The Business Team within Richmondshire District Council has the responsibility for raising the profile of Richmondshire as “a great place for business investment and business growth”, and specifically for ensuring that they maximise opportunities to attract inward investment from both Foreign Direct Investment and potential business relocations.

The first stage was to design branding for the Business Growth & Engagement Team and once approved, roll out brand guidelines and a toolkit of assets for the team to use in internal and external communications. We followed this up with web development using WordPress. Being both visually attractive and intuitive for users, the site really does make a strong business case promoting the advantages of locating in Richmondshire. It also scores very high for accessibility which was a key requirement of the contract.

We have worked closely with Novus in 2021/2022 to develop its business strategy for the next 3 to 5 years. Their change in direction, main services and holistic approach to local and personal care called for a major branding overhaul yet sensitive to its relations with commissioners, partners, staff and patients.

We created the NHS brand (in line with NHS guidelines), two private sub brands, their image style and key messages and rolled it out to include website, digital and printed communications and the internal and external appearance of its new high street premises. In tandem a digital tool kit for social media and internal/external presentations was developed in industry standard formats. Once the brand assets were in place, we and the in-house marketing team were able upgrade all business collateral.

“Together we have built a strong and professional presence in the regional health market with our branding, website and marketing communications and this creates confidence in our staff, our patients and our commissioners. Proportion Marketing have supported us in our journey and have always added great value beyond the brief in addition to the creativity and responsiveness we have come to expect. The monthly retainer set up provides us with full access to their studio and helps us budget and plan for future activity with confidence.”

IGRAC (International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre) facilitates and promotes international sharing of information and knowledge required for sustainable groundwater resources development and management worldwide. IGRAC provides an independent content and process support, focusing particularly on transboundary aquifer assessment and groundwater monitoring.

Proportion won this contract by tendering through an EU portal in 2015 and IGRAC has remained a client since then with various iterations and enhanced development of the existing site, including mapping and multi-languages. Our work has also extended to support UNESCO – a partner of IGRAC.

All of the project management was completed via video conferencing and electronic transfer of materials.

“PML has a team of very talented web developers and it really was a pleasure to go through the development process for IGRAC’s new website together. Unlike some other companies I have worked with in the past, PML has a lot of experience working with Drupal and that was really helpful during this process.

“They knew exactly which functionalities, applications and solutions were out there, so for every issue that I raised they were able to provide several options and for each, the pros and cons. This made my role as commissioner very easy. Apart from their technical expertise, all PML staff members I have worked with also have the same mentality of getting things done. Even after 7 years I am still amazed by how quickly PML implement new requests for changes. I picked PML out of 36 tender proposals and I am still very happy with this decision.”

As the first of its kind in the country Doncaster Children’s Services Trust provides social care and support to children, young people and families in Doncaster. This publication aims to give potential employees all they need to know about the Trust. It covers all of their teams help and protection services for children, young people and families.

GB Belting are the UK’s largest independent fabricator of light to medium weight synthetic conveyor belts. They supply original equipment manufacturers and end users of conveyor belts in a wide range of markets in the UK and ROI. Direct mail plays a key part of their communications strategy and we have developed a number of pieces covering specific product ranges and their whole range of belting products.

“We’ve worked with Proportion Marketing for over ten years and they’ve supported us with input into our marketing strategy, provided web development services (we have one e-commerce site and one brochureware site) and they handle our digital communications. They’re very quick to respond to any questions we ask of them and the quality of advice and standard of work has been excellent.” 

Thirsk-based Rural Arts recently appointed us to build their new e-commerce site and we’re thrilled with how it’s turned out.

Rural Arts deliver creative workshops, events and exhibitions from their Thirsk base at The Courthouse, as well as performances and outreach projects in rural venues around North Yorkshire covering over 3,500 square miles of countryside.

The team were increasingly frustrated and limited with their expensive, proprietary ecommerce solution and wanted a cost effective and easy-to-use solution for the suite of editors developing alongside a rebrand.

The site features a wealth of activities across the region, all submitted and updated by the Rural Arts team and supported year round by PML. Content includes images, video, visit information for hundreds of performance venues including GEO mapping.

