Awesome August

Wayne

August has historically been our quietest month due to holidays, but it's been a great opportunity to get caught up with the workload and therefore we've managed to get a few websites finished and live. We received a great testimonial form a new client earlier this month: "A great team to work with. Everything completed to time and budget". Thank you, Ian.

Mid-Week Treat

We introduced ‘Mid-Week Treat’ at the beginning of August which is a bit of downtime every Wednesday morning to have a break from the computers and bond over something which isn’t strictly work related. We’ve started off by playing Monopoly and it’s already clear what drives some members of the team!

I encourage any small business with a team do this because it’s proving a brilliant way to further understand how each person works. From the way the banker counts money out to those who skip along their squares without counting, you can see similar traits in how people work day-to-day.

Vanity Awards

It’s that time of year again. Twilo has been nominated for a ‘prestigious’ award that claims to recognise small to medium companies that have had a positive impact on their customers in ‘one of England’s most instrumental economic regions’. While I believe that Twilo HAS made a big difference to the region; improving the standard of websites, increasing the turnover of local businesses through digital marketing and earning a ‘black badge’ (said to be worth £250,000 to the local community) in a short stint at BNI, there’s no evidence at all as to why we are nominated or where that nomination came from.

One month later, the results are in. Twilo Creative Limited has been awarded ‘Most Innovative Web Design Company 2018 – West Yorkshire’.

WOOHOO! WE WON!

…On the back of not returning any emails, no contact between us and anyone on the awards committee or even a phone call to our business. We’re sent an email with a price list featuring different tiers of promotion in their online publication. You can buy a trophy, a full page editorial and add some clout to your website, but at what cost?

Don’t tarnish your hard work with false praise. Earn it!

Matt

You only get one chance to make a good first impression, and likewise a website only gets one chance to create the right impression with its users. For most users the homepage will be their first contact with the website, so as web designers we spend a lot of time thinking about the best way to express a brand through the design and layout of its homepage…

However, as beautiful as a design may be, it can be instantly let down by it’s content. The most common problem is a lack of fresh content, or perhaps content that is entirely out of date. We’ve all seen websites with ‘recent’ news from 12 months ago, banners for events that have already passed, or out of date sale offers. Stale content can badly damage a website’s chance of success, so it’s important to have a content schedule with reminders of dates when stale content should be replaced, and fresh content added. An added benefit of this is that website owners become more engaged with their websites – and encouraged to be more active and creative. Google also loves an up to date website with plenty of fresh content… And for web designers it’s always nice to see projects flourish rather than slowly rust, so everyone really does win!