Project:Simply do the White Thing

Web design used to feature two dominant disciplines: graphic design and programming. Getting a website found was achieved through their combined expertise and good marketing. But as the sector matured and competitiveness grew, searchability became a vital consideration, and search engine optimisation (SEO) began to justify its position as a distinct third task in making a successful web presence. SEO also provided Sharp with its very first tenants – Project:Simply.

The company, founded by Christian Hill and James Coop, places SEO at the head of a services list that also includes web design, PR, e-commerce and consultancy. They can therefore optimise an existing site, work alongside external designers, plan an e-marketing campaign or create a website from scratch. But this is only the start of it. By drawing on a wealth of very close relationships they can offer a bespoke service that satisfies any digital request.

Project Simply from The Boot Room on Vimeo.

Christian: “We specifically target the SEO market with experts in our field, but what we do is we partner with other businesses that are best in class who specialise in their field so we can effectively provide a one-stop solution for our clients, whichever way they come in.”

It’s a business model that actually makes a lot of sense. If a company tries to capture too much under one roof, it can become bloated and inefficient, with different skills being over- and under-used depending on changing demands.

James: “No company can focus too broad as they’ll lose out eventually because there will be smaller companies who focus and move on very quickly with how the developments of technology are happening. So it’s better to have a lot of smaller, focused companies. A boutique of experts is how I’d call it. We’re all very good at our specific core but obviously we need to be grouped together in order to really go for some nice big pitches or to provide a client with all the resources they need. Compare it with a traditional digital agency going in with an average-level broad match of the whole service – we’re going in with an expert approach so that we do our job and we deliver it. That’s how it works.”

The biggest benefit of letting a single agency take on a digital project and perform the design, development, marketing etc. in-house is that people know each other and can communicate effectively. But if you work hard on your relationships with your partner companies you really can develop the kind of agile model that Project:Simply have mastered. This way the client isn’t getting the best individual elements the agency can offer; it’s getting the absolute best around.

Christian: “We can cherry pick the partners depending on what the client needs.  The only thing we don’t do is introduce them to the other partners because at the end of the day, the reason we’re doing it is so that they can have a smooth process where they deal with one person, so effectively all the partners come under our banner if the clients come through us and vice versa. We provide that service through them.”

And of course, the arrangement works both ways. As well as bringing in partners for their projects, they can find themselves offering their own services for other creative concerns.

James: “If they’ve got the pitch and the best chance of getting it, we’re more than happy to go in and let them attach us to it as a business or in partnership with. That way they’ve scored the client. For example we work with other PR agencies that require expert services, and in doing that they’ll go and sell the stuff, they’ll see the client face to face, and then they’ll bring us in for that expert meeting.”

The road to Sharp

Christian and James took the traditional route through academia. James studied at Loughborough before going on to work for IBM and some local entrepreneurs, offering his project management and networking skills. Christian finished his degree at Leeds, did some “weird stuff” for a few years and then knuckled down to a Masters in global business and marketing at Manchester. He fell in love with the digital marketing module and found he had a real talent for it, swiftly setting up his own business trading on his expertise. With success came a realisation that it could really grow, and he found a natural partner in James. After a while working from home and renting a small general-purpose office in Cheadle, Sharp emerged as a superb opportunity.

Christian: “Strategy, planning and that sort of thing is really what’s going on here, and also it’s good to have somewhere to bring clients to rather than being at home or meeting up in a bar or restaurant, you know, show them there is a real business behind the concept, show them the developers and employees we have, and prove that we’re a real entity and it’s a good place to bring clients.”

James: “And everyone thinks it’s a bit whacky when they turn up and you’re in a container. There’s that wow factor. When you’re in an old office you just bring them into the office … It’s boring. You’d sit down and there would be that awkward silence or you offer them a brew. But here, everyone wants to have a little look round, so you can sort of work them in gently, have a bit of laugh and get to know them quite easily.”

