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One of our clients, Steve Wade: a director of the engineering company Auto-Lift UK Ltd in Bradford had a kidney transplant from his brother back in October 2000.

As a way of “giving something back� Steve is planning to raise funds for the UK charity Kidney Research UK by undertaking the gruelling 26 mile inline skating marathon at Hillingdon Cycle Circuit in London on the 31st August 2008.

We think Steve’s efforts are tremendous and his cause is a worthy one, so we’d love it if readers of our blog could help Steve raise cash for this worthwhile charity which does a lot to raise awareness of and develop treatments for kidney related conditions for people of all ages.

You can sponsor Steve directly online through his Just Giving page at www.justgiving.com/stevewade

You can find more about Kidney Research UK on their website at: www.nkrf.org.uk

If you’re a client or associate of ours and are planning a fundraising event for charity or some other worthwhile cause, please tell us about it and we’ll give you some exposure here on our blog.

Don’t forget to visit Steve’s sponsorship page with your credit card at the ready.

The time draws near for our office move into purpose built offices at the Ponderosa Business Park in nearby Heckmondwike.

The move date has been set for the 18th April 2008 i.e. later this month.

Everything’s now in place, telephone numbers and broadband (allegedly), stationery: all set to print and of course the address, which if you want to make a note of, is:

Unit 6F
Ponderosa Business Park
Smithies Lane
Heckmondwike
West Yorkshire, UK, WF16 0PR

We’ll be formally writing out to all our clients, suppliers and associates regarding this move, but we thought we’ve give our blog readers the head’s up first.

Exciting stuff!

Preparation and time invested in formulating your ideas into a formal website development brief or plan will save you time and money in the long run.

Many companies, both large and small, approach us to design and develop their new company website. However it’s clear from the outset after talking to many of these companies, that little or no preparation has been undertaken before they pick up the phone to an agency such as us.

This is a real shame for everyone concerned, let me explain why.

The development of website for any organisation is generally a significant investment of time and money. Depending upon the objectives of the website required, its performance can significantly influence the financial performance of a business or at the very least can effect the ‘perception’ of a business to its customers and prospects online.

So, realising how important a website can be a company, we find it very surprising how little time and effort some businesses put into the planning of their website before they approach an agency to develop it for them. After all, you wouldn’t spend a large amount of money in purchasing some new production machinery/vehicles/IT equipment etc without first sitting down and planning what and why you want it for and how much money you can allocate to it, would you? (We hope you wouldn’t anyway).

To do otherwise could result in wasted money and time for your organisation.

It’s the same for a website and can be summarised in the motto “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail� which has been proven to ring true many a time where little preparation has been made into an important and complex project.

Ultimately the lack of planning results in a project that takes longer than anticipated and costs more than initially budgeted for.

Write a Brief for your Website Project

So before any company picks up the phone to an agency to discuss the development of their new website, it makes sense to do some homework first and prepare a Website Development Briefing document which contains their thoughts and requirements for their new website.

The article posted on this website, offers some useful guidance.

Furthermore, the writing of a comprehensive website development briefing document will enable the agencies that are approached for costing purposes; to work on a ‘level playing field’ and in effect, offer a quotation that can be accurately compared to one from another agency by the client on a ‘like for like’ basis (lots of buzzwords in that sentence huh?).

Different agencies may approach the same project in different ways, but at least a briefing document offers all the agencies the same information which then in turn allows you to make a more informed choice on which agency to choose for the development of your new site.

You can download an example Website Design and Development Brief (PDF format) which you may find helpful when writing you own company’s website development briefing document, by following this link. (Opens in a new browser window).

The company is fictitious, but is based upon a real project example for a real company.

We hope you find it useful.

Be Aware of Google Adwords Phishing Emails

We and some of our clients have started to receive a lot of phishing emails that claim to be from Google Adwords.

These emails generally have the sender as “Google AdWords-noreply� and the subject header of “Please re-activate your account� or similar.

When the email is opened it looks like a genuine email that claims to be from the people at Google Adwords. The email then encourages you to click through to what looks like a genuine log-in web page for a Google Adwords account and then ‘reactivate your account’ or ‘change your credit card details’ by first logining in with your Adwords Username and Password.

The web page you click through to is very well produced and could easily fool all but the very wary as it looks exactly like the genuine Google Adwords login-page. But it isn’t (take a close look at the web address).

These emails and the resulting login pages are not from Google, but are illegal phishing emails designed to collect account Usernames and Passwords from unwary Google Adwords customers.

Once the Username and Passwords have been gathered, the User’s real Adwords account is accessed and credit card information is stolen by the people sending the phishing emails out.

If you receive such an email, delete it immediately.

If you feel you’ve been fooled into giving your Username and Password (it’s an easy trap to fall into) – then immediately go to your Google Adwords account and change your password.

Be vigilant.

The Hub and Spoke Business Model

Keyclicks is a UK based creative design agency that works on a ‘hub and spoke’ business model. Such working arrangements are sometimes called ‘creative hubs’, ‘creative networks’, ‘creative clusters’ or perhaps ‘creative collaborations’.

The Idea

The idea behind our business model is simple.

The central ‘hub’ is made up of a small team of employed business professionals which includes, project managers and administrators whilst the creative design and development aspect of our business (the ‘spokes’) is delivered through independent and talented creative professionals who are experts in their own disciplines of design, web development, marketing or video production.

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