Web Design and Search Engine Optimisation Portfolio
covering Hertfordshire (Herts) and Bedfordshire (Beds)

Website Design For Diffusion Alloys Limited Hatfield, Hertfordshire

www.diffusion-alloys.com. Diffusion Alloys Limited specialises in the diffusion coating of industrial gas turbine blades and vanes, long tubes and a diverse range of other components, plus HVOF spray coating, chemical stripping and hard material coating.

Tony Smith, Joint Managing Director of DAL approached me to create a more professional website which would show up in the search engines for the company having become rather disenchanted with their current site. Tony had already spent a lot of time gathering content and thinking about the design of the site he wanted. I was able to take his work and adapt it to the site you now see. The site was put together quickly with 30 days between first meeting and the new site going live. Tony is now watching the search engines to see how the site is performing.

"Thank you for your reply and also for phoning to explain this as well. Both are much appreciated as is your getting the new website up and running today. I am very pleased with it and look forward to speaking with you on my return from holiday. "
Tony Smith

Diffusion Alloys Limited, Hatfield, Herts

Website Design For Paul Jomain Hertfordshire

www.pauljomain.biz. Paul Jomain creates puppets for Film, Television and Theatre. You may not know him but you will recognise many of his creations.

Paul wanted a site he could update himself, that would showcase his work with lots of photos and videos. He had an outline design already and this we adapted for his new website. The site is Wordpress CMS based as it provides an easy to use content update system and in particular it makes adding photos very easy although we have not used the Blog functions.

"Looking great and had lots of compliments."
Paul Jomain

Paul Jomain, Herts

Website Design For JT Marketing PR Hunsdon, Hertfordshire

www.jtmarketingpr.co.uk. JT Marketing PR Services is a strategic marketing consultancy and PR agency that will help increase your profits and maximise press coverage.

I have known Joseph Tirelli (JT) for some years now and this is the second version of his company's website I have done. It reflects the transition from "Marketing" to "Marketing and PR" Agency.

Joseph has been getting very good search engine results from his website ("marketing consultant herts" etc) and with this rebrand we wanted to build on that so the site now incorporates a Wordpress Blog for News and Press Features Gallery which has been designed to seamlessly integrate with the main site and the latest Blog posting automatically appears on the main site home page.

"Michael is very approachable and will provide straight forward and honest advice"
Joseph Tirelli of JT Marketing PR

JT Marketing PR, Hunsdon, Hertfordshire

Website Design For Real Time Change Birmingham

www.realtimechange.com. Real Time Change - RTC is an online MI (Management Information) service using Excel Spreadsheet Upload onto a cloud based Sharepoint server.

Brian Donnelly approached me to redesign the company website after recommendations from his colleagues at Curium Solutions. Brian had a very particular design in mind and wanted to incorporate Powerpoint Presentations into the page layouts. Brian's view was minimalist and this is the most minimalist site I have done.

"This all looks grand - you have been really responsive and put up with my ramblings very patiently.
I think you have done a great job, I have enjoyed working with you and expect to do more soon "
Brian Donnelly

Real Time Change, Birmingham

Web Design For Taylor Stapleton Welwyn, Hertfordshire

www.taylor-stapleton.co.uk. Taylor and Stapleton Engineering Ltd was established in 1973 to provide a high quality commissioning of (HVAC) heating, ventilation and air conditioning services within the building construction industry.

Jonathan Stapleton is an old acquaintance and he asked me to help them design a proper website for the business as he was rather ashamed of their old site. They wanted a nice clean modern site that is search engine friendly, with some nice photos and that reflected the 2 sides of their business. This project progressed very slowly as they are very busy people but we got there in the end.

Taylor Stapleton Welwyn, Hertfordshire

Web Design For Geoffrey Rowe North Mymms, Hertfordshire

www.geoffreyrowe.co.uk. Geoffrey Rowe is a furniture maker, he designs and builds one-off pieces of furniture by commission, using a combination of modern and traditional furniture and cabinet making techniques. His bespoke creations range from cutting edge and contemporary to traditional and period, depending on a client's brief.

Geoffrey came to me with an old website that needed some work: there were issues with the Flash Navigation which took an age to work, pages were out of date and were not showing up in the search engines. We decided that the best way forward was a rebuild from scratch and Geoffery took the opportunity to have the design refreshed as well. Geoffrey supplied hundreds of new photos of his beautiful furniture creations for the new site and had very clear ideas on how the site should look and how the furniture galleries should work. The site is now showing up in the search engines as well - try "furniture maker hertfordshire" or "cabinet making tuition" or "cabinet maker herts" for example.

"It now looks exactly how I envisaged it"
Geoffrey Rowe

Geoffrey Rowe North Mymms, Herts

Web Development For Guinea Fowl Creative Stevenage, Hertfordshire

www.guineafowl-creative.co.uk. Guinea Fowl Creative are a creative agency producing marketing, communication and design materials such as brochures, newsletters, web and PR copy writing, editorial, content production for impact and results.

Fiona Wilkinson asked me to build their new website based on their own designs - they produced a really nice clean design and I was happy to turn this design layout into a working website. I can claim very little credit for anything else as the layout and content is all down to Fiona and her team.

"The site works seamlessly, and looks the business for me. Thanks very much. "
Fiona Wilkinson

Guinea Fowl Creative, Stevenage, Herts

Website and Wordpress Blog For Curium Solutions London and Birmingham

www.curiumsolutions.com. Curium are Award-winning Change Management and Real Time Change Measurement specialists. who work closely with clients to deliver major, sustainable improvements across their business.

