Feelingpeaky

Ever noticed how nothing stays the same in business? What’s changed since you last looked at your brand?

- You’ve got bigger.  Or smaller
- You offer different products or services
- You’ve taken on new people – so the culture of the company has changed
- The competition is doing things different – and succeeding
- You want to attract new groups of customers
- The customers you have want different things

If you answered yes to any of the above, your brand has changed too.

How will a rebrand help?

- Clarify who you want to attract and what they want now
- Show what the competition is up to and where customers see you in comparison
- Take advantage of what’s different and special about you today
- Win new customers
- Keep the loyalty of the customers you have
- Inspire your people to work towards your business goals

Follow our story

Take us, for instance. 10 years ago, we were all about websites. Our customers wanted more so we moved into print. Then we started using a freelance copywriter. Now we do full rebranding projects. Over that time, we got busier. So we employed an account manager. And another designer. We moved into a new office. Back in 2001 we had 1½ people. Now we’re 7 full or part-timers and have numerous specialists who we call on when we need them. Have we rebranded ourselves? No. But we know we need to. And we are about to start.

Watch our rebranding project in action – we’ll update you through our newsletters and blog.

Have you got a branding story to share?

DIY copywriting; it seems like a good idea at the time. But many of our clients find themselves baffled by what to write. And when they do write it, they often find it doesn’t bring in the results they hoped for. A good copywriter will…..

1. Quickly get to grips with your brand, your brief and your organisation and write the words you want, while you get on with your day job.

2. Write words that tap into your customers’ needs and persuade them to buy your product or service.

3. Create a verbal identity that reflects your brand and brings consistency to your marketing material.

4. Work seamlessly with your design agency so that it all comes together without you spending time coordinating it.

5. Complete the work fast so that your project goes live when you want it to go live.

6. Contribute specialist knowledge about the best way to write for each medium, e.g. writing web copy so that it works for both readers and search engines.

7. Be scarily pedantic about making sure your copy is grammatically correct.

Want to find out more? Contact cathy@feelingpeaky.com

In today’s world, it is becoming apparent that ecommerce is simply more popular than traditional shopping for many products and services.  People around the world have fully adopted the notion of making purchases online, and most companies have learned that offering ecommerce is a great way to boost business.

IMRG / Capgemini, predict that the e-commerce market in the UK will grow by 110% over the next decade, reaching £123bn by 2020.

If you are looking to add online shopping to your website, we believe Magento ecommerce is by far the most comprehensive and successful platform available.  There’s an open source community edition that packs so much punch Rocky’s knees would tremble. Feelingpeaky love Magento ecommerce as it is so flexible and is something that can be truly tailored to meet all of your online business needs.

5 reasons why our Magento designers and Magento developers love it!

1. Because Magento is fully modular the layout, structure and content can be fully themed to meet your needs.

2. It accommodates a whole plethora of client needs out of the box and can be set up and adapted to meet your specific trading needs.

3. Wow – a massive community around the ecommerce platform that is supportive and growing – providing a large and diverse range of add on modules to extend the functionality even further.

4. The platform offers comprehensive features for marketing, analytics, SEO, and more. It offers you the ability to really make your site your own, adding a catalog of products, the ability to include multiple images for each product, and even the ability to provide your customers with mobile shopping options.

5. Did we mention that it has a community version – open source ie. Free for us (and therefore you) to use as we please, customise and develop. Therefore, all your budget goes into the design and development of your ecommerce site, without big chunks of money passing over to software vendors.

Finding a Magento designer

By working hand in hand with a talented Magento partner (that would be us – here at Feelingpeaky) who understands your company goals, you can get an affordable ecommerce website that really sets your company up for growth online.

A strong online presence and a great site developed with the Magento ecommerce platform can help your company move well beyond your normal group of customers and can bring you business from around the country or around the world.

Here is one we made earlier: http://store.thepowderpuffgirls.com

For Magento ecommerce design and development contact Feelingpeaky on
020 8997 4700 or email info@feelingpeaky.com with your brief.

Positive Communications commissioned Feelingpeaky to create the branding and websites for one of its clients, The British Orthodontic Society.  Two projects were assigned – the first was a site to launch the first National Orthodontic Week – NOW.  The brief was to develop a NOW logo and website for the campaign which would be as far away as possible from the ‘institutional’ image of the Society and project the benefits of orthodontic treatment for the public.

Visit: www.nowsmile.org

A second project commissioned by the BOS, this time to create a website for the Organisations’ hosting of the 2015 World Orthodontic Congress which is being held  in London.  The Olympics of the Orthodontic World is only held every five years and the website will act as the main focus for communications and bookings for the event, which attracts dental professionals from over 100 countries.

Visit: www.wfo2015london.org

The reception to both websites has been extremely positive – both from members of the Society and the public – and a large number of complimentary comments have been received about the eye-catching branding as well as the design, clarity and ease of navigation of the sites.

Now that both sites have gone live we will be working with Feelingpeaky to ensure that as both projects develop, the sites remain fresh, contemporary and worth revisiting.

- Tracy Posner, Managing Director, Positive Communications.

With Christmas 2009 nearly upon us we wanted to send Feelingpeaky clients and friends alike our festive wishes.

However with our designers busy on important client stuff, and the Feelingpeaky advent calendar rapidly counting down to the big day, we had to work fast to come up with an idea.

Luckily the secret footage we shot whilst helping out at Santa HQ last week was deemed to be fit for general circulation (just!) and so we thought we would send that to our friends for a bit of festive viewing.

Update: 12.01.10 – Video no longer available.

Hope you like it.

Love

The Feelingpeaky Team

Wishing you a profitable and successful 2009 from Feelingpeaky. A new year and a new beginning. We’ve been here nearly two years and finally took a breath taking time just before Christmas to give the place a lick of paint, add some of our artwork and make it home.

Goodbye office hello studio! … Your welcome to pop by at any time.

Gardenlicious provide contemporary, designer and carefully selected garden furniture to people who enjoy their gardens and outdoors areas and wish to have a more individual space to live and entertain.

Gardenlicious provide outdoor lifestyle living products to make that outdoor space perfect for you.

Gardenlicious will be launching online later this year. Visit the garden furniture site to signup and be invited to the pre launch.

www.gardenlicious.com

Update: 06/06/08 – This position is now filled. Many thanks for your interest.

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!

Jan Update: This position is now filled. Many thanks for your interest.

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/