The global leaders in renewable energy solutions practise what they preach

ENER-G (www.energ.co.uk) based in Manchester, designs, develops and finances energy efficient and renewable solutions on a business-to-business basis globally. They deliver a comprehensive end-to-end service – from energy procurement and efficiency expertise through to renewable and low carbon technologies and services.

ID, the Preston based digital agency, have been working with ENER-G for over 5 years now and with their rebrand on the horizon and new requirements for the site it was time to re-scope and re-develop. Or so we all thought.

ENER-G had already invested in the initial website and CMS so the approach was planned to recycle the CMS and just develop new templates to represent and support the new brand. So in terms of renewable solutions this project delivered that promise always made when clients are looking at website development which is rarely delivered against. The site you buy will be able to be redesigned without having to buy a new website or starting from scratch.

There's been new features added to enhance the online presence for ENER-G like a jQuery hero area on the home page:


...and a deep linking SEO type footer which acts as a method of navigation when at the base of the page and highlights where the user is in the site. And obligatory social media sharing options handled by an AddThis widget:


A lovely jQuery based map of Europe helps promote their growing international portfolio via the CMS without getting caught in the messy Flash map scenario getting in the way of SEO and updatability:


And because this was ID's CMS in the first place coupled with our excellent development skills it didn't mean the system hindered the evolution of the site, which can happen with some CMS products. ENER-G could have exactly what they wanted.

ID created the online design after Happy Creative (www.happy-creative.co.uk) in Blackpool did an excellent job with the rebrand, having worked many times with 3rd party branding agencies and extending the clients brand online for the likes of United Utilities and BAE Systems this was an ideal project for Interactive Dimension.

"This is a demonstration of how important long term relationships are these days. 2nd and 3rd generation websites for clients is great for all involved, no need to get another agency up to speed and maximum cost effectiveness for the client and repeat revenue for the agency, it's a win-win situation for all.

"To top it all off, we're very happy with the site and feel it works well in our portfolio, they have a great team over there at ENER-G", said Jonny Wilde at ID.

You can have a look at the site on www.energ.co.uk.

New website from ID turns the spotlight on Preston

A new website promoting Preston as a modern, creative, innovative European city has gone live.

www.prestonvision.co.uk features links with popular social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr, allowing Preston people to get involved in discussions about the planned transformation of their city over the next decade.

As well as expressing their views on current projects and initiatives featured on the site, the public can contribute videos and photographs which celebrate the area’s beauty, heritage and personality to help raise the city’s profile as part of the bid to attract investment.

The fresh, sleek, clean website was designed by Preston creative agency ID and commissioned by Preston Vision Ltd, the regeneration company which is driving forward proposals to transform the city.

Preston Vision’s head of marketing and communications Emma Blackman said: “The website is a key part of our strategy to market Preston in a comprehensive and far-reaching way, bringing together the city’s best attributes and proudly showing them off.

“Preston is a vibrant, compact city with fantastic transport links and a lot of personality, this website will give Preston a new platform to stand alongside it’s European counterparts, showcase development opportunities and highlight Preston’s strengths in sectors such as advanced manufacturing , knowledge and design.

“The website is fully integrated in terms of social media so that Preston people feel part of it and, most importantly, can contribute towards telling the world what a great place it is to live, work or visit - it’s a celebration of Preston. Feedback from local people about our proposals now and as the projects are rolled out is also crucial.

“These are potentially very exciting times for Preston and its people as the city positions itself as a 21st century centre of knowledge and innovation.

“We were delighted to find the creativity and technological expertise needed for our website right here in Preston with the ID creative agency.”

Strategic Account Director at ID Jonny Wilde said: “It’s been a privilege to work on such an important site for the City of Preston. The new brand was easy to work with, and the client was great!

“Integrating so much social media into the site means the community can contribute and that’s something we’re interested in observing, to see how the social media and website channels blend - it should be very interesting.

“We’re very pleased with the final product and have enjoyed the follow-on opportunities with Preston Vision such as exhibition systems and email marketing, it’s a great relationship, and one I’m confident will only grow over time as we work closely moving forward.”

The site was developed using ID’s content management system (CMS) with several enhancements such as:

- Social media integration, including Twitter (both account and search related feeds), Facebook, Flickr (particularly the header on the ‘Preston is Evolving’ page which is made up of images drawn from Preston photographers), YouTube, Delicious and LinkedIn

- Pages tailored in terms of colour and style according to the user journey

- RSS feeds from tourism and property sites are to be integrated making the site a hub of information for the whole of Preston

- Site map footer which acts as the breadcrumb trail highlighting where the user is on the site, and delivering great linking into the content of the site

- Newsletter subscription which feeds directly into the email marketing platform

The site is built with search engine optimisation (SEO) in mind and features SEO tools in the CMS and rich keywords all over the site giving natural search success, especially relevant to the recently launched Google Instant.

You can visit the site on www.prestonvision.co.uk.