Joel Farrar, Head of Business Development at Curium was frustrated with the website they had recently commission as there were a number of issues with the design and it was completely invisible from the search engines so he asked me to sort it out. Amongst the issues I found that there was a block in the code designed to send the search engines away without indexing the site and that the content was poorly focussed on the company's business. So we went back to first principles to re-draft the content, redefined the site structure and reviewed the design. Some basic elements of the design were retained but otherwise the site was rebuilt from scratch. In addition a Wordpress Blog was integrated with the site to allow Curium to publish News Iitems as they wish. The Blog theme has been designed to closely resemble the main site and the latest News Item is automatically posted on the main site home page.

"As well as the design element for building web sites, Michael concentrates very much on the practical functionality of a web site to ensure high levels of web traffic, i.e. making sure it functionally works, can scale/be updated and can be found easily. Michael completely rebuilt the Curium site to overcome the issues that ... left us with; although our original site looked good, it could not be found by search engines at all, the underlying code was screwed and many more serious issues! Michael sorted the lot. "
Joel Farrar

Curium Solutions, Birmingham and London

Wordpress Website For Adoration Art Hanwell, London

www.adorationart.co.uk. Joanne Davies specialises in channelled Art works for clients and for their homes or businesses. The scale of her Artwork ranges from a greetings card to small canvas and up to a full wall mural. Alongside her artwork Joanne works as a Holistic Energy Practitioner.

Joanne had tried to use a website building tool that came with her hosting but found it difficult to use and impossible to load up images of her Artwork. She was looking for a nicer looking site that was easy for her to use to update her site herself. Wordpress provides one of the easiest to use content management systems around so I built her site using this leading Blog software.

"Michael has done the most fantastic website for me - I am thrilled."
Joanne Davies

Adoration Art, Hanwell, London

Website Design For Entec Novare Baldock, Hertfordshire

www.entec.co.uk. Entec Novare supply, install and support computer systems and software to business, education and the voluntary sector. The company is skilled in providing specially discounted software to academic institutions, staff and students and to charities.

I have worked with Ian at Entec for many years now and several iterations of their website. This new design was launched in September 2010. The web site is teamed with an Actinic Online Shop providing full ecommerce facilities which was set up and managed by Ian who is learning the finer points of website maintenance and search engine optimisation. Try looking for "discount software for charities" or "Adobe software for charities" or "discount software for students" in google.

"I was very impressed by the speed that you changed the front page last week. It looks great"
Ian Brown

Entec, Baldock, Herts

Web design for PCC Limited - Personal Computer Care Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire

www.pccare.co.uk. PCC is a specialist in Olivetti, Canon, Sharp and general office equipment. They are the only approved Third Party service centre for Olivetti equipment in the United Kingdom and a Canon training/service centre.

PCC already had a website that was doing very well in the search engines - Paul Lacey of PCC approached me after I had given a talk at a business club on search engines. He thought he had picked up a few new tips and wanted to have his website redesigned and some upgrades with new functionality without damaging its search engine ranking. Try putting "Olivetti Parts" or "Olivetti Spares" in Google - you will see we didn't hurt their ranking.

I have now been working with Paul for many years and the latest design of the PCC site was launched in September 2010.

"Looks great it has really refreshed the site which was looking a bit tired"
Paul Lacey

PCC Limited - Personal Computer Care, Hoddesdon, Herts

Web site design for Alan's Locksmiths Stevenage, Hertfordshire

www.alanslocksmiths.com - Alan's locksmiths are a local independent family run business in Stevenage. They are a local locksmiths with 16 years experience offering a very friendly and trust worthy service and a fast response.

Stuart and Sharon Naylor are Alan's Locksmiths and they wanted to have a properly optimised website that would allow them to reduce annual marketing costs after years of having sites that didn't seem to help. I spent sometime explaining to Stuart and Sharon how the search engines work and what it usually takes to get good rankings and a good conversions. I designed the new website which is now ranking well in the local searches - try "Locksmith Stevenage" or similar in Google and you will see Alan's Locksmiths featuring prominantly in the natural listings. I also helped sort out a Local Business entry for Alan's Locksmiths for Google Places so they come up in the Local Business or Maps searches.

"Thank you so much for all your time and all the information you have given us... The web site looks fantastic, many thanks"
Sharon Naylor

Alan's Locksmith, Stevenage, Herts

Web site design for Fredericks Designer Flowers Epping, Essex

www.fredericksdesignerflowers.co.uk provide flowers and plants to the Contract and Corporate sector. The team at Fredericks Designer Flowers has over 10 years experience of supplying exciting floral and plant displays and associated services to the professional contract sector within London, Hertfordshire, Essex and the Home Counties. This includes supplying bespoke floral arrangements for offices, hotels, caterers and the general corporate market. The team also has a background in floral art for weddings and events.

Freddie commission Joseph Tirelli of JTMarketing Services to look at marketing for his company and one outcome was the requirement for a new search engine friendly website for the corporate market. Freddie wanted a clean but beautiful website that reflected their floral design credentials and would sit well in the corporate market and this is the result.

This new design is the second iteration of this site I have done and was launched in August 2010.

Fredericks Designer Flowers, Epping, Essex

Web Shop Optimisation For Promain Hitchin, Herts

www.promain.co.uk "Promain distribute Industrial Paints and Surface Coatings. Promain are approved distributors for many of the world's leading paint and coatings manufacturers such as Ameron PPG, Sika, Coo-Var, Rustoleum Mathys, Tor Coatings, Classidur, Hempel, Osmo, Anglo, Glixtone, Bollom Intumescent, Marley, Teamac and Akzo Nobel."

