Seven Design Associates:
Bringing small businesses to life

Having started his own business in 1996, Mark Baker has over 25 years of experience in his field and he's been a Fasthosts customer for ten of them.

Based in the historic market town of Wantage, Mark's small but mighty company Seven Design Associates offers services like website design, content creation and merchandise to SMBs scattered right across the UK. While the motor trade is his speciality, Mark works with a variety of sectors as he believes small businesses deserve good marketing too.

Mark was already a Fasthosts Reseller using our services to bolster his offering when he joined the Partner Programme to expand his reach with the Partner Network. When asked about his experience being in this community, he said it's grown exponentially in the time since I joined, but the Partner Network is a community of trustworthy, reputable businesses with the Fasthosts vote of confidence.

The Partner Network is a great opportunity to showcase work to a different audience. Fasthosts helps you cast a wider net.

Building new professional relationships

The decision to advertise himself through the Partner Network led Mark to connect with John Ellison, an Electronics Engineer in need of a complete website refresh after moving his business from a unit on an industrial estate to The Culham Science Centre – the home of nuclear fusion research.

We are nuclear industry trained and the engineering research side of our business has been steadily growing so a place at a science related campus was always our aim. Our focus is carbon reduction technologies so we were naturally over the moon to be accepted at Culham. However, our website required a complete upgrade to reflect our new situation, says John. So he went looking for a website designer to help him bring the old site up to speed and reflect the calibre of the company's new neighbours.

When asked about the objectives of the relaunch, John said the old site was more of a placeholder. We're a small company and most of our work happens behind the scenes, so our brand was invisible and that meant we didn't have a company image which was fit to be public-facing. We needed to change that.

A fast-paced website build

Having contacted Mark through the Partner Network, John knew this project would be in safe hands and the fact that he himself was on a Fasthosts hosting plan made the whole process even more convenient.

With both Mark and John already using several of our services, the website build from domain registration right through to the go-live date was completed in a remarkably short time. After putting together an initial new website loading holding page, John's website was ready to launch in less than two months.

We asked John what he hoped to get out of the build: I wanted a website that reflected the move to Culham, but also somewhere for our research to live. After all, John Ellison Electronics is a research-based company, so it was vital there was somewhere to showcase the intellectual contribution of the business. Mark suggested a research blog where we could share our material with others on our own terms and publish at our own speed.

A successful result

Since the launch of the site, John Ellison Electronics has had fantastic responses from people at universities and other organisations in the field – particularly to the blog – which almost functions as the company's portfolio.

For the first time, our research is out there generating interest and enquiries. It’s a marker of our credentials.

The business has changed. We've got a public face without having to absorb the work that comes with that. And perhaps most importantly, John found an extension to his team in Mark.

As John Ellison Electronics looks to the future, they'll have a trusted web designer on board to help them navigate the ongoing challenge of marketing themselves online – especially as a business that doesn't advertise.

We have an ongoing relationship and pay him a monthly subscription, so I can send things across to him and he pushes them out. There's a level of trust there which is worth every penny.