Personal Injury Directory Website

You can tell by looking back over the portfolio how by the time this site was written, the business was getting busier. The occurrences of own sites is reducing - well this is one.

I actually took the laptop away with me on a short holiday and wrote this site whilst I was on the holiday. It wasn't bad, but as business got busier, I just never had the time to develop it the way I wanted to. I'd intended to research loads of personal injury lawyers around the country and list them. I'd hoped for tons of traffic and generating leads to sell onto the lawyers.

I got the site in, with a respectible directory and had many requests for others to be listed into it. But I just never seemed to get the time to fully work on it - there was always customer work to be done instead. So I decided to concentrate on the mortgages and cottages websites instead. This one lasted until the URL renewal, at which point it was still receiving requests for new listings, then I let it drop.

A good idea, but as with many of my own I just couldn't afford the time to market and maintain the site. Such are the woes of a successful business!

Holiday Rental Villa Website

This was (and still is) a nice site that I get on with the owners well, even though I've never met nor spoken directly to them! Only ever emailed these customers, as with a lot.

They approached me for a quote when they were preparing to leave this country and set up their new rental business in Spain. They liked the quote, but decided to hang on until they were up and running before getting the site live. But I suggested we start straight away so that the search engines had chance to find the site. By including fresh photographs of the villas being built, it was also a very good way of showing friends and family back home the latest progress.

Eventually the villas were ready and we went ahead and built a full site, which they still continue to update regularly. Of course, for the first part of the life of the site, displaying the progress of the build, I gave them that as a freebie. So they were really pleased.

Travel Agent Website

This website was one of three websites all first published in a matter of weeks of each other and all for travel agents. What's more, all used the same affiliate scheme to provide their online booking for their package holidays.

This customer is still with us and is talking about extending out by specialising in the cruise market - so hopefully a new site there in a month or two. This one was bright and colourful, yet clean and professional looking. It was also an early venture into content management systems - with the owner able to add new offers, which are summarised on every page and displayed in full on a special page. The newer sites have a far easier to use system!

Property Website

This one wasn't a long lived customer! Quite an involved site and for a very good price (for him). I have noticed during my years of web design that those customers that pay the least expect the most - this one held that true.

There were loads of contact forms (used as surveys) on the site, with different questions dropping in and out of the screen depending on previous answers. It was a nightmare to code and even worse to test. There was always a question appearing when it shouldn't do, or one not appearing when it should.

When it came to the renewal time a year later he told me my charges were far too high and wanted to host the site himself. But he never came back asking for the code to host the site - I expect he realised that my charges were actually cheaper than anything he could get himself.

At least the site was more work and experience and another for the portfolio when we were just startign up and a little bit quiet.

Travel Agent Website

This site arrived to us as a referal from an existing customer. A travel agent with an existing site and relationships with suppliers, he wanted a new site that better comibined his offerings and gave a newer, fresher feel than the free site he already had.

We combined some vila schemes along with a package holiday affiliate scheme to provide plenty of choice for his customers, giving loads of earning potential.

A few of his standard pictures decorated the site, along with some graceful graphics to produce site any travel agent would love. In fact, during the build process another travel agent saw the site, and signed up for one himself!