A couple of years back Mark French at Promain had just had his new website delivered after a long wait but was a bit concerned about search engine optimisation. He had been told his new site automatically did all the search engine optimisation but he had doubts so he asked me to have a look. The thing about search engine optimisation is that it is mainly about the words on a website and partly about the html code around the words - so automatic search engine optimisation is largely ineffectual unless you know how to use it effectively. I provided guidance to Mark and Carol on how to make the web shop work for them and we made a number of amendments to the way their web site was coded to be more focussed on search engine optimisation. Over the last couple of years they have made a great success of their shop and grown their brand significantly.

Then recently Mark contacted me again and asked me to look at his new online shop - it's a big improvement on the last one but again there is room for optimisation and clearer presentation of products.

"We are really busy now, the phones haven't stopped ringing"
Carol Barry, Promain

Promain, Hitchin, Hertfordshire

Website Design For Home Heating Luton, Bedfordshire

www.4homeheating.co.uk Home Heating are Central heating engineers and plumbers covering Hertfordshire (Herts), Bedfordshire (Beds) and Buckinghamshire (Bucks). They install domestic condensing gas boilers and central heating.

They custom design and install central heating systems with a five year guarantee. They specialise in central heating systems designed to achieve maximum fuel efficiency and minimum fuel bills, which is great for the environment and for their customers' wallets.

Les Dicker approached me to take over the regular maintenance of their website and improve its search engine ranking some years ago now. Recently I have redesigned the site - the brand new look is intended to allow visitors instant recognition of the services on offer but retains the text required for good search engine ranking.

The site has ranked well in the search engines now for a number of years for a wide selection of target keyword phrases. Try "central heating engineers hertfordshire" or " central heating engineers herts" or "... bedfordshire" or "... beds" or "... buckinghamshire" or "... bucks" or some others such as "installing condensing gas boilers" or "central heating plumbers herts".

"The site looks good, you have done all that was asked. The internet is now our major source for heating enquires. What can I say but thank you."
Les Dicker - Home Heating

Home Heating - Luton, Bedfordshire

Content Managed Website Design For Hamilton & Co, Letchworth, Hertfordshire

www.retroandvintagefurniture.co.uk "Hamilton & Co are a Letchworth based company specialising in Retro and Vintage Furniture and Objects from the 1950s,1960s and 1970s. The partners have over thirty years experience trading in Antiques, Decorative Objects and in Furniture Restoration."

Hugh Hamilton had some experience of managing websites and search optimisation from previous ventures - he was looking for a CMS (Content Management) based website that he could update easily himself but did not want the traditional e-commerce CMS type site. The Drupal open source CMS site I designed incorporates the "light box" photo expansion/animation facility to show off products with small on page photos expanding on demand.

Hamilton & Co - Retro and Vintage Furniture, Letchworth, Hertfordshire

Web shop optimisation for Vicol Letchworth, Hertfordshire

www.vicol.co.uk/shop/ - Vicol supply, service and maintain cleaning machines and provide all the associated consumables. This includes commercial vacuum cleaners, scrubber dryers, carpet cleaners and rotary floor machines from top makes such as Numatic, Prochem and Sebo.

Iain MacCormick and his staff had been struggling with his online shop based on the commercial Jshop package for about a year, having made no significant difference to online sales, before he contacted me. Since then a lot of work has been done to put the basics in place, create a nicer, cleaner more professional look to the web shop, tidy up the products, make use of Google shopping and build trust in the Vicol Brand. As with all online shops there is much still to do but everything is now moving in the right direction.

Vicol, Letchworth, Herts

Web site design for Service Master Clean Letchworth, Hertfordshire

www.servicemasterclean.info - ServiceMaster Clean provide Contract and Office Cleaning Services throughout Hertfordshire (Herts), Bedfordshire (Beds) and Buckinghamshire (Bucks) under the Service Master Brand.

Iain MacCormick wanted his Service Master websites redesigned to look more professional and be optimised. The end result is a series of sites covering the major local areas with redrafted copy and optimisation throughout.

Service Master Clean, Letchworth, Herts

Web Design For The Chevronics Centre, Hitchin, Hertfordshire

www.chevronics.co.uk are independent Citroen and Peugeot Servicing and Restoration Specialists based in Hitchin. They not only service vehicles but also supply hard to source Citroen GSA and GS spares and car parts. They have the largest stock of Citroen GSA parts in the world and are regularly increasing production of new lines of classic parts that have not been available from Citroen for years.

Rob Moss the owner of the Chevronic garage had a home grown website done by one of his mechanics for many years but it never helped his business - Rob services my car and has done for years so we got talking about his site and how search engines worked. So I gave it a re-design but retained the banner image he was proud of and rewrote most of the copy to be appealing to people and search engines. To my surprise this made no difference to his search engining ranking so on further investigation I found that his hosting had been set up to block search engine access to his site - so all the years that the site should have been accumulating colateral in Google it wasn't. This problem was corrected and now the site now ranks well as it should and is contributing towards the business. Try "citroen servicing herts" or "citroen servicing hitchin" or "citroen garage hitchin".

"Thanks for looking into this. I had also checked over the Chrismas period and it has got much better.
Thanks for your help with the site."
Rob Moss

The Chevronics Centre, Hitchin, Hertfordshire

Content Managed Website Design For Display-Cor, Little Wymondley, Hertfordshire

www.displaycor.co.uk "Specialists in the Design and Manufacture of Cardboard Point of Sale Displays including cardboard Floorstands, Dumpbins, Counter Tops, Pallet Shippers, Standees and Retail Display Packaging used at the Point of Sale."

Noel Gardiner said "I am looking for a local company that can hopefully 'tweak' our current website design in order to get it higher up in the search engines." It transpired that Noel liked the current design, but felt their site was not optimised and wanted to convert to a CMS based website so they could do updates themselves.

The Drupal open source CMS site I designed looks very much like Display Cors previous site but with much better images and largely rewritten copy which has be optimised. The website also incorporates a nice password protected gallery area including many examples of their finished products for showing potential clients.

