Clear Creative are an experienced web design company in Manchester, producing high end Ecommerce platforms, whether that is a backend database system or great graphical front end. From our base in Bury, Manchester we have been designing and creating websites for clients throughout the United Kingdom. As most clients know it isn’t just a case of building a website and loading in a MySQL database onto a server, a website has to be thought about. At Clear Creative we will list your businesses online objectives and deploy clever online marketing techniques via viral advertising, email campaigns, social media marketing, search engine optimization, pay per click advertising and even offline marketing in support of your website such as brochures, advertising campaigns, exhibition stand designs and builds and direct mail.

As you can see there is a lot more to the marketing mix to drive traffic to your website. At Clear Creative we deploy analytics and lead forensic software to measure the effectiveness of your marketing to see which is the best way to target your customers.

The Pedigree of a Manchester Web Design Company

Clear Creative were selected by BT as one of the first web design companies in Manchester to use their fibre broadband technology (the superhighway) because of our involvement with digital technologies. Clear Creative are proud to be at the cutting edge of technology and our professional web design, brand design and online marketing solutions really make our clients stand out. One look at our portfolio will show you how we combine creativity with experience and deliver the marketing objectives our clients need.

Manchester is a real hot bed for businesses

Manchester is a hot bed for corporate businesses due to its geographic location. Media organizations such as the BBC think so. In fact they have moved almost lock, stock and barrel up to Media City in Salford Quays. Manchester is a thriving creative city at the cutting edge of digital industries and we at Clear Creative, as a full service graphic design company are proud to play our part!

Why choose Clear Creative?

We are a leading web development, design and marketing company in the UK with clients around the world. Our number one goal is to provide each and every client with a high level of customer service and attention regardless of the project size, budget or requirements. If you are looking for more than “just a website” then you have come to the right place – we don’t just do websites but a whole suite of other marketing solutions, from branding, exhibition, print and direct mail.

Why use a design agency like Clear Creative?

Well, we are knowledgeable and have over 25 years of experince in both online and offline. Our mantra is to simplify marketing by breaking it down into basics. By doing this we give your business focus. This allows you to concentrate on your business while we promote it!

If you are a company based in or around Manchester then why not give us a call on 0161 762 3456 and see how we can elevate your company profile and boost your business by effective marketing?

Last night I went to my local restaurant and asked the chef to serve me all the dishes on his menu. I decided I liked one of his dishes and went home informing I would call him later to discuss which if any I would want to pay for. I also visited two other restaurants and sampled all their menu dishes telling them I would call back if I liked any and if I was prepared to pay for them.

All the dishes I tasted were delicious. Then I thought I could make a couple of those dishes myself.

I rang all three restaurant owners a couple of weeks later to tell them that I was going to cook the dishes I liked best myself. I also asked them to tell me their secret ingredients and that I may consider paying for those recipes once I had cooked the dishes.

All three restaurant owners hung up on me.

The above story sounds very familiar to many design agencies who get the request to pitch for potential business. It is a legacy left over when large advertising agencies pitched for large accounts, unfortunately this has filtered down to small accounts and is now the seen as the ‘way to do it’ by ill informed clients.

“Pitch work” invariably leads to frustration for you and encourages a sub standard work from the designers pitching.

Why?

A good design is an informed design. This only comes through research and collaboration with the client — the client knows their market best. A visually pleasing ‘best guess’ created up front as part of a sales tactic is never a good design. Anything created without being informed is at best a pretty picture.

Unlike advertising agencies, we are not in the business of selling. We love our work and we love showing off the diversity of work we’ve done  see our portfolio but that’s because every project is crafted with thought and research, and with respect for our clients. We put all our resources into every client that engages us because we don’t need to save our best ideas to sell ourselves to potential new clients.

We aren’t unusual in our position on declining to partake in speculative or free pitch work. Here are some links to just a few respected industry colleagues who feel the same way, and why:

• “Doing Work on Spec” by Andy Budd (Clearleft)
• “Don’t Design on Spec” by Jeffery Zeldman (Happy Cog)
• “Why Speculative Design Is Wrong” by Paul Boag (Headscape)

We’d be delighted to show you how our best projects got off the ground, and how we could do the same for you. This however comes at the cost of all our experience, talent, infrastructure and service.

So if you want us to ‘free’ pitch our creative, ideas and technical know how for your business we will decline.

There is after all no such thing as a free meal!

Microsoft has been keen to kill off the old version of their browser and persuade users to move to IE8 or 9. IE6 (Internet Explorer 6) usage has now officially dropped below 1%. The good news for developers and web designers like ourselves at Clear Creative is that we can concentrate on designing content rich websites in the knowledge that IE6 is in its final death throes!

In the past we have to accommodate our client wishes to make their websites IE6 compatible although we don’t officially support IE6. From a design and development perspective it is like taking 3 steps forward and 20 steps back – a bit like using Betamax video cassettes to hold HD video.

IE6 doesn’t render or support modern XHTML technologies such as Jquery scripts. Simple graphics like rounded corners are not supported, of course you can employ default CSS to get round this but shouldn’t we look forward instead of backwards.

IE6 is a web browser that has had its 11^th birthday – and last one by all accounts from Microsoft.

