matm has just completed a striking new website for ‘Alexandra Vintage‘ – a new online shop providing a base for expert vintage suppliers across the country to sell their goods.

Alexandra Vintage home page

I had a pretty tight deadline on this project. The site was developed using WordPress – an open source publishing platform powered by PHP – and also included WP e-Commerce customisation, extending out-of-the-box functionality.

The site has been integrated with PayPal Pro which accepts both debit cards and credit cards. PayPal Pro optimises the customer experience by letting shoppers complete the checkout process without leaving the website; it also allows payments by fax, phone or mail and will certainly make Alexandra Vintage’s life easier as the whole PayPal system is managed in one place. Payment online is safe as the site has SSL certificate integration ensuring maximum security.

I have also synced the Alexandra Vintage site with coffeemail – our powerful e-shot system that enables the user to send email newsletters to subscribers.

We also provided the design for the Alexandra Vintage website – Senior Creative Lindsay Crayton-Hardwick said: “We were actually provided with the Alexandra Vintage logo, but we made sure that different elements of the website, such as the background, retained a floral type style.”

matm has completed a new website for Access Alliance – a collaboration of the UK and Ireland’s leading independent regional powered access sales and rental companies. It’s the alliance’s first website and has a number of easy-to-use features designed to help visitors and generate sales for members.

They include:

• A depot postcode locator – providing a quick and easy way for visitors to find their closest access company
• An interactive members map – providing visitors with information when they hover their cursor over a company’s name
• Information on each member company with links to contact pages

Given our indepth knowledge of the powered access sector, Access Alliance asked our PR team to write a good deal of the content as well.

Click on the image to take a look at the site. And remember, if you ever need to hire powered access, you now know where to go.

We’re really pleased to have helped Victoria + Albert Baths, in Telford, successfully launch a new style of bath. We souces a new typeface best suited for the product name – Barcelona – and a special swirl design element for web pages and an international mini-brochure.

Our web developers then created the pages on V+A’s website and co-ordinated the online launch. We hope you agree, the results are pretty classy, just like the bath!

“The figures speak for themselves. But, even without seeing them, this SEO campaign has clearly made an impact, with more customer leads generated. It’s definitely good for our business.” matm client.

It’s good to have a website – it’s absolutely brilliant to have a website that your customers and potential customers actually visit. Most people now always use search engines to go to information they need on the web – even if they know the precise web address they want to visit.

What that tells us is that, if you are in business, it’s vital your website is search engine optimised so when your customers use specific phrases to search for something they want – one of your web pages, promoting your service or product, pops up on the first page of search results.

Here at matm, we can help you optimise your website using carefully written web content and, if you choose, a web news service to ensure your services remain attractive to search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Click here or on the image above to see the results from a very recent example of our work. You can also view our Web Copywriting and Web News brochure.

It’s always nice to get an unexpected pat on the back, don’t you agree? Our web design and development team was certainly pleased to see a website review in the leading trade magazine Essential Kitchen & Bathroom Business.

The magazine’s ‘web doctor’ was reviewing the websites of premium brand kitchen and bathroom suppliers, among them Victoria + Albert Baths, based in Telford. And you’ve guessed it, matm designs, develops and manages the company’s website.

In what is a regular feature, the websites of nine companies were reviewed, picked apart, praised or given a poke in the ribs for their shortcomings. The February edition saw V+A’s website the only one to get the top mark of five out of five stars!

The most discerning critic concluded: “Top marks for simple beauty, teamed with practical touches that mean the consumer will never feel overwhelmed.”

The website has been a labour of love for matm’s senior creative Lindsay Crayton and web developer Jem Turner.

Lindsay said: “We’re very pleased to get such a positive peer review. Our aim with the V+A site has always been to combine clean, high quality design and highly effective functionality – very much like the baths we’re promoting and, it looks like we’re succeeding.”

Indeed. Thank you Essential Kitchen & Bathroom Business – we love you too!

Here at matm we like WordPress. As well as being the world’s biggest web publishing software, it’s:

1. Coded in one of the most popular web programming languages (PHP) which is backed by a hugely knowledgeable worldwide community
2. Open source, which means the core code is open to everyone and you’re not reliant on proprietary systems
3. …and best of all, free! That translates to reduced costs for us which we can pass on to our web clients. Who can argue with that?

When Shropshire-based charity Severn Hospice approached us to build a multi-functional events “shop” into their existing WordPress site, I couldn’t resist the challenge.

Using extensive knowledge of the content management software, shared between myself and developer colleague Richard Pilsbury, we have tapped into user-control functionality built in to WordPress to develop a plugin that allows visitors to register for their very own ‘my Severn Hospice’ profile.

From here, supporters can sign up for events, manage their personal information, register as a team, make a donation, pay in sponsorship money and more. It’s all generated “on-the-fly” using WordPress ‘shortcodes’, meaning maximum extendibility with no programming required by Severn Hospice at all.

Severn Hospice Events Shop plugin preview

If you want to extend your current WordPress website with a bespoke plugin created specifically for your needs, or want to convert your website to WordPress, get in touch. We’re happy to talk through the options with you.