The solution: Huge searchable hub of content, including workshops, performances and community projects, increased visitor dwell time, improved SERP for target user groups, all built and themed to meet WCAG 2.1 standards. Administered via multiple regional offices.

Our client is super happy too. Director and CEO, Max May told us “Working with Proportion Marketing was a dream. They’re creative, hyper-diligent and super speedy – the three perfect things to look for when finding the right team to build your new website.”

To see our work visit ruralarts.org

Cleveland Steel & Tubes (CST) are one of the largest stockholders of steel tubes in Europe and their product is used in a wide variety of projects including the Olympic Stadia, Canary Wharf, luxury marinas and wind turbine farms. They pioneer the concept of ‘greener steel’ by repurposing existing surplus tube stock in projects as it delivers massive carbon and cost savings compared to buying new steel made in a mill.

We were delighted to win the contract to design and build a new website for the business and following its recent launch we’re hearing the new design and its features are being warmly received by their clients. The new site was SEO optimised on launch and has a stock search facility that displays exact matches as well as similar products that could save their customers money. Future enhancements include hard coded translations to aid worldwide SEO and expanding their impressive portfolio of case studies.

The site is built in Drupal 9 and has robust security features as well as being future proofed for any technological advancements the internet may offer. It looks fabulous on hand-held devices and desktop machines and the team at PML are super happy with the end results.

Steve Paterson of CST commented, “We’ve been working with PML for 18 months across a number of projects, pulling together our marketing into one cohesive outlook. The website is the final major piece of our ‘marketing puzzle’, which pulls everything together under one, consistent brand per se. We hope our customers, new and old, enjoy the new website as much as we’ve enjoyed the process of building it with Proportion.”

See the site here at www.cleveland-steel.com

NHS Shared Business Services deliver modern corporate services to the NHS, replacing outdated, time-consuming and error-prone paper processes, with affordable digital systems which improve efficiency and quality, save time and money, and support world-class patient care.

We were delighted to bid and win the opportunity to develop a number of design assets to support the NHS SBS team deliver leading edge finance and accounting, procurement and employment services solutions to the NHS family. The bundle of work included brochure design and print, e-bulletin assets, a tool kit of icons for use in presentations, a brand toolkit and web page design.

A member of the NHS SBS team commented “We’ve been impressed with the quality of Proportion’s work and the speed of response from the team right from the initial briefing to final delivery. These resources will support our sales and cross-promotion strategy.”

We recently redeveloped the Trust Fostering website for Doncaster Children’s Service Trust giving it a design refresh and migrating the software up to Drupal 9. The benefits being it has a streamlined experience for editors and is faster loading. There’s a lot of other tech benefits but we’ll leave those for now, we wanted to share this note from our client.

“I wanted to pass on that I’ve been with our fostering team today and they are buzzing! Enquiries are up, people are looking at our website… and the feedback is they just love our offer and the look and feel of the site! So thank you, Proportion!”

It’s here at https://www.trustfostering.co.uk/

We recently launched a new website for Thirsk-based Zillah Bell Gallery.

It’s an online art gallery featuring over 1,800 pieces of work including celebrated artist Norman Ackroyd CBE RA who is noted for his breathtaking interpretations of Yorkshire landscapes.

The site has a comprehensive faceted search function enabling users to browse by size, style, medium (as well as various print types), location, orientation and price.

The gallery uses the site to promote various events and exhibitions – their latest ‘virtual’ lockdown exhibition ’21st Century British Landscape’ features four artists with four very different views of our landscape.

We’re very proud of this work and you can see it here at https://zillahbellgallery.co.uk/

The project: To create a central hub to coordinate and promote the activities of local authorities in North, South and West Yorkshire.

The site features a secure log in area for potential adopters to access application forms, reading matter, calendar of events as they embark on their adoption journey.

Fine-grained permissions allow three levels of applicants as they move along the adoption process with each permission allowing access to a greater amount of resources and support material. These features take advantage of Drupal’s powerful user/permissions settings and PML’s experience in building permission-based interfaces.

