Feelingpeaky

We are recruiting for a key role of project manager at Feelingpeaky. Ideally with agency experience. Definitely with the ability to demonstrate the successful completion of complex web and print projects. Does this sound like you? Please read on…

Company background:

Feelingpeaky is an independent design & marketing agency. We are dedicated to helping clients develop their businesses and we achieve this by creating successful communication through intelligent design.

Feelingpeaky provides a single source of expertise for all your design and communication needs. In short we help support and drive your business strategy by providing services in the following areas: Corporate id and branding, online media, graphic design and print communications, internal communications, and marketing consultancy.

Overall purpose of role:

The Project Manager at Feelingpeaky is a hands-on role, responsible for managing the production of high quality, creative communications projects, within agreed project parameters, to their successful completion.

Critical to the success of this role is excellent team working and client care skills, organisational skills and the ability to use intuition in addition to a broad communications and technical understanding.

Main duties:

Lead and manage Feelingpeaky’s communications projects from creative concepts through to final implementation.

Project leadership:

• Produce written briefs for all communications projects undertaken
• Produce timing plans for all communications projects undertaken
• Produce internal costing and external quotes for all communications projects undertaken
• Liaise closely with the client, internal and external resources at all key project stages to ensure brief, timing plan and cost structure are adhered to
• Communicate with clients, suppliers and internal audiences in an engaging and clear way, ensuring relationships are consolidated and further developed
• Source additional resources/suppliers where required
• Take responsibility for the billing and internal administration for allocated projects/clients
• Hosting and domain name management: set up and manage hosting accounts on behalf of clients. Register new domains, domain name renewals and email management
• Take part in internal project reviews and help to ensure lessons learned are captured and actioned

Basic Requirements:

• Passionate about design and technology
• Excellent organisational and time management skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills including the ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of client audiences
• Precise and high attention to detail
• Self-starter with the ability to work without supervision
• Motivated and keen to learn
• The ability to converse knowledgably within the landscape of web design, e-commerce, accessibility and usability, SEO/e-marketing, design and branding
• Strong key board skills - fully conversant with standard Microsoft packages – including Outlook, Word, and Excel
• Knowledge of HTML and Dreamweaver a bonus but not essential

Package:

• Salary £25,000 - £35,000 depending on skills and experience
• 24 days holiday per annum + bank holidays

Contact:

Please send us your CV and covering letter to recruitment@feelingpeaky.com.

NO AGENCIES PLEASE!

This month saw the launch of Moditlo Eco Lodge, a breathtaking five- star luxurious investment opportunity situated in the heart of the acclaimed Kruger National Park region, South Africa.

The project involved web design, flash animation, development of templates, implementation of comprehensive content management system and a fully bespoke back-end system to manage sales agents and their customer orders of all the various properties that are available. This is probably one of the most stunning South African property invesments available currently. We are proud to have been part of such a prestigious project.

Visit the Official Moditlo Eco Lodge website at http://www.mel.co.za

Our advice is sound, our clients unique - Fortune Law, London commercial / corporate lawyers this week relaunched their web site. Designed and produced by Feelingpeaky this site looks to highlight and focus on their unique clients and the personal service provided.

Fortune Law wanted a site truly reflective of their business - a dynamic commercial and corporate practice. We think their great - mind you they are also Feelingpeaky’s company solicitors. Fortune Law has been supporting Feelingpeaky for many years now with our general commercial needs. We wish them the very best with this new online presence and thank them for their business.

For commercial lawyers in London visit: www.fortunelaw.com

Looking forward to 2008? Fancy a change and a new challenge? We are looking to recruit an accomplished PHP developer. If you are interested in joining a dynamic and growing design and marketing agency please check you meet the following requirements and send in your CV, detailing example sites and your involvement in each project.

NO AGENCIES!

Essential Skills:

• 4/5 years PHP/MySQL experience covering diverse projects including CMS sites, e-commerce sites and bespoke development solutions & solid understanding of OOPHP
• XHTML
• CSS (styling AND layout and have knowledge of cross browser tricks)
• Accessibility
• Excellent standard of written English and spelling
• DOM compliant JavaScript

Bonus Skills:

• SEO knowledge
• Knowledge of Linux hosting - Plesk
• XML
• Perl
• Understand Macs and PCs

You’ll be able to develop and implement complex, bespoke e-commerce solutions, and have experience of using a number of online payment providers. You’ll be aware of the issues that maximise the performance of an e-commerce store.

