Senior Internet Ltd

Q: What's your name and position in the company?
A: Steve Arnold, Commercial Manager

Q: Describe your company in 5 words.
A: Creative, experienced, modern, technical, thorough

Q: What's your business philosophy?
A: We create simple to use, but highly effective web solutions that are tailored to every individual client's commercial objectives; we do this whilst also ensuring long terms returns on the web investment.

Q: Describe how your team interact and work together.
A: Without a doubt, our success is borne from the fact that we operate a cohesive, highly experienced multi-disciplinary team, with niche specialists each performing their roles on a project. Projects usually involve 6-8 people with an experienced project manager pulling the strings and ensuring effective client liaison.

Q: What makes you different from other web design companies?
A: We have 5 full time programmers which gives us incredible scope to rapidly create new functionality for our River CMS system to meet client demand. We also have 3 marketing graduates (2 at Master level) in our commercial / account management team which allows us to be more than just a technical web company. our River CMS is also a bit special and breaks new boundaries giving clients superb control.

Q: How do you get the majority of your business?
A: New business comes from a mixture of sources: 1) incoming referrals from existing clients and the Business Link; 2) incoming enquiries through www.senior.co.uk; 3) publically available contract notices with competitive tender processes. There is often a great deal of competition e.g. a bid we won in August had more than 40 applicants! We are also extending our reach by marketing our services to specialist sectors.

Q: Describe how you manage projects from the initial client contact to completion and handover.
A: We follow a tried and tested project management process with in built risk management and goal setting at various stages along the project lifecycle. We find that clients are delighted with the fact that their website are often finished ahead of schedule, which is unusual for this industry. This happens, because we build contingency time into the programme which often is not used.

Q: What do you think is the most crucial element of creating a good client relationship?
A: Start as you mean to go on, maintain close communications, build rapport, be thorough and most importantly enjoy it!

Q: How do you manage demanding clients?
A: We expect all clients to be demanding - this is the norm when it comes to such important aspects of a clients' business like the web solution. We handle the process by setting realistic expectations at each stage and communicating with all clients regularly. The main thing that clients need is not to be kept in the dark, so transparency is the key.

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: Visit their offices, meet the team, look at the attention to detail in the pitch work and documentation (this will have a huge baring on their attention to detail in the delivery), look at examples of previous work, investigate the CMS the agency use and very importantly ensure you have good chemistry with them.

Q: Where do you see your company in 10 years time?
A: We plan to consistently grow, and to work on delivering larger and more complex projects each year. Our River CMS is on a continuous development path and we have many exciting plans which will make our system more and more unique over time.

Q: Where do you see the web design industry in the future?
A: It’s in a great place and we see demand continuing to grow for the foreseeable future. Standards are improving all the time, and there's been a lot of change in the web industry in recent time; we do however feel very lucky as we're here at the perfect time.

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

Q: How was your company name chosen?
A: Our company MD is Pete Senior and he managed to tie up the URLs for the website a long time ago. It was his brilliant creative imagination that allowed him to come up with the name Senior Internet!

Q: If you were to give your clients one tip on how to get the most from their website what would it be?
A: Apart from picking the right web partner to deliver the project in the first place, our advice is to keep returning to the notion of 'customer centricity' - put your web visitors or customers as the centre of everything you do online