The solution: Regional adoption agency website with distinct user groups and multiple editor roles. It acts as the face of organisation, with a wealth of content. Includes news, events and adoption journey content all built and themed to meet WCAG 2.1 standards. Administered via multiple regional offices.

We’re super pleased with the end result and the marketing lead for One Adoption agrees too: “We are very happy with our bright, new website which has been created with the end-user in mind. From start to finish Proportion were always on hand with sound advice and quick to deal with any tweaks and changes.”

One Adoption is made up of three regional adoption agencies; One Adoption North and Humber, One Adoption West Yorkshire, and One Adoption South Yorkshire. Each agency provides all adoption services for the local authorities in their area.

See our work here at https://www.oneadoption.co.uk/

Some news on a recent website relaunch!

We recently migrated Euro Treadmill Belts’ existing web store to the WooCommerce platform. Our client is Europe’s largest manufacturer of replacement belts and decks for treadmill running machines with thousands of orders a year being shipped to over 80 countries.

The project involved building a shadow site with translated pages (into French and German) and featuring over 3,000 products to test functionality before switching over to go live. The site historically was very successful and so downtime had to be the minimum with no disruption to sales. Since the relaunch sales levels are up and we’re all very happy how the site is performing.

The new platform brings added benefits including better integration with shipping and accounting packages. You can see our work here at www.eurotreadmillbelts.com

When the Leeds Academic Health Partnership (LAHP) asked us to come up with a bold design to reflect the transformational work they’re doing in the Leeds City Region, it was a challenge we couldn’t resist. ‘Think big, start small, scale fast’ is their latest report on the huge strides they’re making on improving the lives of the Leeds population.

Read more here: https://www.leedsacademichealthpartnership.org/think-big-start-small-scale-fast-2021-report/

The LAHP marketing and communications team commented “We focus on innovation so, by definition, there is no blueprint. Nor is there a blueprint for how to present and promote our work, which sets a challenge for any marketing or design agency. We’re delighted that Proportion Marketing have achieved this so well. They’ve made our work look as exciting and distinct as it really is!”

We were tasked to rebrand a healthtech service managed by Leeds Academic Health Partnership and the project included research, initial concepts and fine tuning shortlisted designs for board/partnership approval.

The service, Healthtech Catalyst, offers wide-ranging support and opportunities for businesses, innovators, entrepreneurs, healthcare providers and commissioners, and researchers. Its mission is to catalyse business growth, innovative product deployment and new regional, national and international collaborations.

Our dynamic design has energy that can demonstrate change, movement and flexibility. These all reflect the values of the Healthtech Catalyst service.

Our client is delighted and told us “We are delighted with the brand concept. It’s compact but cleverly versatile. It promises exciting dynamism through the ‘spray’ of colours as an option, which conveys diversity, growth and a powerful, far-reaching impact. Those exactly represent our ambition – to stimulate and scale a wide range of health technologies to transform people’s lives and accelerate economic growth.”

We’re really pleased with our latest development for Northallerton Glass. It combines brochureware for a wide range of glass products and an e-commerce solution for etched glass fitted in commercial and domestic doors and windows.

As well as selling a wide range of glass products including double glazing units and sheet glass, the company specialises in ‘walk-on’ glass and have won several awards within the construction industry for their design and installation projects.

The solution has been configured with an easy-to-use content management system for shop products and pages so the client now has complete control over how the site develops in future. The shop features a neat cost-calculator with various options for single or double glazing panels allowing their customers to configure a bespoke product to suit their needs.

See the site in action here https://northallertonglass.co.uk/

EPIC is a creative youth crime prevention team based in the heart of Doncaster, tasked to support vulnerable young people who are at risk of becoming exploited by criminal gangs and young people who are at risk of becoming involved in offending behaviour.

We recently relaunched their website using Drupal 9. We chose this solution for the client because it features easy content authoring, reliable performance, and excellent security combined with flexibility and modularity – especially important as the site will grow over time.

EPIC deal with serious issues affecting young people in Doncaster and we think the blend of form and function ably supports their strategic aims.

“As we continue to innovate and offer a range of support to young people across Doncaster our partners at Proportion Marketing have been by our sides as we create the EPIC brand.”

You can see our work here www.epicdoncaster.co.uk