Articles about what we do, where we eat and what our industry is doing.
Finsbury Foods Group website
We have been working with Rare Breed to develop new website for Finsbury Foods Group.
The creation of the new corporate website was a key project for the AIM listed business in order to provide financial reports and group activity across its many brands.
Led by creative from Rare Breed, we developed a custom WordPress theme that would allow the business to support its marketing activity and deliver its financial reports to shareholders and provide key business news and careers opportunities.
This responsive website was developed to provide easy management of pages and content using a series of predefined template layout modules that can be inserted into a page. These drag and drop modules can be easily managed by administrators when creating pages or posts, minimising the need for custom development.
The result is a site that upholds the brand guidelines and keeps content in structure through a responsive page layout.
We integrated the financial reports supplied by Investis, using feeds to display share price and regulatory news. These are displayed throughout the site and provide real time news and reports as it happens.
The annual reports are updated annually and have a different style applied to them to reflect the published report and its content. The current design presents key report information using animation of figures and facts and allows users to jump to the published PDF reports.
Careers and vacancies are an important aspect of the business and these are managed as a feed from a third party service, Recruiter Box, that was sourced as an ideal online service to manage the HR needs of the business online.
The website is updated regularly and continuous develop of the site allows the business to target audiences such as graduates for their new Graduate Programme.
By the Scruff supports Rare Breed as their digital partner and we work closely with their design team to help them produce effective online solutions.
Adventures with online shopping – Part 1/504 – Chance encounterWe got chatting and soon got onto what we were both doing for work and it turned out he had been working in the railroad industry and I was running a digital design company. “Interesting” he said, “I might have some work for you with the other businesses I run”, and so I kissed goodbye to the old Dell I had bought up to the skip and we exchanged details and picked up the conversation a few days later.
It turned out that as well as his main work he was also running an online shop selling workwear clothing called Largam Works and he needed some help with the shop. He was an official reseller for Carhartt workwear, Filson and Red Wing boots. All of which I liked the look of. They were really good quality brands and I think that helps. You have to believe in a product in order to honestly sell it and these were all brands i knew reasonably well. I owned a pair of Red Wing boots and had worn Carhartt in the past. Filson was more of a premium American brand that I was wasn’t familiar with but having seen the clothes I was really happy with the quality and range they had. At the very least i might be able to get a cheap jacket for my troubles.
He wanted to know if i knew anything about online retail and if i would be interested in having a look at his website to see if I could help out with some changes he needed as he wasn’t happy with the company he had been using and wanted our opinion on the setup and how to take things forward. He didn’t know anything really about websites or marketing but he did have good connections and an entrepreneurial spirit that I could connect with.
This struck me as a good opportunity and so I took him up on his offer and started investigating the business and how it worked.
My background has always been in supplying material for marketing teams that either worked for an online store or for owners of such businesses, so I was in a good position to at least asses what they had been doing to date and see if there was anything we could do to support the business and do it better. By the Scruff has designed websites for online shops in the past and we are also very knowledgeable about email marketing and advertising. At our heart we are creative digital designers, so our job is to promote a business or a brand, using familiar techniques that essentially get people to buy a product. This could be a really good fit for us.
Magnus was concerned that the fee he was being charged for ongoing management and hosting was not getting him the returns he wanted and that he was a better way to work. The company he was using was going through a difficult patch and changes in staff meant that the level of service he was getting was below the standard he expected. I agreed to investigate the business and see what the setup was before we go any further.
The first steps
So the process began. We were keen to get some new business, especially through a past connection that had been ignited through a chance meet at the skip. Referrals are always the best way to get work I have found and this way we have already got a level of trust that takes time to establish. Even though the local skip was not a place that i was expecting to have this meeting, it did work all the same. Maybe I should think about more visits to the skip and leave a load of business cards scattered around place. Its a bit like some networking events I’ve been to in the past where you have to sift through the crap to get to the people who you really need to speak to. In this instance it was the card & paper recycling unit that hooked me and Magnus up.
The journey continues…
Part 2 – Discovery phase
Take control of your on site promotions with Bannermate.For a while now we have been developing our own banner system called Bannermate. It’s a simple to use banner content management system (CMS) that allows marketeers and webmaster to control in-house banner ads using a pre-designed template that can run on your own website or a partners website.
Using an embed code, the banners can be inserted anywhere on your pages and are controlled through a secure dashboard. The changes are made instantly wherever the banners are embedded and require very little time and knowledge to get them published.
This is what the dashboard looks like
This type of system is not uncommon online and there are many services out there. But Bannermate is a little different. We design and code your banner for you, rather than you having to think about design and layout. Being an established creative agency and having years of designing banners, we are great at design for your brand and making the banners work for all types of messages.
We’ve found that marketeers are time poor and have very small budgets so we help by designing a reusable banner template that can be used to carry many different types of messages. All you need to do is write decent copy and crop images. That’s easy right?
Marketeers – you are responsible for promoting monthly subscription offers for your website or print publication, software release, new product for sale etc and you want to be able to update it when you want.
Editorial teams – you’ve got a new article or competition you want to cross promote throughout your website and you need it quickly.
You brief a designer to create a new banner or set a task for the web editor to update a promotion area with new copy, images and links. Then you feedback on design, approve the changes, sign off, send assets to the web team to upload. Then you wait…
So the problem our clients used to have was the cost and time it used to take to get the banners produced and live online. We have removed the middle men and now you can simply choose the banner you want to use and add the text and images. If it’s the first time you have used the banner you’ll need to grab the short HTML embed code and get that added onto the pages you want the ad to appear on. If the banner is already embedded then you simply update the details and save it. The changes are pushed live into the banner immediately and thats it!
The dashboard provides tracking information that displays impressions and clicks and the source page of the clicks so you can see how your banners are working.
We are running a promotion to get you using Bannermate, so we have cut the cost for setting up a new banner from £250 a banner to ZERO. You will have expert design advice from our designers so we make the banner just how you want it.
You will be charged just £40 a month per banner for a minimum of 3 months so you can trial the system properly.
Go to Bannermate on our website to see some examples of it in action.
Get in touch with Stuart Edwards on 020 7033 4269 or email me at stuart@bythescruff.com and I will give you a demonstration of the system.