Fine Box Media

Q: What's your name and position in the company?
A: Rick Lord - Director

Q: Describe your company in 5 words.
A: Fresh, Modern, Hassle Free, Creative

Q: What's your business philosophy?
A: One of the key ingredients in our service is quite simply a passion for what we do meaning you get great results everytime. Unlike some designers who work an office job 9-5 and shut down at the weekend we are a team of freelancers who even during our time off find our selves fiddling with designs and websites because we love what we do.

Q: Describe your office environment.
A: Our team consitrs of 3 main freelancers who all work from our own home offices in the southwest, we have good sized home offices so we can cater for meetings at our office no problem.

Q: Describe how your team interact and work together.
A: We interact on site with each other and we also use applications such as Skype

Q: What makes you different from other web design companies?
A: Pretty much already answered this one but again quite simply we love what we do and even when were not getting paid to do design and web work we do it anyway as we are always trying to stay ahead of the game.

Q: How do you get the majority of your business?
A: Most of our work comes from word of mouth and we rarely find the need to advertise to find work but occasionaly we do, we tend to find word of mouth leads are far better than any other lead we have come across

Q: Describe how you manage projects from the initial client contact to completion and handover.
A: We initially meet with the client if client requests or we can have multiple phone discussions to nail the project requirements. We send a formal project agreement so everyone is clear what is expected from the project. We request a deposit upfront to get the ball rolling. We have a private client area for reviewing progress as things develop, once completed we move the site to the client domain and we can also offer domain and hosting management, we collect final payments and offer support on going if requested.

Q: What do you think is the most crucial element of creating a good client relationship?
A: We beleive in honesty with our clients, no technical jargon to blind you with just straight forward business mentality and we treat each client as if we are going to be working together for many years to come so we always try our best to keep our clients happy.

Q: How do you manage demanding clients?
A: We have had our fair number of demanding clients, we treat every client equally and when it comes to support we respond to client requests in the order in which they are received unless something urgent such as website has died or emails have stopped working comes up then we stop what were doing and get that client back up and running ASAP. Demanding clients however we only take so much before we send you on your way, afterall we treat all our clients with respect, if the respect is not returned then honestly we dont want a business realtionship with you. We offer 2 levels of support, an upto 8 hour response and a upto 5 day response time obviously both have varying costs but we have these 2 options to ensure those very demanding clients have the option to pay for a more responsive service afterall you get what you pay for and we like to think by offering 2 repsonse time packages at a higher and low rate our clietns can make the decision them selves how urgent and demandign there request is which in turn helsp us manage our support to our clients more effectively.

Q: If a client was trying to decide between a shortlist of web design companies, how would you recommend they go about selecting the right one for them?
A: Depends on the client and project but in General we have turned away many projects in circumastances like this if we feel another company would be better suited for the job at hand. Trying to convince a client to use us over other companies is pretty hard given so many companies these days are good at what they do, our main edge noramlly is price as freelancers from home offices we don't have the overheads that big agencies have so we tend to win mostly on our great prices and the client still gets a top notch finish.

Q: Where do you see your company in 10 years time?
A: We like how our Company operates now so there is no real long term plan to expand and employ dozens of staff in the future. Beleive me when i first start out my company 5 or so years ago the plan was to grow big but now im at the level im at i quite like the ability to get involved with every client personally and get to create long term relationships.

Q: Where do you see the web design industry in the future?
A: The web has changed so much in the last 5 years alone who knows what the next 5 years will hold. I imagine if more and more people continue to buy 3d TV's and smart phones they will soon be expecting those types of experiences brought to the web. Enter the iPad and its growing Generation of iPads to come

Q: What computers do you have use in your offices, PCs or Macs?
A: PC

Q: How was your company name chosen?
A: it was a fall back name as i was unable to buy the domain i wanted

Q: If you were to give your clients one tip on how to get the most from their website what would it be?
A: A website which is not getting visitors is as good as the junk mail you get thrown through your letter box, targetted traffic is the only way forward for a website to suceed and you can acehvie this with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) or CPC (Cost per Click Campaigns) amongst other marketing methods