at this stage is finding that it is all about expense – car, phone, advertising, marketing ….. the list goes on and the last thing he needs is a quote for a £1500 website but – he doesn’t want to compromise on quality either. I will provide the same level of expertise and support to Conrad as I do to any of my clients as I have learned that this is what people want. Conrad’s success is important to me too, as he grows and his company grows – so will his website.

With the Web Builder service, Conrad can come back to me and ‘add’ to his website. He can add pages, video, photos, Blogs – whatever he wants but he will be charged a set price per item – a simple page costing £30 – £50 to set up and an additional £1-2 per month to host.

I look forward to seeing Conrad’s new venture take off and wish him all the best.

From the offset I could see that this club understood what RuckinRugby is all about, what I am trying to achieve. It is a pity that more clubs in the UK do not understand, but I think this may be due to at least two major factors – 1) The UK in general is a lot more negative and apathetic and this can hinder any approaches to business for sponsorship – on both sides and 2) The clubs in the Middle East do tend to be younger, more active and maybe run by business people – Ex-Pats, that are used to making things happen in a short amount of time – before they move on.

The Kuwait Saracens are a new club, providing rugby for all ages up to 18 and I believe they will grow very quickly, because they have the right attitude – and we will be there to make sure they look good doing it and reach as many as people as they can. I will do a follow up to this soon with their feedback and also any progress on SMO for the club.

If you like this website and would like one for your club – whatever your sport – then drop an email to me on design@ruckinrugby.com.