Well, January has kicked off 2011 with a bang for us.  I've been in the office all hours getting jobs completed, but also getting quotes prepared for prospective new clients.

The interesting thing about the potential new business that we've got is that it's of a very high quality and it all comes from referrals from existing clients.  This proves that our strategy of taking on fewer, larger projects and concentrating on quality is starting to pay off.

In the last week I have quoted for 7 pieces of work with a total value in excess of £70,000.  Of these 7, one is an existing client, five are referrals from existing clients and one found us through Google.

I'm more than pleased with this as it shows that clients trust us enough to recommend us to others and that the quality of the projects we win is much more important than the quantity.

Everyone knows that the most cost effective way to win business is through word of mouth but sometimes it's difficult to ensure that you offer the level of service that will generate advocates for your business.  If you've been running for a while and have lots of jobs that prevent you from doing this then the only way forward is to stand still... just for a short time while you take stock, clear the books and then start to move forward again.

Just moving on from my last blog post, we've just been given the go ahead on a project for a company based in New York.  This came as a recommendation from another client (www.handd.co.uk) that we've built a couple of sites for.  It's great to get work on recommendation like that and better still that we can now say that we're truly international!

Anyway, the upshot is that we've filled one of the 2 slots left in the order book.  By the time we start these projects, the 2 that are in the final phases will be finished.  We're on the 12th of January now and we'll have another site live by the end of the month which means that we'll have another slot free for a project to start at the beginning of February.  The cycle at the moment seems to be that the longest anyone will have to wait for us to start work on a new project will be 2 weeks.  In reality, it can take this long to get everything sown up anyway.

This definitely the way for us to do business to remain stable in what are still fairly uncertain times. What is interesting is the speed at which we can react when existing clients ask for changes.  We're alreading feeling the effect of this after a short time and everyone is happy!

It's 2011 and here's wishing everyone that vists a happy new year from all at Insight Creative.

2011 for Insight is going to be an interesting year in as much as we're going to change the way that we're working.  In the past we've taken on just about every project that we've had the opportunity of taking and that's not always been the best policy.  We're now going to be taking on less in the way of new work and concentrating on providing existing clients with the best service that we can give them when they need things changed on their websites. In the past, we've usually had 10 or 15 projects on the go at any one time. Now we're going to be taking on a maximum of 6 projects at any one time so that we'll have more time to devote to existing clients.

At the moment, the book is open for 2 new projects to start within the next couple of weeks as we have 2 sites that are just about to go live. The idea is that we'll have 2 projects in the design phase, 2 that are in the development and content population phase and 2 that are being tweaked with a view to going live.

As well as being able to devote more time to existing clients, this also ensures that we'll turn out new projects that much quicker.  It's a little bit risky turning away work but I think the benefits for the people we do business with outweigh the disadvantages for us.

So, now is the time to get in on this if you need a great website and an ongoing relationship that you'll actually enjoy.  Contact us for more information!