The company did not wish to sell shoes online however, as their unique selling point is the first-class service and expert shoe fitting on offer when customers visit in person.

Proprietor Murdoch Macdonald explained, “We are one of the few stores that supply shoes in half-sizes and a variety of width fittings, and we pride ourselves on our specialist knowledge that has been built up by our staff after many years in the business.”

Young & Co has existed since 1928, and we wanted to give their website a distinctive and modern appearance that complimented their values. A slick, black theme was devised that integrated existing company colours of red and cream.

Why not take a look at Young & Co’s website and see for yourself?

Staggerforth Ltd worked closely with Tennis Inverclyde, first of all to build a website with a fresh, clean and distinctive layout, and secondly to provide an online booking capability allowing visitors to the website to book up places on tennis camps.

Key features of this project included an easy-to-use web interface allowing Tennis Inverclyde to  update and add to the website by themselves, and a PayPal-integrated booking system allowing customers an easy and secure way to pay for courses.

Why not visit Tennis Inverclyde’s website and see what you think?

Our starter package offers an ideal solution: a single page website produced to your specification, as always built to the highest standards. It’s quick and it’s cost effectively.

South Queensferry based Arnes Private Hire did not need a full blown, multi-page website – just a simple but effective web page allowing people to look them up via the web, and that is exactly what we built for them.

Of course at Staggerforth we always like to provide the very best service we can, and so we also provide visitor statistic analysis, allowing clients such as Arnes Private Hire to see in-depth information about visitors to their website.

You can learn more about our Web Starter offer by clicking here, and do remember that we can always add additional features should you require them.

Their former website had served them well, but it was beginning to look slightly dated and had been designed in such a way that only one person could update it, using a purpose designed piece of software installed on their computer.

We completely redesigned their website, and rebuilt it on top of the Wordpress publishing platform. This meant that any number of staff could share the responsibility of updating the website, and without the need for special software – all that is required is internet access.

It is now easier than ever for the team at Indepen-dance to manage their website, which has a number of useful features such as an RSS feed and a category system for accessing relevant bits of news.

As ever Staggerforth worked to produce a high quality end product to an agreed timescale and at a highly competitive price. To find out more about what Staggerforth can do for you, get in touch with us – we’d be delighted to hear from you.

“The best thing is that I can log in and edit the menus myself, without any outside help.”

Although we initially created 8 different pages for the website, Tracy and her team can log in whenever they want and add completely new pages without any help from us.

The Chris’s Pizza website is also a great example of how we can quickly put together a website without so much as a phone call:

“We only exchanged five or six emails, and the website was finished within a couple of weeks. When you’re short of time like I am that’s just absolutely fantastic.”

As Chris’s Pizza is based in British Columbia, Canada, this website also demonstrates that geography just doesn’t represent a barrier – we are always happy to meet the requirements of clients whether they are based in Scotland, Canada, Japan or Chile!

To take a look at the website, surf over to www.chrisspizza.ca.

This was achieved by the use of impressive photography from the local area, which is a dominant feature of every page, and was further strengthened by extra pages containing insights into the history of the area.

Word of mouth and customer referrals are important in any business, and the company wished to harness this by having the ability to reward partner organisations for successful sales.

We implemented an easy to administer affiliate system, which allows the company to track referrals from its partner websites. Conscious of how time consuming complex programs can be, we created a wizard-like interface that makes it a breeze to administer.

You can view Trees of Scotland Ltd’s new website by following this link.

It has traditionally been the case – and for many mobile phone users it still is – that the mobile surfing experience is not quite the same as surfing at home on the web proper, partly as the underlying technology is different: many mobile-orientated websites are written in WML, a reduced subset of the language used to write conventional webpages.

Recently technology has caught up however and a number of phones can indeed view the ‘real’ web without too much difficulty.

Maximising your exposure

The ultimate purpose of most websites, be they commercial, charitable or community minded in nature, is to gain exposure and increase awareness of what the organisation does. This means that, depending on who the target audience is, it can be worthwhile having two concurrent website versions: one for regular users, another for mobile users.

