My latest site developed is Adattsi.com, an Ireland based company, specializing in energy saving technology for large office and industrial spaces. Their products range from simple rain water collection systems to advanced computer controllers for boilers. Their aim is to reduce a companies energy costs and improve the environment.

The design of the website was a minimalist two column design of opposing black and white, with a touch of blue and grey. The two column design allows much content to be visible on the page while giving the content in each column equal weight. I suspect users will still be drawn to the white background side so the site owner decided to use the left black side to bullet the key items and to make it more scannable rather than full paragraphs.

There is nothing fancy in the coding, just some good ole PHP, HTML, Javascript and CSS. I even broke with my tradition of putting all content in separate files and only put reuseable items (menus/footers) in separate files (calling them with PHP includes). I did create an auto-response email to the contact us form rather than relying on the mail-server auto responder.

Dealing with international clients is no more difficult than local clients. You have to plan online meeting times or phone calls based on the time differences, but most communications can be handled via email or project management tools. There are spelling differences in simple words like inquiry vs enquiry, and the Irish culture is more laid back than buisness in the US. I also learned that the rate for site development in Ireland is much higher than in the US and it is harder to find high quality local web developers. So my client has taken it upon himself to help me find more clients in Ireland. This may be true in several countries and if you find your develoment business is saturated, try finding markets in other countries.

Please visit Adattsi.com and if you live in Ireland say hello to Clive for me.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 5th, 2007 at 10:40 am and is filed under Web Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.