Our focus is to drive value and deliver real business benefit for all our clients through brilliantly effective and innovative digital, design an marketing solutions.
We work closely with our clients, following our own structured and proven process, to help develop effective digital strategies and then deliver them.
We want to help our clients make sure they are doing the right things, before helping them do things right.
Our core activity is the design and build of integrated e-commerce and content managed websites.
We specialise in B2B e-commerce and bespoke software development with a proven track record of delivery and of growing online sales exponentially.
We build on the world’s leading Open Source .Net CMS platform Umbraco and we’re Umbraco Gold Partners. We’re Open Source because believe the ‘tail shouldn’t wag the dog’ and that software should do what you want it to do which is why we specialise in bespoke software development.
We also design and deliver integrated brand strategies from concepts through to implementation across the whole brand experience.
We believe that usercentric design and creative thinking are the critical factors to make any design, be it for paper or screen, stand out from the crowd. Our approach is user led because users will ultimately determine the success or failure of any solution.
As a digital agency launched in 1998, we’re highly experienced with a strong track record of successful project delivery. We believe this experience adds real value, knowledge and insights.
We are very proud of the many commercially successful platforms we’ve developed, the innovative brand strategies we have created and the impactful marketing campaigns we have delivered which have helped our clients grow their businesses.
Our many client successes include:
Developing platforms to support a trade clothing distributor grow their online sales from zero to over £100M annually.
E-commerce solutions to grow online sales for a trade distributor to the building trade from £2.8M to over £40M a year, over 60% of their turnover.
A trade platform for a kitchen manufacturer which grew online sales from £139K to £1.9M a month in a year.
E-commerce platform for a trade distributor of clothing with sales increasing from £100K to £700K per month in less than 3 months, which now handles 90% of all sales.
We design and develop integrated e-commerce and complex content managed websites with a focus on B2B e-commerce and bespoke software development. We build on Umbraco, the world’s leading Open Source .Net CMS platform.
We work closely with our clients, following our own structured and proven process, to help develop effective digital strategies and then deliver them.
Our core activity is the design and build of integrated e-commerce and content managed website.
We specialise in B2B e-commerce and bespoke software development with a proven track record of delivery and of growing online sales exponentially.
We’re Open Source because believe the ‘tail shouldn’t wag the dog’ and that software should do what you want it to do and it’s why we chose Umbraco.
Umbraco is the world’s leading Open Source .Net CMS platform. It’s incredibly flexible bringing total freedom to manage your digital content your way and it’s renown for its intuitive editing experience.
We specialise in bespoke software development and Umbraco gives us complete freedom to build any bespoke features along with seamless integrations.
We’re Umbraco Gold Partners and have been implementing Umbraco sites since 2012.
Whilst most of our software development uses Umbraco at its core, with various levels of customisation, we also build from the ground up, using Microsoft technologies, where the need for a unique solution is identified, through the outcomes of our delivery process.
Case studies include the SILK system we developed for jewellers Boodles which provides a user-friendly interface into key functions within Sage X3, a complex ERP, for their sales team. SILK also provides EPOS and CRM functionality within a web-style UX.
Our in-house software development capability allows us to be more than just implementors. As well as designing and developing custom solutions for clients, we also create our own software such as a new plugin for Umbraco which provides a one-click SEO audit of any page within a site highlighting any missing meta data.
We want to help our clients make sure they are doing the right things, before helping them do those things right. We have a long and proven track record of highly successful project delivery demonstrating the benefits of our approach.
If we’ve learnt anything over the last 20 years of delivering thousands of software solutions of varying forms and scales, it’s that a robust, resilient and proven delivery process is absolutely critical to success.
We’ve been fortunate to work with some ‘best of breed’ partners in many of the projects we’ve worked on, from the UK’s largest Sage business partner Datel, to Hewlett Packard Enterprise one of the world’s largest software companies, specifically their DevOps teams.
Through working in these partnerships we’ve seen what best practice looks like and we’ve learnt from it. From Waterfall to Prince 2, and Agile to DevOps, we’ve incorporated the best of these methodologies into our own delivery process model.