Display-Cor, Little Wymondley, Hertfordshire

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) For Green Restorations Weston, Baldock, Hertfordshire

www.greenrestoration.co.uk Malcolm Green is a true craftsman restoring and repairing antique clocks and furniture back to their true glory in a small workshop in Weston. I have seen some of his work, I am quite practical myself and I was amazed at what he is able to achieve. His work is painstaking, using original techniques and materials where possible, he invests a great deal of time and care in these restoration projects and it shows. Malcolm is now a restorer on The Restoration Roadshow on the TV.

Malcolm Green who lives in Letchworth, had a website already but it was not doing well in the search engines so he approached me to see if I could improve his search engine rankings. I reviewed his web site and concluded that it would be better in this case to recode the site with search engine optimisation in mind than try to optimise what we had. Malcolm therefore took the opportunity to improve the design of the website at the same time. Malcolm also wants to maintain his web site himself so I have also spent sometime with him guiding him on how to make changes to the site.

This is a competitive area so top ranking requires a lot of effort however try "Antique Restoration", "Antique Furniture Renovation", "Antique Furniture Repairs", "Antique Clock Restoration", "Antique Clock Renovation" and "Antique Clock Repairs" in Google.

Green Restorations, Weston, Nr Baldock, Hertfordshire

Content Managed Website Design For 3 Counties Heating, Harpenden, Hertfordshire

www.3countiesheating.co.uk 3 Counties Heating are a family run business of plumbers and central heating engineers operating in the Herts, Beds and Bucks area. Barbara Dicker wanted a brand new website that was based on a Content Management System that will perform well in the search engines. She had a clear vision of a particular design she was after - always a challenge with a CMS based website but the DRUPAL CMS was up for it! The end result was a pleasing design so it was well worth the effort. Drupal is also one of the best CMS systems for search engine optimisation so we are looking forward to some good search engine rankings over the coming months.

"The general feedback I am getting for our site has been very good and we have had a few good leads from it and a number of other enquires too. Everyone I've spoken to is impressed with the site and has said how professional it looks. Some even asked if it was expensive. What we wanted was to stand out from the crowd and be able to compete with the bigger companies like British Gas and Northern Gas Heating. I think we have certainly achieved this with the design. The SEO of course we will have to wait and see. Thank you for all the hard work you put into this site."
Barbara Dicker, 3 Counties Plumbers and Heating Engineers

3 Counties Heating, Harpenden, Hertfordshire

Website Design For C.A.S. Electrical (Ware) Ltd, Hertfordshire

www.cas-electrical.co.uk CAS Electrical (Ware) Ltd are a family run Electrical Contracting Company with over 25 years experience in various industrial and commercial electrical contracting projects. These include: supply and installation of electrical power schemes, supply and installation of lighting schemes, data cabling, inspection and testing, periodic testing and PAT testing. They have specialist expertise in electrical installations in the pharmaceutical industry and schools and colleges.

This is a brand new website for Eamonn and Tracey Cassidy's company who are now looking to branch out beyond electrical contracting within the pharmaceutical industry which has been the mainstay of their work for many years. The site has been designed around their existing logo and as search engine optimisation is a main requirement a significant amount of effort has gone into organising the text content of the website which hopefully will start to show in good search engine rankings in the next few months. (Try "electrical contractors for schools and colleges" or "electrical contractors for schools in hertfordshire" or "electrical contractors for colleges in herts" or "NICEIC Approved Electrical Contractors Herts".)

"Michael made the process of developing a website for our company easy. He is a wealth of information on search engine optimization and website development and is always willing to give advice and help. We would definitely recommend Michael without hesitation to anyone who is looking beyond just a website and wants the site to rise in the search engine rankings. We look forward to working with Michael for many years to come for on going developments to the website."
Tracey Cassidy - C.A.S. Electrical (Ware) Ltd

C.A.S. Electrical (Ware) Ltd Electrical Contractors, Ware, Hertfordshire

Website Design For Mars Building Contractors Knebworth, Hertfordshire

www.marsbuild.co.uk. MARS Builders are a family firm provide Building, Groundwork and Demolition Services. The building work they cover includes large domestic Extensions, Loft Conversions, Drives and New House Build or Property Development projects. They are proud of being reliable - "We know that once your house and life have been disrupted by the start of building work, the last thing you want is for nothing to happen for days or even weeks on end. With Mars Builders this does not happen. We only take on building projects which we are sure we can cope with, which ensures that we can achieve full continuity of work on all our contracts."

Mark Feldman of Mars Builders had a website but it wasn't doing anything helpful, they already had a logos they wanted to use and wanted to feature strong images of building work in progress in their branding. There are a lot of builders so this is a very competitive market and good search engine rankings are hard to come by - try "building contractors herts" or "builders knebworth" for example in google.

"The web site seems to be coming up well on some of the searches ie grab lorries, piling and digger hire. ... Thanks I am very impressed so far"
Mark Feldman

"The best builders website I have ever seen"
This was a comment from a local Estate Agent

Mars Builders and Building Contractors, Knebworth, Hertfordshire

Web site design for Bespoke Renovation Harlow, Essex

www.bespokerenovation.co.uk provide Loft Conversions, Building Extensions and Renovations within the areas of Hertfordshire (Herts), Essex, N, E and SW London. Nathan Ryan is the Managing Director at Bespoke Renovation. He has 12 years experience of managing a significant number of projects involving loft conversions, building extensions and renovations. After working for other loft conversion and building companies, Nathan wanted to branch out on his own.

Nathan Ryan commissioned Joseph Tirelli of JTMarketing Services to look at marketing for his new company and to organise a web designer. The requirement was for a professional looking and search engine optimised website and this is the result.