Christian: “It’s good for us as well because on the tour we take a client round we can say, ‘This guy over here is a 3D design animator, that guy does marketing and they are IP lawyers …’ It’s great because it shows we’ve got these connections.  Very quickly we can go and provide a big solution if we need to.”

Being the first in the Project had its pros and cons, but Christian and James didn’t mind too much being the guinea pigs. They soon discovered a tiny flaw in the container concept. Although mobile signal was fine in the main chamber, as soon as you stepped into your container it would drop. After some discussion with the project director this was remedied by fitting a signal amplifier. On the plus side, they bagged the demonstration unit, which was, and remains, the only white one in a room full of black ones. (They take on the chin the side effect that couriers gravitate to this gleaming beacon assuming it’s the admin block. And always being first in and last out doesn’t help matters.)

Ethical operators

Project:Simply has carved out a niche as a provider of services to the luxury end of the retail spectrum, where a single sale for the client can be worth many thousands of pounds. The technical demands are different to those of the mass market, but there are some fundamental laws of SEO that simply can’t be broken. When asked for advice on avoiding the scourge of black-hat SEO practices, the following advice is forthcoming.

James: “What we’ve found is that what used to be quite worrying in the SEO industry – and, I think, is still quite prominent – is the purchasing of links. So a company will promise them the world, they say, ‘We’ll get you to number one!’ which really means you can get somebody to number one on a keyword that gets no traffic and is no use to them, but hey, number one is number one. They purchase links and then the client was tied into that company because if they ever left the company they took the links off, they drop into non-existence. We don’t do that. We build everything organically, so we’re adding value to the site so that if they should ever leave us, which hopefully they won’t, we’ve got 100% client retention rate; their traffic will stay.”

Christian: “With this whole marketing area some people say it’s a bit like black magic: sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Obviously that’s not the truth. The truth is actually it’s a big process. There’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it, and you can get good results with a wrong way but you’ll get absolutely attacked by Google if you don’t. And I think the good way, I would advise all businesses when they do hire an SEO company, is to require deliverables on the work. Now some SEOs may say it’s intangible; that it’s hard to quantify. But it’s not, because you can provide the work that you’ve done, you can provide the URLs where you’ve posted content or tracked content, you can provide rank reports and you can provide analytics, and all those things will show whether they’ve performed or not, so those are the hot tips. We do provide an audit service which we’re rolling out. So if somebody is a little bit unsure about their SEO, we will also track their data and make sure that they’re doing the job that they should be doing.”

(In case you’re unfamiliar with this hat obsession that grips the SEO industry, think old Wild West movies: the goodies wore white hats and the baddies wore black. Black-hat SEO practices are designed to fool clients and search engines into thinking the site is hugely findable and relevant, respectively. Unfortunately black-hat practices can produce results in the very short term (long enough to clear a cheque) but the risk of being black-listed by the search engines is huge. White-hat practices are open, honest and ethical, and take a long-term view on what represents quality content for the client, the search engine and those doing the searching.)

Christian: “We’re good at putting fires out for companies and giving them advice from a search marketing angle, which is a very important thing for any business that’s e-commerce based because realistically it’s not a simple marketing strategy you’re after. It’s a search marketing strategy because your global audience is about attracting that global visitor. But from that process there are several other things we can consult on such as the client’s website, for example if a website’s not bringing the leads in or it’s not creating the bookings. We do the development in-house or we pass you onto an expert in that design area, and then again from another angle it goes into the PR sort of stuff. What we normally do is a complete competitve intelligence report for each of our clients which will show them the how, the where, the when and the how much in their marketplace. We make sure all of our clients have the most up-to-date information before starting a campaign. It’s not cheap but its better to get it right now than waste time and money getting it hopelessly wrong.”

Project:Simply are the prototype Sharp Project tenants and initial results look impressive. They’re already talking with the others, and collaborations are definitely on the cards – more to come on that, hopefully. We’ll leave them now to get on with their good work. The web won’t optimise itself.

Contact Christian or James via http://www.projectsimply.com/.

Charlie Hankers