March was a month of contrasts, with website commissions from two very different existing clients.
Ann’s micro business
Ann Douglas runs a typical micro business – there’s just her. Ann’s business is will-writing, and she’s based in Wootton Bassett near Swindon.
Our first project for Ann started a couple of years ago when she wanted a small website to promote her book about training dogs. She’d already approached a number of web companies, but none were interested because she only wanted a small site. She was on the point of giving up when we got chatting at FBBC (Faringdon Business Breakfast Club). Yes, of course we could help, and the Just Bark Back website has been live for a couple of years.
It’s always heartening when a client comes back and asks you to do some more work, so we were delighted to get the call. Ann had decided her will-writing business needed a showcase on the Internet, and commissioned us to write and build a two-page website. County Wills South West has been live for a couple of weeks, and Ann is gradually adding testimonials from happy clients. Although Ann now has two sites hosted through us, there is only one hosting fee. This is our standard practice – we have three clients with multiple websites paying the same single hosting fee.
Peter’s international joint-venture
Our second commission in March couldn’t have been more different. We’ve worked with Peter Hayes, MD of Lynq plc, on a range of projects since WORD-right was started in 2006. Peter’s software company has its principal client base in North America, and we’ve provided marketing support including copywriting, newsletters, brochures and website management.
Peter’s call came out of the blue: he was forming a joint venture with a company in Columbus Ohio (USA). Everything needed to be in place for a major conference in Orlando, Florida … in less than three weeks! No problem we said, what do you need? Well actually, they didn’t even have a company name!
Three members of the WORD-right & WEB-right team had a very busy eight days. It started with coming up with a company name … one which everyone in the US and UK liked, and for which there was a matching and available .com domain name. Apart from building the website, we also re-wrote a brochure translated (very approximately) from Dutch, and produced print-ready business cards.
The website look is based on a document design package Peter had bought online, adapted to the Internet, with content mostly drawn from existing sources. There were a few last minute hiccups with the emails – Lynq is hosting the emails while we’re hosting the website, so some of the domain’s DNS settings needed to be changed.
Peter was very pleased with our speed of reaction and quality of delivery (you can read his testimonial on the WORD-right Home page), and this is how it all happened:
- Original briefing conversation with Peter on 22nd March
- Company name (Cohesive Operations and cophops.com) agreed 25th March
- Website design presented and agreed on 29th March
- Cohops.com completed and live on the 2nd April.
We’re not often asked to do so much so quickly, but we’ll always find a way of delivering on time.
