Make Hay Ethical E-Media

Newly launched this morning is the Winkworth Farm website

For couples planning a gorgeous green countryside wedding Winkworth Farm is a lovely venue in an idyllic location on the edge of the Cotswolds. The owners of the farm, the Newman family, are in the process of renovating a group of the Cotswold stone barns to provide an all-weather function venue. The building will be powered by a renewable energy source and they implement a green policy to make sure all weddings held there are kind to the environment.

This Winkworth Farm website is a ‘first phase’ site providing information about plans for the new venue and services which will be available to book for summer 2010. They provide a useful ‘recommended suppliers’ list and rates for venue hire. Anyone interested can make initial booking enquiries and view a picture gallery of previous weddings at the farm too.

We worked with the Winkworth Farm team to implement their new logo and branding into a clear, easy to use website focusing on the beauty of the location. The site is also run by our wind-powered Green Hosting.

Visit Winkworth Farm at www.winkworthfarm.com

We are very happy to launch today the brand new Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust website.

Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust is part of the national Wildlife Trusts network and the leading conservation charity in the area. For a long time they had been using FrontPage to update their old website, which had grown organically and become cumbersome and difficult to maintain.

We worked with NWT staff to re-organise their website content and create a usable structure and navigation system for their new site, allowing for future growth and development. NWT have a massive amount to communicate about their work so it was important to make sure all of their information can be found easily.

We consulted with them on their branding guidelines and discussed a fresh new approach to their visual design and colour scheme. They also have a huge library of beautiful photographs of local wildlife which we incorporated into the layout and content.

NWT staff now manage their website pages without having to struggle with web design software or knowing any code. We spent a morning training them how to use the content management system - built using Expression Engine - and giving them guidance on how to write copy and prepare images for the web. We’re sure they’re going to do a brilliant job keeping the site up to date with news and information about NWTs many events and activities.

The website is also run by our wind powered Green Hosting

Visit the site at www.nottinghamshirewildlife.org.uk

Last Friday’s post was a little heavy and since then I’ve been having a lot of interesting conversations about the way green/ethical business is perceived and how those of us who run ‘ethical’ businesses should communicate what we do. I put the word ‘ethical’ in inverted commas because a big part of the discussions have been about what we mean when we are using certain words to describe our business and how that may be perceived - Hmmm lots of food for thought.

Anyway, that is a huge subject and I wanted to finish this week with something a bit lighter but still ask for your views.

This blog is meant for you - Make Hay clients, those interested in finding out more about us, colleagues and associates. So, tell us what you want to see here.

What would be most interesting and useful? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Make Hay’s services and prices?
• Resources and information to help you manage your website or blog?
• News from the web design world?
• Ethical business discussions?

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An issue which has come onto my radar today (articles I’ve read and conversations I’ve had) is people’s perception of green business. Whether this is positive or negative, I’ve been wondering on the whole what do you think?

In our experience of running Make Hay we’ve worked hard to demonstrate that we are genuine in our goal to provide a service which has a positive impact for people and the environment and that we’re good at what we do.

We know we’re not 100% green but we’re transparent about the practices we employ every day to be a responsible business. Similarly we talk a lot about good quality, standards compliant website design.

However, today I became aware that the perception of small ‘green’ businesses may be that they are unnecessarily expensive and may not be as ‘good’ as non-green businesses when it comes to providing a service. I wondered why this may be…

Here are a few questions that came to mind:

• Do people assume that if a business emphasises green working then their primary concern isn’t being at the top the industry that they work in?
• Do people feel that they don’t know enough about how or why a business is green and because of this assume its a gimmick which allows them to add a premium to their price?
• Have people had experiences where apparently green businesses have not ‘walked their talk’?

I have to say that in my experience dealing with small, genuine, ethical businesses has been positive. Colleagues and suppliers of ours are receptive to our needs because they’re like minded. Additionally, because they’re a small business they do not need to charge more to cover lots of overheads and they’re passionate about their industry because they know they can use it to make positive changes. I think they feel this way about us too.

What do you think? How do you view green or ethical businesses in the market place? How would you answer the questions above?

I would be grateful of any feedback you can give. Either leave a comment below or contact me. Your views will really help us to provide a better service. Thank you.