It is a myth that every trick you deploy into an SEO strategy will rank your website high in search engine listings. In most cases SEO can be detrimental to a website design and sometimes you have a choice between a good-looking website that nobody can find (see Flash websites) or an ugly website that drives tons of traffic.

We have often seen template designed websites ranking high in search engine listings, even when they still contain place holder text such as ‘lorem ipsum’ because the website designers haven’t got round to writing the website copy!

As incredible as it seems there are some websites that look downright awful when it comes to design. However, some of these sites rank on page 1 of Google.

The point is that an ugly website may well rank high in search engine listings but does it engage the site visitor? Does the site visitor want to revisit the website? Does the site visitor understand the website?

There are so many disciplines and strategies involved in website design, search engine optimisation and social media marketing it is bit like baking a pie. If you add much salt in it can taste bad. The same applies to the online marketing mix – if you add too many keywords you can turn the site visitor off.

At Clear Creative we assess who the website audience is, what the target audience are likely to want and how we keep them engaged.

Our mantra is to captivate both the site visitor and the search engines with the right balance of great creative and relative keyword density.

So next time you a fantastically designed website ranking high then let us know as they are as rare as hens teeth!

The writing was on the wall when Apple said it wasn’t going to support Flash on the iphone or ipad. It is a real shame this has happened from a creative perspective as Flash gives you real control over font and image interaction. It also has that wow factor that other sites just don’t have these days.

We built our first website using Macromedia Flash in 2002 and thought it was great. Unfortunately Flash sites are not great for SEO, even XHTML websites with Flash header images are a stumbling block.

It looks like Adobe are going to concentrate on the mobile market, and let us be honest that is where we all starting to communicate now.

When we saw the news on the BBC website today it wasn’t a surprise, just a shame that it hasn’t been developed to another level for optimization.

R.I.P Flash!

Most copywriters would love to submit quick and easy content to a web page with fingers crossed that Google and other search engines index it. If only this was the case. Our philosophy is to engage the online audience with enticing visuals, social media gossip and buzz words that Google likes.

Another trap that content copywriters often fall into is writing quantity and not quality. Keywords repeated as many times as possible is just a turn off. The problem is this that quantity is not engaging whilst quality is. To emphasise this point imagine that you are writing your CV and you keep repeating your qualifications through out your document as opposed to delivering the information concisely and to the point. It is no secret that Google recognises keyword density abuse and will demote your website.

Thankfully we have managed to engage readers on our website with great graphics and a showcase of some fantastic design work (we like blowing our own trumpet!) so we don’t have to just rely solely on keywords!

So if we get frustrated we let our imagery tell the story. It really is a wonderful way to get out the frustration of keyword copywriting out of the way.

If you have any view points on keyword copywriting or your frustrations writing web savvy content then drop us a line.

(SEO) search engine optimisation is recognised as the best source of lead generation for both B2C and B2B marketeers, in fact it beats both (PPC) pay per click and (SMM) social media marketing as top dog at lead generation according to a recent survey of online marketeers. Despite this, most of those surveyed say they plan to increase their social media marketing budgets in 2012, ahead of their SEO and PPC strategies.

These figures were compiled by Web marketing 123, a US-based online marketing agency. The company surveyed more than 500 US marketeers in August and September 2011 and about two-thirds of all respondents identified themselves as B2B marketeers.

Whether B2B or B2C, both groups of online marketeers agree that SEO has the greatest impact on lead generation. 57 percent of B2B marketers credit SEO as their primary source of generating leads, while 41 percent of B2C marketers said the same thing.

Great photography will enrich a website, brochure, advertisement, point of sale or brand. Photography and design go hand in hand and it has always been our philosophy that a great photographic image will enhance the design of any layout, whether it is a website, brochure or advertisment.

A great image simply captivates your audience even if sometimes it is not relevant to your message!

“A picture tells a thousand words”.

Not everyone can see the true value of a great photograph and what it can do for design, unless of course they can compare it against poor photography. The skill involved in getting great photography is derived through a combination of art direction, lighting, camera lense selection and subject.

However it doesn’t stop there. How the image is retouched in Adobe Photoshop, cropped and colour-balanced can make a significant difference to the end result.

These results are only achieved through experience, something we have in abundance at Clear Creative.

As a design consultancy it is our job to create imagery and set a tone for a design piece. The sad truth is that some clients really do not understand that great photography will make all the difference. For our clients that have seen the light – thanks for listening and looking good!

Just a very short post about the sad passing of Steve Jobs – the Apple computers co-founder. Steve passed away after a long illness. Clear Creative, our peers and most creative industries would ‘NOT’ be where we are today without the technology and vision of Steve Jobs. His vision brought us technology that a few hundred years ago would have had you burned as a witch! His vision gave us creative tools that have revolutionised the way we work and create our lives.

I personally have used Apple kit since the beginning at BDH Advertising Agency in Manchester, UK – where one Senior Art Director looked at the first Mac we got in the studio, sniffed and said about the kit “It will never catch on – it is just a fad”. (Yes right, I thought!)

I couldn’t put on the post what I thought about this Senior Art Director – who I bet today is using some form of Apple Kit!

Thanks Steve (you genius) for giving us brilliant kit and a brand vision that means so much to us!