One of the first sites we worked on this year was our own (would have been rude not to, really). After Acrylic Creative and Advice IT merged we didn’t have a website for the newly created Acrylic Digital. This, as you can imagine, was a rather frustrating situation to be in (particularly for a digital marketing agency that specialise in website development!). So we created a completely new site for ourselves. The important thing to remember about website development is that you don’t have to do everything all at once. In fact, there’s a huge SEO benefit to regularly updating your site with new pages (as well as blog content), and making major updates to existing pages. All of our high-end SEO plans include regular updates, and we do recommend that clients build the main pages of a site at the outset (home, about, core services pages, contact, and any other cruicial elements), then slowly expand it. This is how we approached our own site, and new pages get added regularly. We’re also getting ready to give the core pages a bit of a refresh…

One of the largest websites we’ve worked on this year, Beeston Shenton are a long-standing client of Acrylic’s whose website has been in need of updating for a while. An extensive site with 70+ pages of content, they were looking for a fresh, modern site that simplified things considerably. Their top priorities were easy navigation, a clear brand message, and a more engaging new brand. Rather than overhaul their existing website we built them a new one from scratch. We’ve done extensive work on their rebrand, creating a new logo for them, bespoke icons to represent their services, and various other elements. The site has also been completely re-written and fully optimised for search. Work on the site isn’t yet complete, and like ours will be an ongoing project that we continue to add to on a regular basis.

The most complex and largest site we’ve worked on this year has been for one of our international clients. BluVida Precision Health and Wellness are a treatment centre with multiple locations all the way across the pond in the US. They came to Acrylic looking for Hazel‘s health and wellness expertise to write their new website, realised we had a lot more to offer, and decided to entrust us with all their marketing and development needs. We’ve loved working on this site, they offer a lot of very cutting edge, technology-driven treatments, and we’ve had a lot of fun representing all that tech and blending it with the wellness vibe. The site itself is huge, with multiple treatments and different locations to represent and optimise for.

Another website created for a local startup this year was Cheshire Bridal Boutique. As a new business they needed a very simple, clean site to work with initially, and we went through a couple of iterations before we found the perfect balance of modern, effectively optimised design, and the precise look and feel they wanted to achieve. Needless to say the finished site is one of the prettier ones we’ve worked on, with so many gorgeous dresses to show off.

A site we built a couple of years ago needed some additional development work this year as we added a membership area to house a new five-part video mini course we created to act as a lead magnet for the site. Lead magnets are hugely powerful, giving people an incentive to subscribe to your email list so that you can market to them directly through newsletters, special offers and more. The problem with simply popping a ‘signup to my email list’ box on your site is that there’s really nothing in it for people. Offer them something of high value, that showcases your skills, and gives them immediate, actionable advice and they’ll happily subscribe. More than that, with the right nurture sequence in place to deliver your lead magnet and follow up with new subsribers, you have a powerful inbound funnel to convert people into sales and clients. Video is the most powerful form of content in modern marketing (that goes for everything from SEO to social media and particularly lead magnets), however, your website needs to have special functionality to effectively house something like a course. It needs to be protected so that only those who have actually subscribed can view it. Ideally you also need a way of timing the release of the videos to people once they join, so you have the opinion of allowing them to watch the whole course on signup, or staggering the delivery of videos so they’re only accessible at certain points.

A brand new website build for a well-established business, Fresh Hair Salon needed an eye-catching site that showcased various aspects of their genius with features like before and after images, and original photography. We spent a day at the salon getting shots of the staff at work and the space, and created a gorgeous site for them.

A well-established construction company in Middlewich, Hough Construction had an existing website, however, they weren’t happy with how it was performing in terms of visiblity and SEO. The site itself was built several years ago, and rather than update an old site with numerous issues we built them a brand new, modern website that is fully optimised for search. With so many amazing projects they’ve worked on we quickly made the decision to avoid using anything but original photography on the site. Banners showcasing the various stunning buildings they’ve built and renovated are featured across the site, and we made portfolio feeds a central feature of most of the pages, with different categories for their various types of work. In addition to that, we had them round up the whole team for some group photography on-site at the office, and got some great shots of the team and their branded vans for use on the site. We also took individual photos of the management team to ensure the whole site had a completely consistent look and feel. The branding was kept very clean and simple, using the colours from their existing logo and ensuring plenty of white space and very easy navigation.

A chain of high-end eateries, Old Rope Walks needed our help with a site for their restaurant at Dovedale Towers in Liverpool this year. We kept the design and style consistent with the sites built for their other locations, and focused on photography that shows off the gorgeous venue.

This was another site that got a thorough facelift this year, with the development of a new logo as well as a completely new brand that highlights the ecofriendly benefits of electric chargepoints. We built several new pages for the site, including one dedicated to walking people through the installation process featuring a timelapse of one of their installs. We also integrated a lead magnet, in the form of a book, and inbound funnel into the site.

Newly opened in Northwich town centre, The Claim Point needed a simple, effective website to get started with.

Marketing Xylem’s upcoming events in 2020 meant developing a whole new portal for them to use so people could find information, register, and provide essential details concerning their hotel and flight needs. We did such a good job of the English version we were asked to do the same for the French arm of the business.