You’ll have implemented a number of different content management systems and be in the position to recommend the ideal solution depending on our client’s requirements.

You’ll be experienced at producing tableless layouts from PSDs or PDFs using XHTML and CSS. You will be fully aware of all the technical challenges involved in producing accessible websites and are able to code to AAA standard.

You’ll need to be able to code complex graphical designs to a pixel-perfect standard and be aware of all the standard css tricks (css rollovers and dropdowns, sliding doors etc).

Although design skills are not required you will need to demonstrate attention to detail when coding sites and know your way around Photoshop.

You’ll be able to manage your time and work well with a team of people dedicated to helping make the web work for our clients.

Finally, you’ll have experience of cross-browser and cross platform testing.

Salary negotiable dependent on experience - please provide details on salary expectations.

IMPORTANT: Please send CV’s with at least 5 URLs pointing out exactly what you did on each. Please don’t apply if you can’t demonstrate the necessary skills. Please send to info@feelingpeaky.com.

NO AGENCIES!

The key difference between web and print design is that web design is dynamic - it will be presented differently on different screens, operating systems and browsers. With regard to this medium there are also many other specific areas that need checking. Here at Feelingpeaky we look to spend time ensuring that we make our web sites look great who ever might be viewing them. To this end we have prepared a check list for our team to use which I thought I would share here. Whilst not completely original I hope you’ll find it a useful resource:

Website Testing Check List

The following is a quality checklist for elements to test on a brochure web site.
Code:

• Title tags - spelling, appropriate and sensible, SEO friendly?
• Other Meta data required? Or blank? Appropriate and sensible, SEO friendly?
• Image Alt Tags - correct spelling on Alt tag? Is there any missing Alt Tags?
• Review code of the page to check nothing obviously strange
• All styles, JavaScript in linked in files and not inline.

Layout and Content:

• Layout issues? - Does the completed page match the design layout? Have there been any problems in translation to coded page?
• Non CSS/Text version - check through for spelling mistakes
• Copy and headers? General typos? Proof read the site
• Navigation - functioning as required
• All links go to their appropriate pages/files
• Email links - check code correct mailto:
• Image quality - any pixelation - over optimisation on size? Etc.
• Special Characters - check that special characters have been coded correctly including inverted commas, apostrophes, Currency symbols and copyright symbols etc.
• Missing content?

Specific functionalities:

• Forms - are they working? Ensure you get a response from the intended recipient, test form controls - required fields etc.
• Search facility
• Check printed pages
• Etc.

Cross Platform checks specifically for impact on layout and styling:

• Run checks across IE7, 6, 5, FF, Opera and Safari
• Run checks across PC and Mac

Validation:

• Validate HTML
• Validate CSS
• Is the site Accessible? Check text version
• Colour blind tests

Flexibility:

• Check works in different window sizes
• Check it works with varying text sizes

Does it still work if?

• You switch off JavaScript
• You switch off plug-ins
• You switch off images

Download speed:

• File size including images, linked in files
• Check on dial up
• Is at least some useful content appearing whilst rest of page loads

Resources:

W3C Validator: http://validator.w3.org/
W3C CSS Validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator.html#validate-by-uri
Link Checking: http://valet.webthing.com/link/
Link Checking: http://validator.w3.org/checklink
Web content accessibility guidelines: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/
Web page Speed Analysis: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
Browser Stats: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
Colour blind checks: http://www.vischeck.com/

This month our managing director, Chris Peak was asked to give a presentation to The Athena Network on how to improve the effectiveness of your online marketing. The presentation was well received especially after a fantastic introduction and recommendation by a client of ours - London life coach, Carole Ann Rice… Since we built her site back in the summer she has seen a massive uplift in interest and sales gaining clients from around the World.