Bespoke Renovation, Harlow, Essex

Website Design For Radleighs Ipswich, Suffolk

www.radleighs.com- Specialist Recruitment - Banking - Insurance - Finance.

Mark Payne who lives in Letchworth, asked me to produce a simple site for one of his ventures. The design reused elements from another of Marks websites I designed. The result, a clean and simple design.

Radleighs, Ipswich, Suffolk

Content Managed Website Design For Le Swing Jive Dance Club, Manchester

www.leswingjive.co.uk Paul Forber of Le Swing Jive had a website but was having difficulty getting help when he needed it from the web site designer so he asked me if I could sort out his site and provide a means for him to update it when he need to. This is the result - it is a straight forward Drupal Content Managed site that uses a standard design template.

 "I've just looked at the site , I see you have done your home work, its fantastic, thank you very much ...
Michael once again thank you for your help, you have been a star, after all the problems I have had over the years, you have been the one thats turned up and helped me out, I will pass the word around the jive venues, if any one needs a web site to see or ring you."
Paul Forber

Leswingjive, Manchester

Search Engine Friendly Website Design For PK Law Edgware, Middlesex

www.pklaw.co.uk PK Immigration Law specialises in providing sound, easily understood and expert advice on all aspects of UK work permit and all other forms of immigration and citizenship.

Peter and Michael Kossew of PK Law had a website that they wanted to be upgraded and made search engine friendly.  So I explained the principles of creating search engine friendly websites and the need to focus the copy on the target search engine phrases. They took my advice on board and drafted new content for the website. I then adapted their existing website design to suit the search engine optimisation needed.

Try "Immigration Lawyer Middlesex" in Google - you will see they now rank very highly.

PK Law, Edgware, Middlesex

Website Design For 4 My Schools Chelmsford, Essex

www.4myschools.org"Schools Recruitment and Supply Teachers Support Staff Services - This innovative service is specifically designed for schools and supply teachers and is structured to deliver benefits to schools and children. A non profit distributing business which means any financial surplus is reinvested in the services for schools and children. The service is for the recruitment of permanent staff and provision of supply teachers and support staff and is for use by all schools across the County."

Mark Payne who lives in Letchworth, came to me with a logo and a general idea of the design he was looking for, for this new website. The result, a clean, simple design that takes its guide from the logo. The images were sourced by Mark from an online photo site.  The website has been revamped at the beginning of 2009 so that it caters for mulitple regions and can now easily be expanded as the company moves into new areas and a Jobs Advertising mechanism has been built by one of my long standing colleagues - Mark Hudson of www.seventhwavedesign.com

"Brilliant thank you very much - You continue to excel"
Mark Payne

4 My Schools, Chelmsford, Essex

CMS Website Design For R-Squared Risk Management Bloomsbury, London

www.rsquaredriskmanagement.com "help managers improve their investment performance by ensuring that their portfolio selection skills are harnessed efficiently by aligning risk with expected return and eliminating unwanted risk. R-Squared Ltd began designing and building Customised Hybrid Risk Models in 2005, continuing and refining the work Jason MacQueen started in 1983. In response to the success of portfolios constructed using these models, R-Squared expanded from 2009 into Quant Partnership and Risk Consulting. R-Squared is based in London, serving investment management firms in Europe and North America."

Richard Young from Hitchin wanted a Content Management (CMS) based website designed for R-Squared Risk Management. He had a logo and wanted a clean design just using their logo. The site I designed uses the Drupal open source CMS system.

R-Squared Risk Management, Bloomsbury, London

Website Designed For Furnishing Report London

www.furnishingreport.com  A new website to support companies in the home furnishings industry by providing insight and information, including breaking news, market data, opinion and analysis.

Richard de Melim who lives in Letchworth, asked me to design a website he could update daily himself having had previous experience of using Content Management Systems and experience of preparing images for use on the web.

He had a clear idea of what he wanted his new website to look like. This can be a problem with CMS based sites as presentation options can be limited however most of Richards presentation requirements were possible using the Drupal Open Source Content Management System (CMS).

“Michael Spencer’s knowledge, skill and approachability have proved to be second to none. Content management system driven websites can be incredibly complex, but Michael has followed the brief to the letter and provided a range of solutions that will allow us to monetise our website. We would highly recommend him as a web designer/developer and have every intention of using his services when we launch further sites in the future.”
Richard de Melim, publisher, Furnishing Report

Furnishing Report, Media 3V Ltd, London

Website Designed For Peter Hamilton Kitchens Bishops Stortford, Herts

www.peterhamiltonkitchens.co.uk "Peter Hamilton comes into his own working on a one to one basis with home owners designing with them their ideal new kitchen. As he says "your kitchen, designed with us, by you". After all you know what you want from your new kitchen it is up to him to put these ideas (and ours) into a practical plan on time and on budget."

Peter had a website already but it was not making any impact on the search engines so he came to me to see what could be done. I explained the problems with his site - while it looked nice it was not coded to be search engine friendly and the website lacked text content - so we drafted more text between us and I redesigned the site while retaining some of its original look.

"WOW!!! There needs to be some minor alterations of course, and I have taken on board your comments... but once again WOW!!!"
Peter Hamilton

"seeing as the compliments are being handed out I thought it only right you got your share"...Hi Peter, Just had a look at you website which is fantastic. One of the best I've seen. Michael Knaggs

Peter Hamilton Kitchens, Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire

Search Engine Optimisation For Eagle Controls Letchworth, Herts

www.eaglecontrols.co.uk supply Large Digit Displays including A to D (Analogue to Digital) Inputs, Clocks, Time Zone Clock displays, Counters and Totalisers, Production Target Displays, Quality Control Displays, Safety Displays, Serial Input Displays, Timers, Time Temperature Displays and Message Displays.