The model is a proven and robust delivery process which places a heavy emphasis on a thorough planning and scoping exercise which we consider vital to a successful outcome. It is largely based on Agile techniques which allow us to be more responsive, provide greater visibility of the status of projects in progress and to deliver working solutions quickly.
Ideate
Workshops to discuss requirements in detail with the key stakeholders, and the bd2 team.
Design
Of the user experience and user interface presented in emulation tools to test.
Define
The architecture of the solution, Scenarios and User Stories of each function and feature with work broken into Sprint Plans.
Build
Development of the UI, CMS and core build including integrations.
Test
Concurrent testing during testing and endto- end testing of the entire solution. Launch, Support and Evolve From go-live onwards.
The process is cyclical because the launch of any website or digital products is just the start of it’s life.
It should evolve through a program of continuous development to meet changing business needs and take advantage of new technologies. As changes are made, the code should be refactored to ensure it is optimised and the CMS continuously upgraded.
Whilst our process is proven, we’re always looking to learn and improve our processes. We invest heavily in our team with continuing professional development and training to continuously improve.
We design and deliver integrated brand strategies from concept origination through to implementation.
We believe that thorough research, creative thinking and a user-centric approach are the critical factors that will make your brand stand out from the crowd. Aligned to original creative is the development of all the assets a brand needs to communicate with all its target audiences and stakeholders across all applicable touchpoints. Consistency is key to building successful brands so we manage to roll-out and define the outcomes and their use.
We always start with the ‘why’, because articulating a brand’s ‘why’ is a very impactful way to communicate a strong value proposition that will differentiate it from others. The ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘where’ are generally self-explanatory. The question of ‘how’ is more interesting, as it might include strengths or values that can differentiate an organisation from the opposition. But successfully articulating the ‘why’, in addition to ‘how’, is what distinguishes the really successful brands as they express why they do what they do, focussing on benefits and the value proposition.
We work closely with our clients to consider and define their brand’s why proposition before extending this message across straplines and elevator pitches with a specific tone of voice and a clear set of brand values defined.
We then consider how best to communicate these within an integrated visual identity. A process that involves extensive research into competitors, the target markets, positioning and creative preferences. Many ideas may be developed and tested amongst stakeholders and users to identify the creative direction before refining through rounds of reiteration.
Once the brand identity has been fully rationalised, including the logo, fonts, imagery and colourways, we then identify all the ‘touchpoints’ where the brand will be presented and experienced from digital to printed media, and from liveries to uniforms.
A program to design all the assets needed for each application is undertaken incorporating the assets and principles of the identity.
Consistent application is absolutely vital to build an effective, recognisable brand identity so we define the all the brand assets within a reference document for all internal and external audiences. This protects the investment by ensuring everyone knows how it should be presented.
“In everything the organisation does. owns and produces it should project a clear idea of what it is. This is achieved by consistency in purpose, performance and appearance.”
Wally Olins
We put users at the centre of thinking at all times to ensure intuitive, userfriendly and delightful experiences.
Our approach is userled because users will ultimately determine the success or failure of any solution.
Users must be at the centre of thinking throughout the entire delivery process. From scoping and design onto development and testing through to launch and reviews to gather user feedback, so that we can create an intuitive, friction-free, user-friendly and delightful experience.
Using technology has become an intrinsic part of our daily lives from IT systems at work using desktops or laptops, to surfing the internet and using social media or apps on our phones or tablets.
Our expectations, as users, has been pushed higher and higher by market-leaders who invest billions to continuously improve their products and set the bar.
Consequently, our patience as users has become less and less, meaning that if we’re faced with a poor, slow or frustrating user experience we simply click away.
Usability is essential and it starts with the user interface, which is a bit like a joke; if people don’t ‘get it’, it’s probably not very good.
We work very closely with all our clients to build effective partnerships which is reflected in the many long relationships we’ve developed, some spanning decades.
We genuinely have client relationships that extend for over 20 years.
We believe this demonstrates an ability to continuously deliver and we do this by listening and building deep knowledge of our client’s business and the markets they operate within. By building this in-depth knowledge, it enables us to add real value by being truly pro-active and make suggestions that make a difference.
We also believe that this demonstrates responsiveness, good communication, excellent customer service and generally being nice people to work with! We’re delighted that many of our clients have become friends.
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