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philmophlegm and I have been working like blue-arsed flies lately: hence rather less posting than normal. We decided that rather than move house, or end up with Pp having to take a job that he didn't really want that would pay not very much, we would try and make my business, which has been bumping along for a good few years now as a one-person business with occasional help from freelancers, into a two-person business. This has meant adding on a bunch of services that Pp can do rather than me (mostly business development) and Pp training up in some extra Google services, so we can now advertise ourselves as Google Adwords certified partners!
It's a bit scary that both of us are entirely depending on the business now - but after all, I've been doing it for 11 years now, it really should be possible to scale it up a bit. We've joined a local trade group (Tamar Valley Tourism) and we did a free workshop for them on Tuesday, as a means of getting the name a bit more widely known locally. We've also joined the Federation of Small Businesses - an organisation that always makes me think of these guys :
I am quite dubious about the FSB, but I'm not yet sure if it's just because I am worried they may be in league with the Sith. We're looking at Chambers of Commerce too. They are probably less likely to tend to the Dark Side, I hope.
Our website was a classic case of cobbler's children having no shoes, having not been significantly updated for many years - so we had to completely revamp that. It's still not perfect, but it is at least a bit more 2013 than 2003 now, and does a better job of explaining what we do, although it could still use more work, of course!
If anyone reading this has a few minutes and would be prepared to take a quick look and let me know your immediate impressions - whether indifferent, bad, or good - it's here:
http://www.clareassoc.co.uk/ I'd really like to know if you spot anything that would make you think 'hmm, not sure about hiring these people!' (I mean, I may not agree with you. But I'd really, really like to know.)
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"Drop us an email on info@clareassoc.co.uk without obligation for an initial discussion."
The "without obligation" phrase seems a bit awkward - I'd probably expect it to be without obligation anyway.
"Employee surveys"
"Surveys" is unusual on this page in not having a capital letter.
http://www.clareassoc.co.uk/home/about/
"I’ve worked on search engine optimisation campaigns for large and small businesses (from internationals to one man bands). After a while I found I spent so long trying to get developers to accept my recommendations, it was quicker to learn to program. ;-)"
This paragraph is laid out a bit awkwardly, at least when I view it through Firefox.
http://www.clareassoc.co.uk/category/blog/
"There is a third way. (more…)"
I'm not sure the "more" bit works.
http://www.clareassoc.co.uk/home/contact/
"Clare Associates is based in South East Cornwall, in the beautiful Tamar Valley."
Is the "beautiful" bit relevant?
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I did have a couple of technical hitches with your site which would put me off since that's a large part of your business. One was clicking on a picture under the "Our Work" heading on the home page gave me a "page not found". It was Williams Crawford that did it, the others seem ok.
Also I was looking at some blog entries and the one on why marketing still feels like we're in 1900 said "Here’s a late 19th century advert for some kind of printing device." but I didn't get any image displayed.
Good luck with it all! Your approach/philosophy comes across well.
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thank you very much for those - all fixed, apart from the hexes. I think they are too big and red- they'd look better if I took the size down so they are more delicate.
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I'll have a nosy at the text for you at some point if I get chance but I'm afraid it's a bit too much like work for this evening :) Best of luck though!
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Sorry I don't have time to look much at the site, but offhand I like how it's simple to navigate instead of having a lot of distracting/confusing bells and whistles.
Like Phina, I reacted to the hexagons, but in my case they reminded me of a stop sign (can't recall what UK stop signs look like ATM, but the red polygon to me definitely said "stop!")
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The site otherwise looks clean, and loaded fine for me in Chrome with no dead links or missing pictures!
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I've calmed the hexes down a bit. I'm glad you appreciated the resizing - was a bit fiddly to get right but I think worth the effort! Good spot on the 'too close to the edge' thing too - I've fixed that. Thanks for spotting it.
LOL at the ass. I think we'll live with that one. If people remember us as 'the people with the big ASS' then at least they remember us!
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It's probably just me having recently done a site for my cows with lots of photos [and goodness knows what computer photos you could include, perhaps a view of the Tamar Valley] but I do feel the lack of imagery.
Good luck doubling the income.
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I do agree with you that it's light on images, but I'm reluctant to put them in unless they are highly relevant - if only we were doing something more photogenic! There is a Tamar Valley photo on the contact page, could you not see it?
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I was a member of the FSB, when I had my own business. They seemed mostly harmless :-)
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Although it is good news if they are not likely to be building a droid army any time soon :-D
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I'd also get rid of the sitemap at the bottom, which just looks weird when you scroll down to it.
You then have a perfectly solid front page that is almost entirely visible on any screen, with no scrolling necessary.
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I should probably look at making the top section adjust according to the screen resolution of the user. I'm guessing that your 15' screen is using a 1024 x 768 resolution, as anything above that would show the blog etc without scrolling. (A majority of non-mobile users so far are on higher screen resolutions, although of course that is no reason for the site not to cater as well as possible to the lower resolutions. )
If I just made the top section smaller universally, then on higher screen resolutions, the site would look as though it was perched at the top of the screen with piles of whitespace underneath, which always looks a bit messy. Screen resolutions visiting this site vary from 2560x1600 (which would show the whole thing with space underneath) down to 320x240, so it's always a bit of a balancing act.
Personally I find home page bottom sitemaps very handy when I'm trying to work out quickly if a company does something, but perhaps I'll see if it can be tidied up a bit.
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Not sure what the answer is there. Reactive design would allow you to specify different CSS depending on resolution, but that's potentially a lot of work.
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