Above all Chris Parfitt wanted his website to rank highly in Google. So we discussed at length how content needs to be focussed around search engine phrases and how design needs to support the repeated use of the search engine phrases, then we set about creating suitable content and optimising it. The design has since been modernised.

The web site is getting page one ranking in google for many of its target search engine keyword phrases  such as " Large Digit Displays", "Seven Segment LED Bar Displays", "Large Digit Serial Input Display", "Production Target Displays", "Large Digit Clock Displays", "Large Digit Process Displays", "Large Digital Counter Displays".....

Eagle Controls, Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire

Website Designed For The Haymakers Survey Ware, Hertfordshire

www.thehaymakerssurvey.com "The Haymakers Survey – a unique and mysterious project about climate change, deforestation, poaching and pollution. Let’s look back 200 years to the industrial revolution. Imagine people like Mary Shelley, William Wordsworth and William Turner deeply concerned about the potential impact of the industrial age on our Earth! What if they met in secret on Christmas Day in 1822 as the Blakeware Set with other heroes from across the world and left us something magical and enchanted – ‘The Haymakers Survey!’ What if a romantic poet from that time, Charles Lamb, recorded everything in his journal." The Haymakers Survey is in fact a novel by Chrissie Daines, a new writer.

This is a very interesting project from the perspective of what Chrissie has set out to achieve as well as what she wanted on her website. ln addition to the normal website pages, there is a survey (using open source software) which has been skinned to match the site design, plus 3 blogs (provided within the hosting set up) used to provide relevant news, feedback and a bonus for people who make it to the end of the "Survey".

In addition Chrissie has been very active on You Tube and elsewhere creating associated materials.

"I'm so glad you are doing my website"
Chrissie Daines

The Haymakers Survey, Ware, Hertfordshire

Website Designed For Letchworth Eagles Y.F.C

letchwortheagles.org.uk is a website we have sponsored for some years now for the Letchworth Garden City Eagles Youth Football Club.

The club was established in 1979, currently has over 400 players are registered between the ages of 6 and 17. Between these ages LGC Eagles has grouped them 'under age' teams. All the boys teams are entered in the Royston Crow Youth League , the girls teams are entered in the Herts Girls League. The club is affiliated to the Hertfordshire Football Association. The LGC Eagles are proud to be awarded the Football Association Charter Standard Club. The club also hosts a Saturday morning Soccer School and runs regular 5 aside competitions ..

The web site covers the full range of activities of the club including merchandising, regular competitions and events. Each team have their own section of the web site - some teams provide weekly updates with match reports and photos, others are less active but all support for the club is completely voluntary so time is at a premium for some of the team managers.

LGC Eagles YFC, Letchworth, Hertfordshire

Website Designed For MRCS Stevenage, Hertfordshire

www.mrcsrevenuesrecovery.co.uk "Managed Revenue Collection Services (MRCS) is a new concept, providing Local Authorities with revenue collection and recovery solutions to maximise revenue on unpaid Council Tax and Business Rates, Sundry Debt, Housing Benefit Overpayments (HBOP) and Former Tenant Rent Arrears."

Joseph Tirelli of JT Marketing Services asked me to produce a website for one of his clients very quickly for an up coming company launch. He had a graphic designer produce a logo and the site was to be clear, with plently of white space, echoing the logo theme. Joseph produced the text content - the web site you see is the result.

MRCS, Stevenage, Hertfordshire

CMS based Website Design For Modus Operandi Hertfordshire

www.modusoperandimarketing.co.uk  Modus Operandi are a marketing, sales and customer service development company with specialist experience in the hospitality, leisure and service industries.

Ursuline wanted another new website she could manage herself so I provided a Drupall Content Management based web site.

"I wanted a sensible website design and build that would give me maximum flexibility to strategically grow my businesses over time. I also wanted to incorporate SEO into the design and build without paying expensive SEO fees to a so called specialist. Epsilis provided the solution and have built two sites for me that are performing well. Working with Michael has been a pleasure and behind his unassuming nature is a wealth of talent and experience that he is happy to share to improve your web presence and your business. Michael also provides an incredible ongoing support and advisory service and is always available to answer your questions and queries first hand. If you are considering creating a new website or revamping your old site then be sure to seek out the services of Michael Spencer and his company Epsilis"
Ursuline Edwards-Sutton (Director), Modus Operandi,

Modus Operandi, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire

Website Designed For North Hertfordshire Compact Letchworth, Hertfordshire

www.nhcompact.org.uk "The North Hertfordshire COMPACT is an agreement between local government and other statutory bodies with the voluntary and community sector to improve our relationship for mutual advantage"

This initiative is run by North Herts CVS and Jacquie Hime, Director, wanted the rather dated website updated in terms of appearance and current web design standards. The colour scheme and logo existed already and the site you see now is a modern, clean interpretation.

"Thank you for doing such a fantastic job you have even made Compact look more interesting which is a skill in itself"
Jacquie Hime, Director, NHCVS

North Hertfordshire Compact, Letchworth, Herts

Search Engine Optimisation For Flowpoint Letchworth, Hertfordshire

www.flowpoint.co.uk "Flowpoint supply Water and Energy Saving Shower Heads which can save upto 60% on your Water and Energy Bill. Their range of modern stylish replacement shower heads are designed to save on your Water and Energy Bills while not compromising on the invigorating and relaxing feel of a powerful shower."

Chris Parfitt had a web site designed but his web designer was not a search engine specialist so Chris approached me to see if I could improve the search engine performance without starting again. I have retained the general look of the website while substantially rewriting the underlying code and focusing the text content on suitable search engine phrases. I also helped Chris understand his google adwords campaign and Chris now tells me he has stopped paying for Google adwords as the website is now ranking sufficiently well in Google natural listings. Try "water saving shower heads" or "replacement shower heads" in google - flowpoint are on page 1.

