The role would suit a small design studio or a freelance graphic designer. It would also be a great opportunity for someone out there who is considering going freelance and is looking for that great first client to get them off the ground, out of the rat race and enable them to work for great people, from home on some very visible design work.

I can’t mention names but you could not work for a nicer company. They’re based in Dublin but it’s possible for you to be based anywhere in Ireland.
Get in touch – Peter@edenweb.ie

Just like the right photograph, the right font can make or break any piece of graphic design. I love these font catalogues and can easily spend hours browsing through hundreds of pages of Serif, Sans serif, Gothic, Display, Blackletter and Slab fonts just to find the right typeface for a graphic design project. Unfortunately, typography on the web isn’t as versatile as it is in the printed world and that’s something I still miss about designing web sites. Still, these book are gorgeous pieces of graphic design in themselves and a great reference tool for a logo I’ve just been comissioned to design.

Visit www.edenweb.ie and click on the Portfolio link on the top right of the page. Believe it or not, in the last 5/6 years we’ve never had our own design work on our site.

Anyway, please take a look and I’d love to hear your feedback.

P

We’re not sure exactly what the problem is, but details about the error are being emailed to our developers (and their boss, which means someone’s in trouble) as we speak.

This means that this problem will be fixed pretty quickly, so it might be a good idea to check back in a few hours…

This email newsletter caught me eye this morning. I subscribe to a lot of newsletters and it’s great to see something come in that is pitched perfectly at their audience and has a creative theme applied to this message. I love the what they’ve done with the main banner (above). It’s creative, well executed, appeals to their audience and is refreshingly humorous.
But there’s one big problem…

1. I click on the email and it brings me to the rackspace web site (good!)
2. I have a look around their very infomative hosting services site (very informative)
3. Overall I get a good impression from them (becoming more interested)
4. I decide to look at SLAs and benefits of using Racksapce (very good!)
5. I decide I’m interested and look for pricing and order information. There’s none!

Or at least there appears to be none. Please have a look – am i missing something? I can’t see an ‘Order now’ button or any way of buying their products and services other than emailing them. Directly. Now this only takes two seconds but this is unecessary.

On a related note and to use a bricks and mortar example…

I took a trip to the supermarket last week to grab some ingredients. I was trying out a new Ainsley Harriott recipie ( i love that guy!) and since everyone had exceeded their yearly quota of his fish cakes or spaghetti bolognaise recipie it was time to do something different. While I was in the shops I saw at least three couples eye up the checkout ques, ditch their baskets and walk away with brass in pocket. I have to confess I did the same after i’d left everything back. I just didn’t have the patience. It was busy, everyone was rushing to do the Lottery and nobody was smiling. But at least next time I go down to the shops I know where the checkouts are are will probably actually hand over my money.

Now we all know how to buy groceries. We all know that the checkouts are usually at the end of the shop and they’ll even have big helpful arrows hanging from the cieling instructing us to ‘PAY HERE’. The groceries industry is an established one and these guys know their stuff. They know why we shop, when we shop, how we shop, what we want while they shop, how to get us to shop with them more often and how to get us to the checkout so they can make a sale.

If everyone in that shop were to fill their baskets, take out their wallets and then leave because they could not find the checkouts, I’d say the groceries industry would be in big trouble.

Fortunately for us the groceries industry solved this problem years ago. Just to emphasis the point, they now have even bigger arrows hanging from the celing and even more checkouts for bigger baskets. In fact even if i wanted to I don’t think I could leave their store without paying (and I do frequently want to!).

So my point is that your web site must make it easy for customers to purchase your products. Sounds simple? It is thankfully. Internet marketing is a very new discipline but fundamentals still apply. Think about how people use your web site, why they use it, what they are looking for while they use it and how to get them to come back more often. But unlimately, let them know HOW to buy something.

Overhauling a companies web site for a Venture Capital audience is a common occurrence for hi-tech companies as they move from

• Stealth-mode (owner invested/managed)
  to
• Level 1 funding (employing first staff members, improving marketing collateral, establishing credibility etc)
  to
• Level 2 (ramping up product(s) offering, hiring key management, marketing to customers)

What isn’t so predictable during the lifecyle of a company web site is the scope of audience a site may need to cater for outside the usual sales/marketing customer net.

eg

• I’ve recently started design work for one of Ireland’s largest landscape architectural firms whose sole target audience are potential employees.
• A long term customer of EdenWeb in the UK had some great feedback on their web site from their Board at the end of the year. The Boards approval is vital.
• An Irish client secured Level 2 funding from their VCs last year. The VCs said the strength of the client’s web site was was a major factor in determining the level of funding provided.
• A US hi-tech company who rolled out a large marketing campaign for their Partners received a lot of praise for the professionalism of the landing page I designed and their email newsletter too.

I’ll be developing this post over the coming weeks so keep any eye on the blog for more updates.

Also listed are icons from the original shortlist of 25 which didn’t make it.