The winner of The Apprentice 2012, and business partner to multi-millionaire business magnate Lord Alan Sugar, is Ricky Martin. Shortly after winning the Apprentice Ricky began work on the website for his new business with Designer Websites.
The brief from Ricky was to design and develop a highly functional and very professional website to represent Hyper Recruitment Solutions. The website itself would specialise in science jobs, science and technology being a field of considerable expertise for Ricky himself. The website would fully integrate with their chosen recruitment software solution, to make managing and posting jobs on the website automated and easy.
When we learned that Ricky wanted to work with Designer Websites to develop the HRS website we were most pleased and honoured. We immediately began work on planning and designing what we now feel is the best recruitment website on the Internet.
“We chose Designer Websites over many other companies for the HRS website because they have a great track record and obviously have the skills to produce a high quality website, which was absolutely imperative for this venture. Working alongside Lord Sugar is a great privilege, but it comes with very high expectations, so choosing the website developer required much consideration. Thankfully we chose the right web developer and our website is proof of this. Designer Websites completed the work on time, to expectations and without fuss. The team at Designer Websites were easy to work with, full of ideas and extremely cooperative in all areas of the project. We now have an excellent working relationship and hope to continue working together in the future. HRS would like to thank Designer Websites for all their hard work and for producing an excellent website for our business.”
Ricky Martin BSc (Hons) MIRP CertRP MRSC
Managing Director of Hyper Recruitment Solutions
The Apprentice, of course, is the wildly popular television programme in which aspiring young entrepreneurs battle it out for a chance to become a 50:50 business partner with Lord Sugar who would invest £250,000 in to their company.
With Hyper Recruitment Solutions, Ricky Martin is aiming to provide a specialised, professional and highly compliant recruitment service for the science and technology industries. Jobseekers and employers alike will find the HRS recruitment website incredibly useful; applicants can find science jobs with some of the biggest names in the industry, while companies can use the website to recruit highly qualified candidates. It’s a great deal for both parties, so whether you’re looking for employment or looking to recruit some talented new employees, Ricky Martin and the HRS recruitment website can help.
We’re thrilled to have been given this opportunity – it isn’t often that you get to work with such high-profile clients. Apprentice winner or not, we think that Ricky Martin has come up with a brilliant business idea, and we know that he and Lord Sugar have worked hard to bring Hyper Recruitment Solutions to life. We’ve been working hard too, and we know that the HRS recruitment website that we’ve developed will be up to their high standards.
The site went live today; you can find it at www.hyperec.com.
It might all sound like pop-psychology and hocus-pocus, but there is real psychology at work in how colours affect the way users approach your website design. This isn’t as simple or powerful as “red=angry” or “blue=calm”, but the tones, hues and saturations used in your website design can certainly have an impact on your browsers. In this article we’ll be looking at the effect that colour has on your website design and whether or not it’s worth keeping colour in mind when putting your site together.
Saturation
The saturation of the colours in your website design is one of the most measurable factors in the world of colour psychology. As a rule, the higher the saturation of a particular colour, the stronger the viewer’s emotional and physical response will be. Bold colours will generate a far stronger response from users – whether that response is positive or negative can depend on the colour in question.
This makes using highly saturated colour in your website design a risky move. If it pays off, you could generate a really positive, excited response from your user but, if you pick an unfortunate shade, you risk putting them right off!
A smart, bold colour choice will create a really strong, memorable impression on your visitor, which is great for your brand. Equally, too many very highly saturated colours can create a kind of colour overload, making your site feel hectic, stressful and more confusing than it really is – the key is to keep it simple and use just one or two bold colours.
The colours themselves
So, if this is the case, which colours are going to create the impression you want from your website design and which are going to send your visitors sprinting in the opposite direction? It’s really all down to our everyday associations and, if you take a little time to think about it, it is all common sense.
For example, brown is a warm, natural colour. It brings to mind wood – which is both natural and used in furniture. It is a safe colour which suggests warmth, sincerity and comfort. Meanwhile, black is typically associated with sophistication, power, sexuality, seriousness etc.
A load of old nonsense?
Well, not really. It is possible that the real power of colour in website design gets overstated from time to time, yet it does have an effect and it is well worth bearing this in mind when you create your site. Sticking to a few basic tips will help you to use colour to your advantage:
- Keep it simple
Overcomplicating your colour palate is a sure-fire way to put visitors off. It looks messy, confusing, overstimulating and will completely distract your users from the real purpose of your website.
- Use your common sense
Before settling on a colour scheme just have a quick think about all the possible associations your selection might conjure up. For example, if you’re selling toothpaste, brown, black and yellow are probably not the best colour choices.
- Create a strong theme
Use one or two strong colours to your advantage. A memorable theme will keep your website design fresh in your visitors’ minds and help you create a strong brand image.
It has been well over 2 years since we updated our own website, so back in March we decided to get on with a new design, however we have struggled since then with our schedule to fit in completing the work, anyway now we are finally at a point where our new design can go live. We believe that the new website is more informative as well as being more attractive.
We have purposely designed our website to provide a more tailored and rewarding experience for our users, depending of course on what they are looking for. We acknowledge that no client will want to read the entire site instead they will likely be looking for a specific service relevant to their needs, so for example they might be looking for an ecommerce website designer, so they hit the ecommerce specific page which provides them with a little information followed by 5 case studies to assist in their decision process. Here's how it looks..
We think the design looks great and the examples provide enough information, without going over the top, to assist potential clients with their decision to use us for their next website.
You may have also noticed that we have integrated our promotional products and promotional clothing ecommerce websites, take a look we are very proud of these sites.. Promotional Clothing
Of course being the website optimisation specialist we have optimised our own website to rank for keyword terms like websites designer, ecommerce websites, website optimisation and many many more. We obviously rank extremely well for local terms like website design cardiff or ecommerce websites Cardiff but now we need to improve our ranking on a national scale.
If you have any opinions we'd love to hear them, but please keep them constructive! Thanks for reading.
In the initial stages of website design designers look into browser consumption and which browsers are in favour with the targeted web users. This helps designers to use the relevant code to ensure their pages look good and function well within each browser’s interface.
It can be a real challenge to keep track of what the browser market is doing. Firefox 5, Chrome 12, and Opera 11.5 were all released last month with more updates expected in the near future. Updates are also hard to track down with many browsers set to auto-update and others set to never update or to receive updates manually. This can make website design harder than ever and a lot of testing at the development stage is often required.
The big news for anyone involved in website design is that July has seen the usage of Google Chrome rise above the 20% mark for the very first time. Microsoft IE is still currently the big daddy of the browser world, but with Google firmly on their heels things could be changing in a big way which will impact website design and development.
This June saw Google Chrome 11 topple Firefox 3.6 to become the world’s second favoured browser. However, the release of Google 12 has caused a split in Google’s user-base and Firefox 4.0 has now regained its second place position.
It’s not all good news for Mozilla though; Firefox experienced a drop of almost 1% in its user-base in June which was three times that of IE and one of the biggest declines Firefox has experienced in its lifetime. The reasons are not clear. Whilst Firefox 4 and 5 have been well received they have not stopped Google’s popularity or progress. Maybe the updates and changes were a little on the radical side for some. Those involved in the website design game have certainly been scratching their heads wondering which browser is going to give Microsoft a run for their money.
When it comes to good website design it pays to keep on top of the latest browser developments including updates and new releases. This will ensure the correct coding and formatting of pages is carried out and that the user experience is uniform across all major browsers including IE, Chrome, Firefox and Opera.