Mayes, more than accountants

Mayes Business Partnership Ltd, the Accrington based chartered certified accountants and registered auditors who serve the entire Northwest are in the midst of a rebrand and refocus exercise.Experiencing great success in the provision of business services which confirm their moniker as Added Value Accountants they felt they wanted to evolve their brand to leverage the Mayes name, clarify their offerings and bring their image right up to date for the bright future ahead.

Appointing Preston digital agency Interactive Dimension (www.interactivedimension.com) to develop their brand and website, a thorough blueprint phase was undertaken which helped both parties focus on their customers and aspirations. Taking this step back, deep breath approach has rewarded Mayes with a fresh new, modern and unique look and feel to the company identity, one which will be followed though in all their marketing and communication materials over the next few months.

A detail of the logos bespoke type treatment:

"One thing which stood out to us was the need to leverage the great Mayes name and clarify what they do, but with a novel way to show they do so much more. Our creative team developed a clean, stylish and sophisticated brand that introduces the 'more than' concept which will be applied across their service portfolio. We're very pleased with the results and look forward to seeing it work hard for the client. We particularly wanted to boil the identity down to 'Mayes' as everyone knows them as that. They are an accountancy firm with a great personality, not a machine and we wanted that to be the focus." said Jonny Wilde from ID.

"It was something we'd all wanted to do for some time. It's a big step but we felt the timing was right; the future for Mayes is about focusing on what we do best to deliver great results for our clients, we simply do more. We can't wait for the full transformation to be complete and we're very excited about the future for us as a practice. This new brand identity spells it out for our existing clients and prospects alike." said Anne Parkinson, Managing Director at Mayes.

Moving forward Mayes will continue to provide the best possible value business development services for their clients, focused on accountancy, tax, audit and other financial services.

ID are in the process of developing Mayes’ new site which will showcase their services and host a number of value added tools for their clients leveraging web based technologies and systems integration with Mayes’ back-office systems. The project is perfect for ID with their creative, build and integration capabilities which have been homed and proven over the last 15 years the agency has been delivering digital solutions.

Why not catch their old website now on www.mbpacc.co.uk before it's replaced by www.mayesaccountants.co.uk which is currently in development.

Preston Carers come to ID

Preston Carers support carers in the Preston area. They offer a host of information, advice, services, support and activities for carers.

They have selected Interactive Dimension the Preston based digital agency to support them with their new website design and build.

We'll be bringing the site up to date with an improved structure, design and content management system so they can edit the site themselves moving forward.

We're proud to support such a worthy organisation and increase our support for Preston as a whole. This, along with our Preston Vision win increases our local portfolio and we're very happy about that.

Keep an eye out for the new site, the current one is here: http://www.prestoncarers.org.uk/

Were you at WordCampUK?

Last weekend Louis from ID attended WordCampUK, an "informal annual gathering of WordPress publishers, designers and developers based in the United Kingdom, held at a different location around the country each year". The event was a fantastic mixture of geeks, lead developers, plugin authors, theme designers and complete beginners to the WordPress platform. Louis has been using WordPress as a blogging platform for over 5 years, but in recent years WP has turned into something that Louis and ID use for full websites, not just blogs.

The event was held at the Metropolitan Business School in Manchester over the weekend 17th-18th July.

Saturday started off with a talk by Michael Kimb Jones 'How WordPress Themes Changed the World' (slides) which was a great insight into the very profitable arena of theme development for WordPress. Some of his own sites were featured which highlighted the very versatile nature of the latest WordPress platform.

Also on Saturday 'Wonderflux' was revealed. This is a framework which "bridges the gap between developer and designer enabling the creation of powerful WordPress themes & functionality" A great session by Jonnya gave us the basics of framework possibilities. Louis came out of this session feeling excited, particularly how versatile this framework could make his and our existing WordPress sites.

The quality of the content from all the speakers on both Saturday & Sunday was fantastic and catered for all WordPress users from beginners to hardcore fanatics. It wasn't just all talk though, there were several 'tracks' and activities to choose from as well as some superb Q/A sessions and some 'Site Doctor' arenas.

If you wanted to go but couldn't, there is good news! A lot of the slides from the speakers presentations are now available online, and the whole weekend was captured on video by the lovely folks at Orange Coconut this footage will soon be available on wordpress.tv.

Overall Louis got a tremendous amount out of WordCampUK 2010. He met some great approachable people who we're sure we'll be working with in the future on upcoming Wordpress projects. WordPress has now evolved! If you think WordPress is just for blogs, think again! ID think you will be surprised which sites you visit everyday are actually running on WordPress!

Many thanks to all who helped organise WordCampUK 2010 it was a truly great weekend!

Always nice to hear about clients success!

Just had a nice sit down with a client who let us know they had reached their KPI for 'new business via their website for the year' within 3 months of it being live!

Really good to hear things like that, it confirms approach, reasoning, strategy and all those creative juices were all on-point.

