Upon setting up my business as a catering consultant, I was invited to join the Festival Chapter of the BNI (a business networking group). Initially I was quite sceptical as to if networking would work for my business, but soon discovered that networking is not only for promoting your business, but also an invaluable source of advice and services which can help any business grow. It was at the BNI where I was introduced to Clive Loseby, Managing Director of Access-by Design.

Due to the nature of my business it was apparent from the offset that the best medium of promoting my new venture was to develop a brand and design a website around the concept of the business.

It has to be said that there are cheaper websites out there but I am a great believer in “you get what you pay for” and this has certainly been the case with my website. I myself am a bit of a technophobe so needed guidance and a certain amount of patience from the design team but the whole process from start to finish has been an absolute pleasure. The first meeting was a fact finding mission where both Clive and Pollyana Popov (website designer) spent an entire morning with me to evaluate the needs, the design and feel of the site. They not only listened and understood what I wanted but suggested some innovative design features which have made my site come alive.

After this initial meeting I provided as much information as I could to assist with the content of the site and Luce Wright (copywriter) did an outstanding job making sense of the information I provided.

The next meeting was with Pollyanna once again to take the first look at the website that had been created. This was the first time I had seen the site and I was amazed with the overall professionalism, and more importantly how well Polly understood what I wanted from the site. This meeting was to assess the site and make any changes before signing off the design, this was an easy process as they had surpassed my expectations and there was very little to change.

The site went live very shortly after this meeting; Kate Heron (office manager) kept in touch ensuring I was happy and kindly assisted with setting up my new email accounts.

Clive then explained to me how the site works and how the optimisation works which basically puts your site on the front page of Google. We then had a training session to teach me how to keep my site fresh and optimised and the beauty of this is that it is not only user-friendly but allows you to edit your site as often as you see fit. By having the ability to edit add content yourself you actually have complete control instantly and moreover there are no additional costs involved.

Although I was initially worried about the process of having a website created, I can only reiterate that the team at Access- by Design made what I believed would be a real nightmare an absolute pleasure. They were on hand every step of the way providing an outstanding level of professionalism and service (nothing was too much trouble) and I would have no hesitation in recommending there services to not only colleagues, but friends and family in the future.