1996
A long-time ago in a random bar somewhere in the West-End of London a couple of long-time friends and Internet early-adoptors sat down for a beer and discussed this new t’interweb thing. Both of them thought it showed some promise. Jerry and Martin had met in the computer networking industry back in the mid 198os and had became firm friends and when the opportunity to work together on a brand new project in a brand new industry presented itself it was just too much of a temptation. Connected was born.
Jerry was based in London and looked after the technical side of things. Martin was based in the lovely Yorkshire mill town of Halifax and looked after sales. In May 1997 we employed our first staffer, Conrad Edkins who hit the phones hard (13,000 outbound phone calls in the first year!) and he struck a rich seam of companies who also saw the early potential of the Internet. We were soon building sites at a rate of 3 a month so hired more developers and sales and support staff.
2000
The first Internet boom-bust cycle hit and many companies fell victim to over-expansion, over-borrowing and over-spending. Not Connected; always staying in the black and with no borrowings the company was ideally placed to ride out the storm and emerge stronger, sleeker and sucked up the excess demand in the market as the world returned to normality.
2004
With some big clients under out belt we were moving away from building conventional, design-led, web-sites and now looking at the online commercial models and exploring early ways of A/B testing and measuring conversion rates. Clients liked this commercial approach and the benefits it brought. Connected was, however, quite limited by the poor choice of tools to improve and measure so we created our own platform, VITES, that allowed for simple testing and conversion rate improvement. The scene was set for the next growth spurt but still adhering to our policy of no borrowings, no outside investors and keeping our company lean.
2011
We’re a thriving team of nearly 20 who provide clever solutions to client problems in the online world. With just over 50 clients we are a nice size to provide world-class service and great thinking without being too small to deal to demanding clients. With over 100 man-years experience we’ve got a lot of know-how in creating great web properties and it’s fair to say that since then we’ve gained quite a reputation for excellence. We love our clients and they, on the whole, love us and that’s how and why we work so well and for such long period of time with some of the brightest and best companies in the UK.
It’s all about results
We build and manage web properties. Creating strategies that make our clients money. It’s about squeezing the most from the online world and translates into a suite of skills, technology, methodology and know-how that glues together beautifully to produce:
- More sales
- More leads
- More customers
- More profit
We find out what really works – and then do more of it. Does this sound interesting?
We believe
- Partners in a journey. Continuous improvement is not a project – it’s a journey. A journey built on partnership and trust. Continuous improvement is never finished: why stop?
- Results = Beauty. We don’t do design ourselves – we outsource this. For us, the only measure of beauty is results. We know that the best people to judge the appearance of your site are … ordinary people who visit your site.
- Science. We test new ideas to check they really do boost your results. We’ve copied the Kaizen methods of the electronics industry, with lots of small improvements that add up.
- Don’t be average. Be an outlier. Be a winner – at the very edge of the curve. If you’re looking for average results from an average website then we may not be right for you. It’s your call…
What next?
Discover more about how we work, get in touch with us or click here to see the key members of our team. Or, you could pop over to TED for some video inspiration. We love TED.