However, the reason we titled this ‘traditional marketing works wanders…’ was the fact that The Athena Network reminded us again of how one of the oldest forms of marketing - networking - can work so well. Vibrant and fast-growing, Athena is the UK’s premier business networking organisation for women and is establishing a significant international presence. Meetings are run extremely professionally and to a tight schedule. Since Chris was presenting at the meeting he was allowed special dispensation to join them. During the meeting everyone had the opportunity to present a “minute to win it/ elevator pitch”. Chris mentioned that an ideal referral for Feelingpeaky would be other marketing agencies without the in-house competence to carry out web design or development projects. A husband of one of the ladies present turned out to be the managing director of just such an agency. One week later we are already in the process of designing and building two web sites for a casino client of his. We spend a lot of our time focusing our energies online, but sometimes it’s a simple bit of networking that makes all the difference.

Special thanks to Liz, the owner of Babye - who specialises in contemporary maternity wear amongst other things for that wonderful introduction.

Novelties Galore specialise in Party Supplies, in fact wholesale party supplies to be more precise. They supply novelties and other party accessories to businesses and individuals looking to have a great party.

Feelingpeaky created this e-commerce site for Novelties Galore a couple of years ago and since then the client’s business has gone from strength to strength. Whilst the site would have worked fine as it was I think the key reason why business has grown is the client’s commitment to improvements and marketing over the long term. That’s why we are talking Christmas Crackers in August!

But it’s hot outside…

I know it’s summer and feels way too early to be thinking about Christmas however, Novelties Galore is one of the largest distributors of Christmas crackers in the country and therefore we need to plan ahead to make the most of the season when it arrives. There are a number of keys to good search engine listings - the primary one being good content. With this in mind we prepared some interesting facts about Christmas crackers, some fun Christmas cracker jokes, and introduction to how to make your own Christmas crackers. The next step will be to starting building quality links into this page with the final aim to get it to page 1 in Google by the autumn.  We are already there for our primary keyword phrase of ‘wholesale chistmas crackers‘ but we feel there could be a big boost in sales by improving listings on the more generic term ‘Christmas Crackers‘.

I’ll look to report back on year on year performance later in the year.

CREW are committed to bringing you the very best in Educational Drama. Promising consistent quality, excitement and learning in over 15 school workshops. CREW inject drama, humour, and life into all areas of the Primary National Curriculum. With workshops covering Victorians, Romans, Healthy living and many more.

Over the past year we have had the pleasure of working with the CREW team on many occasions starting off with the redesign of their logo through to the website, and many printed materials. However, our last project proved just how serious they are about school workshops. They could have potentially presented the workshop notes in a Word document but they wanted something dynamic, colourful and memorable.

Feelingpeaky devised a workshop folder, booklet and child take-home worksheets. The job included all the illustration work - following on from the themes developed previously. The workshop itself was a huge success. CREW are looking forward to taking this format onwards in the new term.

As of the 30th of April 2007 Feelingpeaky Ltd will be residing in their lovely new offices. Please make a note of our new contact details below.

If anyone fancies popping in to brief us on an exciting new project (or just to say hello!) there is a lovely cake shop on the high street that is worth a visit en-route.

Hope to see you soon,
The Feelingpeaky Team.

This is something Feelingpeaky has addressed in our new web site (see the feelingpeaky Contact page) and already actioned in our email footers. However, I notice many websites, clients, prospects and suppliers are still to action.

Basically from 1st January 2007, Companies in the UK were required to add specific regulatory information on to their web sites and email footers.  The basic requirements to be added are as follows:

 - Company registration number
 - Place of registration
 - Registered office address
 - If your business has a VAT number - state this as well

 

We’ve added ours simply as:

Feelingpeaky Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales.

Registered Company Number: 5579994.

Registered Address: 106 The Avenue, Pinner, Middlesex, HA5 5BJ.

VAT Registration Number: 832 873608

More information found here - The Register

 

Stationary

By the way this legal requirement was also previously the case for “Business Letters” … Have you checked your stationary recently? Firstly is it meeting your legal requirements? But also just as important is it representing you and your business in the best possible light?

Feelingpeaky are happy to help whether its for company stationary or web site maintenance. Contact us for more information and a quote.