Testimonials
Testimonial 1 - Marimay German Shorthaired Pointers & Whippets
We had a website built by Everoak Web Design in November 2008. We are delighted with our site and with the attention to detail and effort of Everoak Web Design to create the site to our individual requirements. Updates and alterations are made extraordinarily quickly and we would recommend Everoak Web Design to anyone wanting an efficient and professional service.
Ian & Barbara Halbert
Testimonial 2 - Special Interest Holidays - Sqn Ldr Delahunt-Rimmer of Special Interest Holidays has very kindly written this account of our visit to create his company website.
Our company, Special Interest Holidays Amorgos, is walking based and located on a remote island in Greece. Our latest company web site had been running for two years. Although we were content with the appearance of the site and it’s use as a reference guide to clients, who knew of our company, it was not generating business from the Internet. Search engine results were low and often picked out irrelevant areas or old site addresses rather than our current home page. Our market has become much more competitive since our company inception eleven years ago and in this technological age our target segment are turning to the Internet to search for holidays to suit their needs.
We have always enlisted outside help for marketing and in the past have invested considerably in this area but not Internet based. We were looking for a company that had combined experience and skills in marketing and website design to achieve our goal. We were also aware of the weaknesses with some website design companies who may be able to construct an attractive looking and workable site but lack knowledge in the underlying programming skills to maximise a return on all aspects of this medium.
Working on recommendations we approached the company Everoak Web Design and asked them how they would approach our project. One of their programmers offered to visit us and make some suggestions as to the way forward and gain some first hand experience of our requirements in our specialist market. We were impressed by the personal approach and their willingness to visit a company in such a ‘far flung’ out-post. He felt that he would be in a better position to construct our required site having a better feel for the product and it’s location. This proved to be invaluable. In very little time a proposal and suggested template was submitted. We were very pleased with the proposed site, which was attractive, had a clean appearance and was easily navigable. Everoak Web Design and ourselves discussed the point that it could be beneficial to all stakeholders that the final construction of the site should be done in theatre. This was agreed without hesitation.
For four days we worked together and developed what we consider to be a fantastic final product. We had no idea what was going on behind the ‘screens’ during this time. It was all ‘Greek’ to us. We were however assured that this site was so technically advanced using some of the latest techniques in website design that it would be found by the search engines very early on. On a Google search for ‘walking in Greece’ there are over 7 million listings. For ‘special interest holidays’, worldwide, there are nearly 16 million listings. After three weeks of posting www.walkingingreece.com and www.walkingingreece.co.uk , both names being their suggestion, we were listed at number 11 in the former search and number 29 in the latter. It is too early to measure the return on bookings and subsequent profit against this investment but if a return does not materialise it will certainly not be a reflection on the extremely professional and effective approach of Everoak Web Design.
We recommend taking a ‘strategic’ approach to what could be the turning point in your business.
- Selectively research the market when looking for a website design company and listen to recommendations.
- Target a company who have experience in marketing.
- Return on investment has to be calculated and budgeted for accordingly.
- Assure stakeholders that you have chosen a company where the designers are primarily programmers.
- Try to encourage the designer to visit your company to get a feel for your product and, or, location.
- Effectively benefit from the synergy of working alongside the designer in the latter stages of the project.
- Generally take the professional advise during the development but try to amalgamate your own company ethos into the resultant product.
- You cannot expect to be No. 1 in the ratings in just one week, give it at least one month!
Postre. Point number eight was written ‘tongue in cheek’. On Yahoo there are over 60 million listings for ‘walking in Greece’.
After one month we were at No.1.
Paul Delahunt-Rimmer
MBA, MInstD, MCMI, AIIB, RAF (Ret’d).
Squadron Leader
Director
Special Interest Holidays
Amorgos
Greece