How big does a website need to be to bring results?

Dene Secretarial Services

This website is for Dene Secretarial Services, a virtual assistant company owned and operated by Gill Atkinson and based in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Gill had found me on Google and had been so impressed by my other work that she called me and we met for a cuppa and cake – of course cake, always cake!

We immediately hit it off, and Gill’s brief was clear if, well, a little brief. She wanted to give a professional image that showed how she could make the lives of her clients more organised and less stressful.  She also had a small budget, so we stuck to just two pages – a Home page with all of the necessary information on it, and a contact page.  And to be truthful, there are an awful lot of businesses out there which don’t need much more than that.

Picking an image for a virtual assistant was tough – it’s not exactly the most exciting job, is it? – but we finally settled on this lovely one of a laptop on a beach with all its connotations of relaxation, holidays and free time.  After that, the site basically built itself. We took the blue from the photo and made it into a logo, but added the red buttons to give it a bit of zing.

Gill then sent me some copy which I chopped up and rearranged, and Bob’s your uncle!  A lovely site for a lovely lady, and the perfect example of designer and client working in harmony.

Update 2017: earlier this year, Gill’s site was found by a researcher for one of the local universities who gave Gill a retainer contract for the whole year so she recouped the cost of her website many many times over.