Flowpoint, Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire

CMS based Website Designed For Shine Hertfordshire

www.shinepersonaldevelopment.co.uk  offer a range of Personal  and Professional Development programmes that can help you enhance your life and the lives of those around you.

Ursuline wanted a new website she could manage herself. I demonstrated a typical Content Management based web site to her so that she could see what was involved and we went from there. This website uses the open source system, DRUPAL CMS. Visitors can sign up for courses, a regular club, a newsletter, download tip sheets, purchase gifts and subscriptions.

Shine Personal Development , Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire

Website Designed For IABCO Stevenage, Hertfordshire

www.iabco.co.uk. "IABCO Ltd an established and leading supplier of Low and Medium Alloy Welding Wires to the Welding Industry. The IABCO welding wire product range encompasses in excess of 70 wire analyses manufactured as MIG/TIG and SUB-ARC welding wires. At both our warehouse in Stevenage, and at the manufacturing plant in Germany quality control is paramount. We have systematic processes in place that incorporates an extremely concise number of quality controls, from selection of raw material and runs through the entire production to final inspection and labelling."

Mandy Barnes approached me to create a simple website just to give the company an online presence. We started by creating a new logo and choosing the company's corporate colour scheme. Mandy acquired some nice photos of their products and we designed the website from there.

IABCO, Stevenage, Hertfordshire

Website Designed For Secure Your Fertiliser London

www.secureyourfertiliser.gov.uk. This is a second site I have designed for NaCTSO (The National Counter Terrorism Security Office). They already had this website but wanted the design brought up to date.

The site is aimed primarily at farmers. Fertilisers they commonly use have been misused by terrorists as an ingredient in home made explosive. The website aims to raise awareness amongst the farming and growing community and to provide practical guidance about securing fertiliser. The site has also includes a set of Welsh language pages.

The site is search engine friendly, accessible, XHTML and CSS standards compliant. The drop shadows on the heading text were a done without using images - they are done by layering and offsetting text using html and CSS.

Secure Your Fertiliser by NaCTSO - The National Counter Terrorism Security Office, London

Website Designed For Quantum Binders Broxbourne, Hertfordshire

www.quantumbinders.co.uk. "Quantum Binders specialise in producing customised document and presentation ring binders, folders, clipboards, point of sale, catalogues, manuals and special products designed to meet your requirements."

Terry Redgrave, Managing Director of Quantum Binders, wanted his tired old website brought up to date and designed to be search engine friendly, the site you see is the result. Charlotte at Quantum Binders supplied all the nice product photos you see throughout the web site. Try "Presentation Ring Binder" or "Custom Ring Binder" in google.

"I wanted to let you know we are performing really well in the search engines now.
Terry organised some back links and this as well as your improvements are doing the trick.

Big Thank You"

Charlotte Smith

Quantum Binders, Broxbourne, Hertfordshire

Website Designed For REN Solutions Knebworth, Herts

www.rensolutions.co.uk provide building and dwelling thermal imaging. This was a new one on me as I had not heard or thought of such a service before but it is just such a great idea. Basically you can have your house checked for heat loss and damp problems by using an infrared camera. So problems can be found without pulling anything apart - brilliant. To quote from the website:

"Infrared imaging offers a fast, non-invasive means of monitoring and diagnosing the condition of buildings. There are many applications, and recent restrictions on working at height and ever increasing demands for carbon foot print reduction has increased the demand for this service".

The website has been designed to be search engine friendly and Nick was particularly keen to ensure the site complied with Disability Accessibility legislation requirements. Nick provided lots of interesting phopographs that illustrate nicely the benefits of the service his company is providing. The website is making reasonable progress in the search engines achieving page 1 rankings in google for some target keyword phrases - try "building thermal imaging"

"...... quickly understood what we required and produce the site with a minimum of fuss. Michael's flexible approach and prompt feedback made the whole process straightforward. A pleasure to work with."
Nick Reilly

REN Solutions - building and dwelling thermal imaging, Knebworth, Hertfordshire

Search Engine Optimisation For Freelance Copy Hitchin, Herts

www.freelance-copy.co.uk provides Freelance Copywriter services for websites and other media. Freelance copy's professional UK based freelance copywriters and website content developers compose fluent, energetic, search engine aware online copywriting for websites; and eloquent, succinct written material for other media - on a comprehensive variety of subjects. They create Search Engine Optimised (SEO) Copy - primarily for human audiences and easy readability, but also taking into account search engine spiders. All their freelance copywriters write content for favourable listings in search engine result pages, using keenly researched keyword weighting, density, and proper distribution within the written content.

Jackie Griffith, who runs Freelance Copy, approached me to upgrade the search engine optimisation of their website and recode it to standards.

"Epsilis gave us a completely unique, personal, and highly professional service. We are delighted with our new website as it passes W3C validation and is completely accessible for disabled people. Michael Spencer is a Master Craftsman of the web." Jackie Griffiths - Senior Copywriter

Freelance Copy - Copywriters for web pages and documents, Hitchin, Hertfordshire

Terrington Facilities Hatfield, Hertfordshire

www.terringtonfacilities.co.uk. Terrington Facilites handle all aspects of Television production - This includes the installation and operation of digital television in Studio and Outside Broadcast environment. They provide technical support for all broadcast environments; studios, control rooms, edit suites, video servers, outside broadcast and transmission areas.

Mike Hartung of Terrington Facilities had done some graphic design work and had a good idea of the sort of look he wanted for the website. We took his initial graphic designs and created a number of website designs from them. Mike did not want much text content on the site and search engine performance was specifically not a requirement. The resulting website is therefore a little different from most of the ones we produce and in particular is fixed width to suit the high graphic content and low text content.

