Paddy Ryan's Blog

Well what do you know, I do believe we've actually pulled it off. A couple of hard grafting Saturdays saw the vision implemented. Not perfect, but good and there to be built upon. Check out the New Adnet Website, personally I'm very pleased. It captures the tone, creates the right impressions and the initial feedback had been varied and mainly positive. I think our web site is now making a positive contribution to our business rather than being a lacklustre placeholder. Thank you Fergal and Alan (and me) now back to the graft :-)

Over a month down the line and a lot has happened. The process of designing our new web site has had the unexpected effect of catalysing the transformation of our business. With hindsight this makes perfect sense. The process of identifying who you are, what you do, and effectively communicating this, clarifies your thinking and helps crystallise many disparate elements into a single vision. I will make this a more explicit selling point for future!

Initially we came up with a raft of good ideas such as making use of our very appealing business card and telling some of the more interesting and compelling stories of Adnet and our clients. Incorporating some working eCommerce on the site rather than linking too examples also seemed in keeping with our "make it manifest" manifesto. Our approach was driven by a tell it visually in the first 3 seconds with some interesting human stories in depth for those who are drawn in.

Some further work with our business development advisor yielded the concept of the "holistic" web development company bringing together analysis, design and technology in a human centred approach to the business. I felt we might be on to something here.

April began to get very busy and the work on our own web site went on the back burner for a while. All of a sudden it came to me, clear and simple, innocuous yet strangely powerful, Adnet - "Web Builders to the Design Industry". So what chorused everyone, bland, me too, limiting.....

Well says I consider the following:

How do you get to a major chunk of that SME business for web sites?
Why has no other web company taken this kind of position?

Much of the web industry views itself as being in direct competition with the design industries for design, branding and marketing related activities. The web businesses lack the credibility of the design companies for design and much of the quality SME web work follows design. The design companies don't normally carry the full depth and breadth of technical expertise and can be light of the web specific aspects of design. Design companies are often in a prime position to get the web business but usually loose interest if the clients functional requirements escalate. Design companies are generally disinterested in the support and maintenance aspects of web sites.

By selling Adnet to the design companies we "multiply" our own sales efforts. The design companies bring creative uniqueness to the situation and do not view using the same "implementor" as a competitive issue, in fact the more design companies we are implementing for, the more attractive we become to others. This does not imply that we have to tell anyone who isn't a design company to go away. If we have 20 design companies as Adnet Clients it gives us access to a much greater range of design talent. The relationships can and should be a two way street.

This phrase "Web Builders to the Design Industry" is simultaneously a marketing strategy, a positioning statement, a mission statement, a vision, a USP, a brand identification, a statement of intent and indeed a one line business plan. When the whole becomes greater that the sum of the parts could this be considered a "Wholistic" approach. Perhaps I'm getting a little carried away ;-) Now back to the difficult job of work, building the relationships one at a time, providing an efficient and responsive service, perhaps there are never any real shortcuts.

Suffering from a bad case of "Cobblers Shoes" and a relatively slack mid-March we decided it was time to take a serious look at our own sadly neglected web site. Its something we've been avoiding for a long time and we all felt it was about time to "do more" and "explain less" when it comes to the web.

We commenced the process with the following simple yet powerful ideas

• Become our own client.
• Look at our competition.
• Define our main target markets
• State our business objectives.

The business objectives we defined for the Adnet web site are:

• Engage more fully and effectively with our marketplace.
• Generate more enquiries from potential clients.
• Solicit communications from potential new channel partners.
• Create a better first impression with visitors to our web site.
• Improve search engine visibility and ranking.
• Demonstrate our capabilities and expertise directly.

The next steps are to decide on the mechanisms we were going to employ in order to achieve our stated business objectives.What particular bag of creative genius and technical wizardry will help us stand out from the crowd and get us that important next client.

The vital next steps in the process are:

• Generate draft ideas for the site's visual look and feel.
• Develop the core site messages and impressions.
• Design the user interface and interactive site elements.
• Generate, select, obtain and structure appropriate initial content for the site.
• Choose the online tools you wish to employ e.g. Blogs, Mailing Lists, Enquiry forms etc.

We believe, at this stage, that case studies will be the single most important part of the site content. We have a number of compelling stories to tell about our clients and their web sites. These stories say almost everything we need to communicate to our target market. Telling these stories well should help serve our business objectives well.