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Each month Internet.Works arranges for a Commercial
Web site, in desperate
need of attention, to have a full makeover by a professional Web design company.
These makeovers treat more than just the surface layout and appearance. Often a site can
be let down by poor navigation or fails to provide
Meta information in the tags (which search engines read).
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Before online: www.rajfoods.co.uk
Before on the CD
After: www.raj2.com
After on the CD
Raj Authentic Indian Cuisine
Fashions may come and go in the world of cuisine, but nothing even comes near to replacing a good
curry as the favourite food of the British public. Apparently, half a million curries are eaten in
the UK every day and a good number of those are made by Raj Authentic Indian Cuisine Ltd, a large
Indian food company based in Hyde on the outskirts of Manchester.
Ansuruz Zaman, the owner of Raj Authentic Indian Cuisine, got in touch with Internet.Works over a
year ago requesting a makeover for his site www.rajfoods.co.uk. He had first set up a site on the
Internet in 1998 and was getting some response from it, however, a lot of the responses just
highlighted the fact that the site was confusing customers. "We put Indian recipes up on the
site and people got in touch with us thinking we sold the ingredients," said Zaman.
The root of the problem lay in the fact that the site tried to convey the different sides of
Raj Authentic Indian Cuisine and didn't do it very clearly. "We have two sides to our business,
we manufacture frozen foods and we also have a takeaway delivery service and basically both of
these sides were mingled into one and it was difficult to tell what we actually did," Zaman admitted.
Basically, Raj produces frozen food (sold to shops and the catering sector) during the daytime and
during the evenings, the excess capacity is utilised by running a hot food takeaway delivery business.
All takeaway orders are freshly cooked then delivered directly to the customers' homes. Unfortunately,
none of this was conveyed by the old site. Internet.Works was called to the rescue, and we in turn called
on the services of London-based design company and solutions provider, FireByWire to see what they could do to lift www.rajfoods.co.uk out of the doldrums.
FireByWire arranged for Zaman to come down to London and meet up with them to discuss the possibilities
and options for the site. "FireByWire involved us a lot and they were excellent. I went down to London
to see them and they gave me an idea of what would be best for the site," said Zaman.
FireByWire also found the discussions useful because it gave them a better idea as to what Zaman really
wanted. They agreed that the current site was confusing and needed to be divided up into individual sites
to reflect the different sides of the business. Each site could then have an identified and consistent
business model. For the purpose of the makeover, FireByWire offered to develop the online takeaway
component of Raj.
The overall goal for the makeover became that the site should be able to generate online takeaway orders
from the current menu, which could then be prepared and delivered to customers within the Tameside
district. Hence the overall brief for the design would be to ensure that the menu selection and ordering
features of the site were as easy and enticing to use as possible, as well as pleasing to the
eye and reflective of Raj's overall company style.
This was just what Zaman felt was needed, "We do get quite a few enquiries from the old site but we did not have any online ordering facility so that is what we have concentrated on in the new site. People will be able to look through the pictures and menu and decide what they want and order it over a secure server." Zaman bought the raj2 domain name shortly after the meeting: "I chose the name because it is short, easy to remember and can be easily linked to the original name of the company, so that our existing customers can make the connection."
About FireByWire
As a solutions provider FireByWire is not a standard run-of-the-mill design company, all solutions are led by the business model, not by graphic design.
Coming from a strong business background helps the team at FireByWire understand what a business is trying to achieve with it's web site and look beyond what most people consider a web site to be. Even the smallest sites that FireByWire develops use technology to deliver a business benefit, not just an online brochure.
FireByWire only does one thing - it provides web solutions - and by using the best technical solutions backed up by a business led approach they allow the small business to compete with the big boys on a level playing field.
www.firebywire.com
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