Is such an approach going to be expensive? Or cause delays when it’s time to update the website? Not at all.

The solution lies in clever design. Best practice suggests that we treat the content of  a website – the text and images, etc – as one layer, and the design – that is, rules concerning the layout and styling – as another. It is the combination of these two layers that crystallises into the familiar output we all see every day when we surf the web.

By implementing two or more different design layers we can open up websites to a range of customers, by serving their browsing device with the design that suits it best. So a more streamlined design can be sent to mobile users and richer, fuller designs can be restricted to conventional customers.

For most businesses, websites exist as part of their marketing strategy. In addition to promoting the organisation, they act to raise awareness of its profile.

Similarly, just as an infrequently serviced car becomes less effective, so does an infrequently updated website. Out of date or just plain incorrect information can give visitors a poor impression of your organisation. It may be enough in itself to make them look at one of your competitors.

What can an audit achieve?

A website audit can be invaluable. Busy professionals simply tend not to have the time to run over the content of their website in depth, and in most cases they do not have the required knowledge to pinpoint areas that could benefit from recent improvements in technology.

Staggerforth’s audit service is a three-phase process. Phase one looks for information that is obviously out of date or incorrect. The second phase probes deeper – we’ll compile a list of appropriate questions that will quickly highlight any other discrepancies. The third and final phase is a look at the general design and layout, partly to provide general recommendations but more importantly to check if there is any non standards-compliant code or impediments to search engines.

Giving you the information you need

Armed with our audit report you can then take appropriate action, whether through us, your existing web developer or even by yourself. The report gives a clear plan for improving your website, and also gives you the ability to focus in on the most critical areas.

Carrying out a website audit need not be expensive, and, in the long run, can save you money that you could otherwise lose by turning off your customers.

Perhaps you’ve seen the icons, often accompanied by text like, “Click here to subscribe,” or “RSS feed,” but you’ve never really been interested in what it means or what it does. Here at Staggerforth we’ve got our own RSS feed – just look at the top right hand corner of the page.

RSS feeds (RSS means Really Simple Syndication) are more popular than ever – in fact, it’s becoming strange to see a website without it. So what does it do?

A user’s perspective

Let’s say you’re something of a technology buff, and whenever a new gadget is released you want to know about it. An appropriate RSS feed makes this easy.

All you need is to find a (hopefully reputable and frequently updated) technology website, you can simply click on its RSS feed and, if you have suitable web browser software or a dedicated feed reader, it only takes a couple of clicks to subscribe.

From then on whenever they update their website with news of new gadgets or anything else, you will receive a summary and a link to the full story. It’s that simple.

Do I need to provide RSS?

The powerful and effective online publishing platforms used by Staggerforth for many of our clients’ websites make the generation of RSS feeds easy, but do you really need a news feed?

RSS and its counterpart technologies (such as ATOM) are fantastic for organisations that regularly make announcements or changes to their services and products, and there is an argument for saying that, given the ease with which it can be integrated, there is no reason not to provide a feed.

If you require more information about RSS and methods of integration then feel free to email us at enquires@staggerforth.co.uk.

Not everyone needs a fully fledged, content-managed website. For many businesses a well designed, single page website is all they require, and that’s exactly what our Web Starter deal offers.

Here’s how it works: you approach us with your design brief, which can be as simple as some ideas and key phrases you would like to use jotted down on a piece of paper, along with any images you want to see included and an idea of your desired domain name.

We’ll check over the brief and clarify any points if required. We’ll also confirm if your desired domain names are available (if not, we’ll provide you with some suggestions).

As soon as your payment has been processed, we get straight to work registering the domain names and producing your website – we’re known not only for the quality of our work but also the speed – typically you will be on the web within a week of payment being received.

What’s included?

With our Web Starter deal two domain names are included, typically one .co.uk domain and one .com domain – variations on request. You can also have up to 10 email addresses, any one of which can be a redirect – ie, it will forward emails straight to your Hotmail or Yahoo account.

It’s that simple. No exaggerated claims, no unnecessary extras – just great value combined with rock solid support and friendly service.