Bluetreeservices.co.uk designs, manufactures and sells a personal alarm and location system that provides a unique level of precision about the location of the user. It's a device a client wears combined with software that allows a manager to view the client's location on an on-screen map with an accuracy of within 4 metres.
What you see here is my second iteration and the third for the site. This is what it looked like in the previous iteration:
What's changed in the meantime is an improved look to the front page including JavaScript driven image crossfades, a new 'logo' for the company, a form for people who buy the product to complete in order to agree to the terms and conditions before product activation, and a whole lot more work on the text, on the flow from interest to purchase, and on special offers and product bundles. Oh, and we connected to a payment processor so we can take orders online.
Prior to all that, the client had originally developed a site using Microsoft Publisher which created a website written in VML which predates SVG. Both are vector graphics markup languages which haven't been approved as a standard although the latter is the most standard. Sadly even that's not been implemented in the latest Internet Explorer, so that's foiled that. The heavy dragging feeling .. it took five years for this latest version to come out .. is why IE is losing market share to Firefox, now at 12%.
I couldn't see the client's site properly using Firefox, and couldn't find it in search engines: even a search for Blue Tree Services didn't find the site, not even in the top 100 google.co.uk results. With a product launch coming up, something had to be done.
That was mid December. I proposed a fair amount of work but the client wanted a basic site to be completed by the end of January with the rest to follow. The deadline was the main thing, so the initial site looked a bit spartan but it was at least delivered on time.
I like the photographs because it turns out we really shouldn't be shy of using good stock photographs because it costs much much less than I thought.
And I think the menu's a little bit groovy too.
I also like the fact that I spent time understanding the product and writing clearly about it, getting it really straight. One of the things we sorted out during this process is some standard terminology, and we named the products too.
The site has taken about 91 hours to date (start of May 2007) requiring an investment of just over £4,000.
The initial site was completed in about six weeks, stage two took about another three months. The client said "Your sites are so good and clean, they make me smile when I go on them" and "brilliant, thanks".