In today's climate marketing spend has to be effective. Else it erodes the business and can quickly prove to be a burden rather than an investment. Talk to Interactive Dimension, the creative digital agency in Preston about your fears, aspirations, requirements around your website, intranet, branding, print or exhibition media. We're sure we can help. Today just proved it again!

Kenta is coming!

Digital agency Interactive Dimension in Preston are in the process of finishing an app which will allow Private, Public and 3rd sector organisations to benefit from being able to manage their intangible resources and increase efficiency in ways they never thought possible.

The app build is going well. It will be ready to beta very soon. ID are in the process of recruiting pilot clients at the moment and the demand is really pleasing to see.

It's is exactly what large organisations need to navigate the uncertain paths ahead and transform the way they do business.

We call it Kenta. And it's an exciting venture between Interactive Dimension and Bodyproject. Interactive Dimension bringing our extensive branding, web design and website development skills to the partnership and Body Project driving a consultancy methodology which is truly revolutionary.



Watch this space... oh, and do 'like' it if you like the sound of it. That way your organisation could benefit from it too as you'll be kept up to date by our Facebook page.




P.S. Thanks to you all Liking our Facebook page we now have the username URL of http://www.facebook.com/mykenta secured. Thanks!

Fresh Fish Sold Here Today!

One of the best lessons learned throughout 20 years in design, marketing and communications was taught to me, not exclusively of course, by a truly inspiring old-school agency guy named 'Granville Jagger'.

Now Granville wore a bow tie every single day, and was always on-point and up-to-date with the latest equipment, software and techniques. What was most remarkable about Granville was that he was past retirement age, yet had one of the sharpest minds I've ever had the pleasure to be associated and involved with.

Anyway... Granville dropped 'Fresh Fish Sold Here Today' on me while we were working on a new brochure for Bodycote, one of his clients, now our client since he stepped down and we secured them after pitching against a number of agencies.

The cover needed to express the service offering without clouding it in frills, bumf and unnecessary words that could have made the subject matter dull and overly technical.

Obviously this isn't a unique or exclusive approach, lots of people know the story and I'm sure lots of people apply it to their design/marketing/comms approach. There isn't a book in it.

I just wanted to share it, I use it every few days myself still to this day and it's probably one of the best techniques to boil things down to their essence. Something that is critical in everything we do day-in day-out to gain clarity in a message, focus to an advert and the most relevant these days is probably cutting the crap away when delivering messages online. It's a 'known' fact that people don't read every word of your content online, they scan for points of interest, nuggets of interest and then progress until they find what they want, or lose interest and go and try elsewhere.

I say 'known' because truthfully we don't know, we assume, guess, make it up and base it on previous experience most of the time. It would be great to test and try everything with every client to know the facts about their users, but most clients don't want to spend money on that.

You probably know the story but here goes anyway:

A guy, walking past a fish shop, saw a sign that reads,

“Fresh Fish Sold Here Today”

Guy: I see you have quite some fish there.
Merchant: Yes, they are fresh from the dock early this morning. Would you like to buy some?
Guy: No, thank you, I’m just walking by, but I have some advice on your sign.
Merchant: Please share. I’d love to make it better.
Guy: Well, you don’t need to say ‘sold’. You’re a shop right?
Merchant: You’re right. (Erases the word).
Guy: Actually, I didn’t think you were selling it tomorrow, so I’d erase ‘today’, too.
Merchant: That’s true. (Erases).
Guy: While you’re at it, I’d also erase ‘here’ since you’re not selling it over there, are you?
Merchant: Err… right. (Erases that too).
Guy: You surely wouldn’t sell non-fresh fish, either, so ‘fresh’ has to go, too.
Merchant: Ok. (Erases).
Guy: Well, frankly, anyone can see that you’re selling fish, or are they fruit?
Merchant: (Erases). But wait…

Basically what this is telling us is:

No element should be in your design or message without reasons for its existence.

Of course there are arguments to be had, for example you could have changes 'Fresh' to 'The Freshest' to differentiate yourself if you were on a street packed with fish shops.

And you may introduce a picture of a fish on your sign to attract shoppers on a busy shopping strip easily.

These are all factors around the environment in which you are trying to promote yourself.

But the essence of the lesson remains. Keep it simple and the message will work. They will understand.

The relationship grows!

Dead chuffed we're growing our scope of work with Preston Vision since they selected us for their website (ID have Vision). We're now working on advertising and exhibition materials for them.

As ever with ID it's about relationships which are mutually beneficial.

We want to win clients, not projects... and this once again proves our approach works.

One-page-site SEO success!

The one-page-site we did for Northern Stock Auditors (http://www.northernstockauditors.co.uk/) has only been live for a few weeks and already it tops Google.co.uk for their key phrase 'stock auditors preston'. No mad science or witchcraft, no PPC, just good content. Very happy.

See the results here - till they change of course ;-)
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=stock+auditors+preston