Clear Magic Website
Clear Magic, a commercial and domestic window cleaning company in Milton Keynes, were in need of a new look and new website to help promote themselves and develop further into the commercial market.
After finding Amasci Creative Limited through a Google Search for Web Designers Milton Keynes, they contacted us to help them create a new website based on their new branding and company approach.
The website had to be impactful, modern, lively and shout commercial to help them gather further momentum within this market place. The branding that had been created was very strong and was an excellent foundation for us to build upon.
Web Design
Before we could work on the website design we reviewed the new branding, requirements of the site, functionality/features, approach and market position as well as looking at the existing imagery and artwork.
Initially we tried to utalise existing imagery but it was soon apparent that this would not suffice and so we offered the client our new photography service but in this instance the client arranged to create the photos themselves and supply these to us (they did a very good job too)!!!
Once we had discussed these with the client and agreed a brief/specification we took about designing the site. We took the branding an initially established a strong layout utilising the black, green and white from the company colours. We designed the homepage initially as this would layout slightly different from the remaining ‘internal’ pages as we included extra features such as a scrolling clients area and highlight for the payment options. Once the homepage was designed and agreed with the client we took this design and formed the basis for the internal layouts before moving onto create the CSS and HTML/PHP.
Features
The website has a few features that offers improved usability these include the quick enquiry form located on every page, the highlighting within the navigation to indicate the current page/section being viewed. The design also features an easy consistent navigational menu and layout of the content.
For visual enhancement we created a couple of animated elements, these include the banner where we have utilised jQuery to create a 4x4 image board which repeats over 4 slides totalling 16 images. These incrementally slide out to reveal a new image. This was a nice subtle approach to ensure it wasn’t too distracting and stop the user reading the content. The other feature is on the homepage and is the client scroller. Created in Flash it randomly displays a logo from a bank of logos before swiftly sliding in the next one, this repeats constantly, offering a quick visual promotion of clients to potential customers.
Payment Facility
As part of the new site we created a single payment page which offers information on all the payment methods and details. It also has an interactive PayPal facility allowing clients to easily pay balances or in advance. They can simply enter the amount they wish to pay and then they are taking directly to PayPal to process the payment, simply and very effective.
SEO Preservation
As the old site also had been online for quite a while it had gained some very good search engine ranking and exposure so we didn’t want to lose what was already established. To ensure of this we created a HTAccess file with 301 redirects on all the old URLS which had been running and pointed these to the new pages. This ensures that the approved practice of informing the search engines of relocated content was adhered too and therefore no lose of ranking would take place.
Client Response
The response from both the client and their clients has been exceptional and we are extremely pleased with the overall out come.
I contacted Amasci after carefully considering getting a professional website created. I’m glad I did! I found them to be very professional at what they do. I’m over the moon with my website. I feel I had an image in my head and it has been brought to life. My corporate branding is spot on. I’ve also had a few comments where by people think its the best website they’ve seen…you can’t wish for more than that!”
Steve Bird, Managing Director
You can view the website here at http://www.clearmagic.co.uk/