Terrington Facilities, TV Broadcast Setup and Support, Hatfield, Hertfordshire

Website Designed For Craftsman Ltd London

www.craftsmanltd.co.uk. Craftsman Limited provide and install Granite Worktops for Kitchens, Bathrooms, Pubs etc. Tadas Bukys (Tom) - Sales Manager of Craftsman limited approached me as they had a web site but it was invisible in the search engines and they were paying a lot out regularly on Google Adwords. They were hoping to reduce their adwords budget by getting some natural search engine results. Their website used a content management system.

I re-wrote most of the existing website content and created new copy for the site. However this did no good in the search engines as the content management system was preventing the web site from getting search engine rankings it deserved. So it was decided that the content management system should be removed. All, the pages were restructured and redesigned to be search engine friendly and the site has just been relaunched but good search engine rankings are hard to comeby in this very competitive area. However some good rankings have been achieved - try "Granite Worktop Care and Maintenance" or "How should I clean my granite worktop" in google.

Craftsman Ltd, Granite Worktops, London

Speakers for Results Stevenage, Herts

www.speakersforresults.com is a promotional site for Public Speakers and is owned by Derek Williams, a Public Speaker and Customer Service Guru.

Speakers for Results is a website we enhanced and optimised for Derek - try "motivational public speakers" in Google - the website is on page one.

Speakers for Results from The WOW! Group, Stevenage, Herts

Website Designed For SWIFT Accounting Services Letchworth, Herts

www.swiftaccounting.co.uk. Swift Accounting are a newly formed business that focusses on providing a range of Accounting, Bookkeeping and Payroll Services to small and medium sized businesses. They specialise in Estate Agents and Lettings Agents Accounts bureau service which provides a highly specialised Accounts Services to the Estate Agency market.

The website was designed from scratch including providing the logo and branding. The web site is small but has been designed using CSS style sheets to provide both the look and the positioning of all elements on the page providing a fast site, that appeals to search engines, is accessible, works well across a range of popular browsers and is good to look at.

Site owner Rob Wallis commented "The site looks great and was done so quickly"

SWIFT Accounting Services, Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire

Website Designed For Baily Thomas Trust Luton, Beds

www.bailythomas.org.uk. The Baily Thomas Charitable Fund is a registered charity which was established primarily to aid the research into learning disability and to aid the care and relief of those affected by learning disability by making grants to voluntary organisations working in this field. They consider under learning disability the conditions generally referred to as severe learning difficulties, together with autism. In this area, they consider projects concerning children or adults.

We developed a web site design from scratch including logo and branding. Disability Accessibility was a key requirement. Included within the web site is a complex form allowing organisations to apply to Baily Thomas for grants.

"At our last meeting the Trustees reiterated how pleased they were with the site and thought it looked excellent! "
Ann Cooper, Trust Manager

The Baily Thomas Charitable Fund, Luton, Bedfordshire

Website Designed For Mr WOW! Stevenage, Herts

www.mrwow.co.uk. Mr WOW! is actually Derek Williams who is an Inspirationalist and Creator of The WOW! Awards™. He is the leading UK customer service speaker and world-wide selling author of "3-Dimensional Care" (a work-book for business owners and managers) and "Learning From Sport" (inspiration and motivation for all). Derek is one of Britain's leading business and customer service gurus.

Derek is fond of the union jack flag and wanted a Red, White and Blue look for his own web site - so that is what we aimed for. The website has also been designed using CSS throughout to provide maximum accessibility and effective search engine performance. Epsilis now manages the content and maintains the web site for Derek.

"Since you and your team have taken over the management of our websites there has been a significant improvement in every aspect. Visually, the sites are much more attractive. In terms of content, they look much more professional. And, most importantly, in terms of our rankings with the search engines we have achieved a fantastic improvement! Whilst I appreciate your technical ability what I also really like is your down-to-earth business advice."
Derek Williams - MrWOW!

Mr WOW! - The WOW! Group, Stevenage, Hertfordshire

Website Designed For The Management Practice Stevenage, Hertfordshire

The Management Practice Limited is a consultancy specialising in improving business performance through effective people management. Their services include Change Management, Culture Mapping, Team Building, Project Management, Appraisal and Performance Review, Executive Coaching, Leadership Training, Career Management, Outplacement, Business Planning, Group Facilitation and HR Advisory Service

The brief from them was to provide a clean, neat web site design based around their logo that was in keeping with their professional approach. It was to be free of all the tired animated effects used on their current web site. The web site contains only a small number of pages advertising the services of The Management Practice as the nature of their business is that they always deal directly with their clients. The web site therefore only needs to make clients aware of their services in broad terms and provide contact details.

"Having had the website live now for a couple of months, I would just like to thank you and your team for your efforts in designing and publishing the site so effectively.
I have had positive comments from clients about the site, and the ideas that your team came up with in making some of the site downloadable in PDF format has been well received by students and clients alike"
Steve Hollingsworth, MD, The Management Practice, Stevenage, Hertfordshire

The Management Practice, Stevenage, Hertfordshire

Website Designed For The WOW! Group Stevenage, Herts

www.thewowgroup.co.uk. The WOW! Group are responsible for bringing you The WOW! Awards, a national award programme to recognise outstanding customer service.

Epsilis designed their simple group website which provides news, events and product information covering all The WOW! Groups activities and links to their other sites. The website was designed using CSS positioning to provide universal accessibility.

Epsilis updates the content and maintains the site on behalf of The WOW! Group.

"Thank you for all your help"
Lucy Best, Co-ordination Manager, The WOW! Group

The WOW! Group , Stevenage, Herts