25:04:2008
Re-launch and Expansion
Welcome back everyone,How was your St. Georges Day? Apparently this year a bigger deal was made than ever before, it kind of slipped our minds in the office a little bit until the actually day when we all got patriotic and were proud of the odd person waving the flag and one of our locals putting up some decorations. Hopefully next year we can plan an event to remember our great country by, if you did anything this year let us know I am sure it would have been fun!
We do have some exciting news this month however. Our constant expansion and success means we now have 3 confirmed new members of staff, all of which have been settling in this week and adjusting to the Soula way. All of them are great and we are looking forward to getting even more high quality work done now we have an even bigger team. Let me give a brief introduction to our newbies.
The first is Graham who originally joined us on trial but was so strong a candidate we decided to offer him a permanent place on our development team almost straight away. Graham attended Lincoln University and gained a degree in Computer Information Systems and we are very pleased to have him aboard.
Our second new starter is Katie. She has joined us to expand our SEO team and has great experience in design, development and search engine optimisation and we are looking forward to using her wealth of skills to improve the sites in every aspect possible. Katie has studied at a variety of colleges to perfect her web development skills including the National IT Learning Centre and the New College Nottingham.
Thirdly we welcome Tom to the team. He is an experienced Digital Marketing Executive and has previously worked for some very impressive clients. We have brought him onboard to offer our clients even more online marketing options.
Last but not least is our second Tom! He is an experienced copywriter and has joined us to help produce high quality copy for websites as well as online and offline promotion for ourselves and our clients.
We hope you can see how important it is to Soula that we are constantly expanding. At a mere 10 months old we have over doubled our starting staff base and we are hoping to continue growth past our first birthday and beyond, helping forge more and more bonds with local business and bring their sites to optimum performances. Thanks to everyone who has worked with use do far and good luck to our new starters!
14:04:2008
Back to the Grind
Hello Everyone,It’s Monday morning and the whole Soula office is already back at work weaving their magic into client web sites. We had a busy end of week last week which caused a delay in our blog but we feel proud to announce the launch of a fantastic range of new product sites.
Firstly the shiny and unique printer cartridge supplies shop “Cartridge Master” has gone live. Our clients wanted a site that was both eye catching and seemed related to the print industry. We went with the colours to represent printer inks themselves and also worked these into the logo. Everyone was pleased with the results and we were proud to work with another local business and put them online.
The second site to go live was Road2Race models, a business which specialise in motor sport collectables and memorabilia. Our clients wanted something that stood out from the competition but remained easy for customers to browse and use.
We also have exciting news from our own camp. Due to our constant expansion since launch we have taken on another new front end developer on trial, Graham will be working on some of our sites over the next few weeks and he looks like a fantastic addition to the Soula team, he’s already fitting in to the office and hard at work.
You may also have noticed a certain Soula Design mentioned in Nottingham’s “In Business” magazine this month featuring none other than our own creative director Martin Pykett. We did the interview to try and get the word out that the website design business should be more than an off the shelf solution, Soula looks to create partnerships with every one of its clients and take each one forward to a new level of success.
Have a great week everyone!
04:04:2008
Soula Advice Colum; Pt. 1
Hey Everyone,Hope all is well out there today. Soula is working hard on our latest set of projects; we have quite a few e-commerce sites that will be going live over the next few weeks. The first one will be Anna Kates Nursery Design, an attractive shop which sells nursery furniture and accessories as well as baby clothes and baskets.
Soula has been around as it’s own company for a while now and we recently sat down to discuss all the things we have discovered about working with clients so far. One of the thing we feel is very important to both ourselves and our client base is ensuring we understand each other fully.
In order to help our clients, potential clients and indeed anyone else who wishes to read it we have prepared an FAQ of basic questions which we get asked and some easy to understand answers. Please feel free to submit more questions to us via email and I’ll try to answer them in the next update.
Q: What’s the Difference Between E-Commerce and Static Sites?
A: There are many differences between the two varieties of sites but the major one is that an e-commerce site is used to sell products and services to a customer and process all the payment transactions for you. A static showcase website is more of a catalogue for your products or a showcase for what you business can and has done.
Q: Why Shouldn’t I have my Site all in Flash?
A: Although Flash can be an excellent tool for adding flare to a website building a site in Flash alone has several disadvantages. Loading time for your site will be large, users are impatient on the whole and while they may be happy to wait for Nike and BMW’s huge sites to load they may not offer your company the same curtsey and click away to a competitor before they see anything.
Flash also have a negative impact on SEO if overused on a website.
Q: What is SEO and why is it Important?
A: SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and in a nutshell it is improving and managing your site to help it gain better rankings in the search engines. SEO is very important for any site as it enables people to find your product or business among the huge amount of other competitors that are around.
Q: How Long Will I Have to Wait for a Concept Design?
A: We aim to get concepts to you within 10 days. Many factors can influence this including the type of site you want but be assured that you will see one as soon as possible.
Q: When Will the Site Go Live?
A: Every website needs a different amount of development as we want to revise the design to fit your exact needs and desires as well as arrange merchant banking details if you want an eCommerce site but generally expect a time frame of 4-6 weeks.
Q: What Makes Soula Different from any other Design Firm?
A: Unlike most web design agencies, Soula Web Design was born out of a successful e-commerce company. Not only are we experienced in many aspects of web design, development and implementation but we have years of experience at designing sites that sell. Very few of our competitors can offer such a claim and Soula is proud to be a forerunner in such a fast growing and competitive field.
That’s all for now but we’ll add some more content