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Company: Finn William
Project: Our own company website

http://www.finnwilliam.com

Dates: Mar 2007 to Aug 2007

How did the project start?

We started the project verbally at the beginning of 2007. We knew our existing website just didn't show off what we did. We physically began the project during the first week in March.

What options did you consider?

We considered creating an extravagant Flash centred website to wow visitors with animation, sounds, etc. However, we knew though that this wasn't who, or what, we're about. We knew we needed to create a compliant, attractive website that was different from our competitors. We wanted to make a statement of intent about the work we do and can do.

What help and expertise did you receive?

Knowing which direction I wanted to take the company I decided to employ an experienced CSS web designer. Her skills and expertise in W3C compliant and accessibility have proved invaluable and the success of the site is as much down to this as it is the overall design and layout.

Did you face any challenges or learn any lessons?

One of the biggest challenges, as the Director, was trying to balance the amount of time spent on the creation of our own site whilst working on the paid-for-work from our clients. As for lessons, I think the most important lesson we learned was planning, planning, planning. We did lose time on certain areas of the site because we hadn't planned appropriately beforehand.

What are the outcomes and how has it improved your business?

The outcome of our new site design is that we now have a website we are all really, really proud of. We have a site that reflects the pride, passion and enthusiasm we have the work we do. We have a site that always receives great feedback. It's a break from the norm and is a refreshing change to the tired looking sites you see. These, and the other positive comments we've had fuel our enthusiasm to continue to deliver bespoke web design solutions for all of our future clients.

What are your plans for the future?

The future vision for our website is to continually nurture and feed the site with more case studies from our current/future projects and to develop the bespoke RSS and CMS systems we have in place on the site. Above all though we all aspire to make our site the benchmark for other websites. We're continually encouraged by the wonderful feedback we're getting to the work we do. Our website is the 6th member of our team who shows off this work to the world. It tirelessly works 24 hours a day for us and we look forward to feeding her more work to sing to the world about.