Should I meet your web agency face to face?

The power of the internet has meant that a large number of web agencies don’t ever actually meet their clients with all work done over the phone or even more commonly these days, by email. Is this good, bad or indifferent?

When looking for a web agency or even a web designer direct why should you meet them when you know exactly what you want? You can simply send the web agency a web design brief and ask them to proceed? I mean this will save you or the company time travelling to meet.

It is a fair point but at James Blake Internet (JBi) we believe that something is missing if you don’t meet you client face to face prior to working on the project and we will give 3 simple reasons why.

1) Web design – this is subjective and sometimes to explain your vision for your business website over the phone, is not easy and sometimes the detail can be lost in translation. What better way than explaining to you web designer direct, showing the benchmarking sites and colours you like and removing all the ambiguity?

2) Web development – Often when looking at websites for businesses the client is looking not just for building the website but also for ideas and feedback direct from their web developer. Again, a full understanding of the vision will really help the client get the best out of their web design agency. For instance with a content management system (CMS), what aspects of the site would you like to control? Why should your business not control the whole website? For ecommerce stores, what about some of the extra functionality that can make the difference between and on-line sale and a drop off.

3) Human contact – Working on a website takes time and some business websites are complex and the project can run. This means that your account manager will need constant contact with your web agency. Surely it is better to know who you are dealing with and build a relationship with them? Go for a coffee and let them know get to know you and what you tastes are, it can only help the project.

Here at James Blake Internet we try and meet as many of our clients as possible. We are based in Finchley North London so we have easy access to all clients in central London as well as in Hertfordshire, Essex, Middlesex and Berkshire. In fact if you business is located on our doorstep say in Barnet, Golders green, Hampstead, whetstone, Southgate etc then you have no excuse !! We are honestly not that bad to meet!

As part of our monthly features, we caught up with Peter Sumner owner of SP education Educational services Ltd (www.speducationalservices.com)to discuss his business and web experience.

SP Educational Services work in the education sector and James Blake Internet developed them a new on-line ecommerce site to help sell their products to a wide community.

Hi Peter

1) Can you tell us a little about your business?
The business was started in the year 2000 by myself and my sister, Laura Pooles. Laura and I are both practising headteachers of primary schools. All our materials are written by teachers who are still working as teachers (many companies use ex-teachers who very quickly lose touch with current educational practice).

SP of SP Educational Services stands for Sumner/ Pooles.

We started the business because Laura noticed a gap in the education market - the need for assessments to accompany the original Maths Numeracy Framework. The assessments were updated in 2008 because the Numeracy Framework was redesigned into what is called the Renewed Framework for mathematics. We also now have mental maths tests on CD and in book format to accompany the delivery of the renewed framework for maths.

2) Who should buy your products?
Our biggest market is primary school teachers and teaching assistants. We do however sell to an increasing number of parents who use our materials to help their children with maths. The materials are simple to use and really help diagnose children’s maths strengths and weaknesses. Parents our real future target market as this market is obviously much greater than our teacher market.

3) What are your objectives and plans for your new website?
The objectives for the new website are to present a much more attractive and professional ‘front’ to our business. We also want the site to act as an online shop. So far the feedback has been excellent and several customers have commented on the quality of the website.
Several have also given us feedback on some ways to improve the site and we will be working with James Blake on making these improvements.
We plan to incorporate all our new products into the website. Our next products are a set of Word Problem maths books for Years 1 - 6 in the primary school.

4) How do you use the internet to help your business
The internet has become a great source of advertising for us. We send email mailshots to schools in England and we include a link to our web site. Traffic has increased greatly since we have had the new site.

5) Have you got any tips for people who are considering setting up their own business on-line?
My tip would be to invest in a reputable company to design the website. It is very important that the web designer is patient and will work with the customer until the customer is happy with the site. James Blake were excellent in this respect.

6) Finally for our own records, how was working with the James Blake Team
I was extremely impressed with the James Blake team. I had a very clear idea of what I wanted the site to look like but because of my lack of IT knowledge, I found it difficult to verbalise. David Gelb of James Blake was very helpful and patient and we were both delighted with the end result. The site has really helped our business grow. I would recommend James Blake in terms of the professionalism of the team and in terms of value for money.

James Blake went out live on Scottish Radio station L107 on Tuesday 13th October!

James Blake was invited to take part in a live discussion on the effect the internet can have for businesses in times of recession.

Some of the key areas of discussion were
a) How important is good web design really to the success of your business
b) How do you market your website to ensure that it is found
c) Do you have to spend huge amounts of money on SEO and internet marketing
d) IS the Internet safe for ecommerce?

The James Blake Director, David Gelb held discussions with the L107 radio presenter in a lively discussion.