Interview with September WOTM Winner Recognition Design | Heart Internet Blog – Focusing on all aspects of the web

Web design company Recognition Design was the proud winner of September’s Website of the Month contest. We caught up with director Martin Blunt to find out more about the company, tips for going self-employed and more…

Tell us a bit about Recognition Design and its history.

After spending more than 10 years working for different design agencies both on the South Coast of England and around the world, I realised that I had everything I needed to set up my own company: the experience, expertise and private clients that I had been building up steadily for some time. I had thought of the company name ‘Recognition’ when I was eighteen, so it had always been my dream and ultimate ambition to run my own company.

Recognition Design was born in my study at home, where I worked for a number of years building up the company’s profile, services and client base.

I was then offered the opportunity to develop the derelict buildings on my parent’s farm in Lymington, Hampshire and it’s here that Recognition established our professional design studio. For our first few years, we rented out desk space to other sole traders in the area to fill the space and help with rent as we grew.

Now, as a flourishing Limited company, we feel that our website is a true representation of the work that we do.The content, news stories, images and graphics and supporting social media hopefully show the depth of services that we can offer and the high level of personal service that our existing and prospective clients can expect.

If you were starting Recognition Design again from scratch, what (if anything) would you do differently?

There’s nothing I would do differently, I would just have done it sooner.

Recognition Design covers branding, design, print, events, copywriting and more. What benefits are there in working across a wide range of areas and what challenges do you face at the same time?

Recognition’s wide range of services means that we offer a ‘one stop shop’ for clients – there are many benefits to this – as well as the obvious time and costs savings, there’s also the peace of mind that comes with working with a company that understands all parts of their business.

The challenges are always keeping our skills and knowledge up-to-date across a wide range of disciplines in order to stay at the top of our game.

Your website has a vibrant, eye-catching design. Where did you get the inspiration for it and how long did it take to create?

Because of the nature of our business, we of course wanted our website to be image and graphic led. It’s an ongoing project, I’d never say it’s totally finished. When we get a rare free moment, we’ll spend it updating the news stories, the content and navigation.There’s so much more we want to do with it, for example introducing new features that make the most of new technologies such as HTML5 along with style updates to the portfolio and news sections.

How do you go about promoting and marketing your business?

Most of our business is repeat from clients that just keep coming back to us, we also get a lot of business through word of mouth.Other than that we invest in Search Engine Optimisation which is really starting to pay off as the amount of new business leads has tripled in the last three months.It’s not a short term quick fix, but a long term investment in making your website work for you.

What advice would you give to a designer or developer looking to create a full-time business like Recognition Design?

Be prepared to work harder then you ever have before.

Being your own boss definitely gives you more flexibility than being a 9 to 5 employee but when you’re the one in sole charge of a project, you have to deliver no matter what and that can involve some long hours.

There’s no greater buzz though when you win a new client or project, so the sacrifices are worth it.

If you had to choose just one, which do you think is the most important aspect of a website: concept, content, design or promotion?

It’s hard to pinpoint just one aspect. A successful website has to have all of these elements working together.As I say to all of my clients, there’s no point having an all singing, all dancing website if no one knows it exists.Promotion is just as important as content, design and structure but it’s the element that is most commonly forgotten.People have a tendency to think that the whole world will flock to their website just because it exists or that they will automatically be at the top of their Google search but it’s competitive out there and you have to invest in SEO and PPC and offline promotion to drive traffic to your site.

The old 3 clicks rule is also really important.In this digital age, we all expect to have the information we need at our fingertips, if takes too long to find (more then 3 clicks away) or a website is hard to navigate people give up very quickly! So an accessible website is absolutely essential.

Website content needs to be engaging, accurate, persuasive, to the point but long enough to be optimised for search engines (at least 250 words per page).

Eye catching, slick design can make your website and brand stand out above your competitors and it can also keep people coming back time and time again.

Why do you host your website with Heart Internet?

The support ticket system is great, really responsive and usually solves the problem within a couple of updates. Uptime is okay and the service is really good plus the reseller control panel is really easy to use.

How did you go about asking people to vote for you in the Website of the Month contest?

We sent an e-newsletter out to our clients, suppliers and friends and were so chuffed that they all got voting.

How do you see Recognition Design developing further in the future?

We never want to be a huge organisation, we’re a friendly, down to earth company that values each of our employees highly.Being based on the South Coast, if the weather or the surf’s good, then you might just find that some of us are down at the beach but equally we’ll work into the wee hours to get projects finished, if that’s what it takes.We also work with a wide range of talented freelancers that can help us out when there’s a lot on or we just don’t have the in house expertise.

That said, we’d like to bring more web expertise onboard in the next year as well as developing the marketing and event management side of the business.

Comments

Please remember that all comments are moderated and any links you paste in your comment will remain as plain text. If your comment looks like spam it will be deleted. We're looking forward to answering your questions and hearing your comments and opinions!

Got a question? Explore our Support Database. Start a live chat*.
Or log in to raise a ticket for support.
*Please note: you will need to accept cookies to see and use our live chat service