We have been hard at work on a new design for this very website, and it's finally done! We hope it will give you a more rounded picture of what it's like to hire and work with Rarebright.
Well, we missed the annual redesign target launch date by a few days but the new Rarebright website is now here! Whilst the old one served us admirably for the past year it was starting to look a little tired and we were ready for a change.
Whilst the old website did a good job of showing our portfolio of work, we’ve aimed our new website at telling you exactly what you need to know about the experience of working with Rarebright: that we’re creative, that we produce great results, that we’re friendly and that we’re fairly-priced. Please let us know if any of that doesn’t come across! We’ve also tried to be a bit more specific about how we achieve those results by detailing our web design process.
We’ve updated the portfolio with some of our newest work. Over the past few months we’ve been developing a new site for VideoBooth Systems, a designer and manufacturer of automated video booth technology for events and experiential marketing. We also spent the summer working with StopWatch, a campaign for fairer policing - we created a new ExpressionEngine website and some cool infographics.
Finally, scattered around the site you’ll some some kind words about us from our happy customers for which we’re very grateful - you should check them all out.
If you’d like to be part of Rarebright’s third year by working with us please get in touch - we even have a new project enquiry form. We hope you like the new site and we’d love to hear any feedback, good or bad - drop us a line.
We've been creating a website for a luxury holiday cottage in beautiful North Dorset.
I’ve just finished and launched our latest bit of web design work: a new site for The Cider Mill, a luxury holiday cottage in beautiful North Dorset. With the property listed on both Sawdays and Baby Friendly Boltholes, the owners Sophie & Alex wanted their own website that showcased the beautiful cottage, the surrounding area and the local pubs and restaurants.
Design inspiration came from the colour palette of The Cider Mill’s interior design – matching soft greens and duck egg blue with slideshows of the rustic rooms and decor.
The new website includes a Google Map showing the nearby pubs and restaurants as well as an extensive directory of local attractions. Despite a plethora of availability calendar plugins across the web, none of them quite matched the requirement for a simple, customisable way to show booked and available dates. Instead I built my own system which allows the cottage owners to update the calendar themselves with each new booking so that prospective guests can start planning their trip straight away.
If you’re looking for a holiday cottage in South West England, why not check it out at www.thecidermill.co.uk. If you’re looking for a designer to help with your own website project, please do get in touch.
Rarebright presents a handy checklist of things to think about when planning your new website.
Yes - this is exactly how hard you should be thinking (image includes a photo by seatbelt67)
When prospective clients first get in touch with us to enquire about web design we’ve often found ourselves walking them through a familiar process. To help future clients we’ve written up our checklist of things to consider. If you’re interested in discussing your web design project, please read on and get in touch when you’re ready to go!
What do you/your company do?
Whether you’re just getting started or have a few years experience behind you you’ll be aware of the need to make a niche for you and your business. Let us know what that niche is. How is your business different? What do you provide? Why do your customers choose you over your competitors?
Who will your website be targeted at? What sort of people are your customers?
Who do your customers tend to be? What are they like? You might know this from engaging with them on Twitter or Facebook or maybe more anecdotally from working in the sector. What are they looking for when comparing you with your competitors?
How do you want it to look?
What visual styles do you like? Try not to just look at websites. You can find visual inspiration anywhere: magazine spreads, existing brand names, colour palettes, artwork. Struggling with this bit or just not a visual person? Don’t worry we’re pretty good with design. We can advise on creative ideas and concepts that can make you stand out from the crowd.
What do you want your site to do? What should your customers be able to learn or achieve on your site?
What a website does can range from a few pages of information to massive online shopping systems. What do you want your site to do? What do your customers expect? If you’re providing a costly professional service it’s unlikely your customers will want to make direct bookings without chatting to you first. On the other hand, if you sell affordable widgets, the widget-buying public may well want to place an order and pay for it online.
What are your aims? How will you know you’ve succeeded?
Once you know what you want your site to do you should be pretty clear on exactly how you’re going to assess whether it’s succeeding or not. For instance, if your site tells your customers about your services and encourages them to contact you, you’ll want to know customers are doing just that.
Who are your competitors? What do they do online?
Your competitors might be doing absolutely nothing right on their websites but it’s still worth having a look. How does your market work? How do your competitors attempt to differentiate themselves? How are you different? How are you better?
What’s your budget?
How much do you have to spend on getting your website made? It’s fair to say that your website will be your most important piece of marketing material. Your customers will use your website to make decisions on whether to use your company or move onto a competitor. If you already have a website, these decisions are being made right now. For anything but the smallest website it’s wise to budget at least £1000 or risk cutting corners and not achieving your aims.
Do you have a deadline to meet? When is it? What is it?
By when do you need your site online? We’ll take a guess that the answer is “as soon as possible”? Are we right? Either way have a think about if there’s a specific date when your new website needs to be live - maybe a sales pitch, marketing campaign, lavish launch party? Is it realistic? From start to finish a website project needs an absolute minimum of two weeks.
What next?
Once you’ve got answers to all of the above questions you’re ready to get started on building a quality website and we can help. Get in touch with us.
We’ve just finished some fun graphic design work for Frankie’s favourite blog, Any Other Wedding. Includes cake.
We’ve just finished some fun graphic design work for Frankie’s favourite blog, Any Other Wedding. Clare, Aisling and Anna who run the popular blog on weddings, love, life etc. have been surveying their readership with the Any Other Reader Survey 2011 and were looking for some graphics that were both beautiful and informative to present the data they’d gathered back to their readers. Here’s a little taster:
AOW and their readers were big fans of the “cake graph” that illustrates how much the respondents were planning to spend or had already spent on their wedding day. You’ve got to love an informative cake.
You can see the graphics in-situ alongside comments from the bloggers in blog posts part one and part two over on the Any Other Wedding blog. You can also have a go at working out what pre-engaged means…
Rarebright Design celebrated its first birthday at the start of September. I personally celebrated it by being on holiday but since then I've been hard at work.
Rarebright Design celebrated its first birthday at the start of September. I personally celebrated it by being on holiday but since then I’ve been hard at work and addressing a long list of to-do items.
Chief amongst the to-dos was to redesign the Rarebright website and to add some of my most recent work to the portfolio. I also figured while I’m here that I’d add a blog to the site so there’s somewhere to keep interested people up-to-date with Rarebright developments.
Do get in touch if you spot any problems with the new site or just to let me know your feedback – either drop me an email from the new contact form or tweet us at @rarebright.
