My business experience is quite diverse. I have been involved in:

• Department store retailing – everything from shop floor sales, to management, buying and allocating stock out to 30 branches.
• Hospitality and catering – running pubs, clubs and restaurants.
• Financial services – investing money for insurance companies and pension funds in the US, Japan, Australia, Far East and Emerging Markets around the world.
• Internet services – website design and marketing.
• Voluntary work in the Charity sector.

As you can appreciate, the skills I picked up along the way are quite varied.

One thing I really got into was systems design, data mining, performance measurement etc. All Excel based. I have built some powerful management reporting systems for a range of clients over the years (St James’s Place, Lincoln Financial Services, The Kitchen Broker, Helen O'Grady Drama Academy). It’s all about logic and maths, using technology and software to produce business benefits. That is a skill I use when creating a web project for clients.

I got into web design in 2000. I was setting up as a consultant and needed a website. I knew what I wanted and wrote a job specification. I didn’t want anything too fancy, no Flash, just a basic brochure type site with 7 pages. Then I went through the Yellow Pages (as you did back then!) and rang my local web designers. There weren’t many, not like now. They all had the same brief. But the range of quotes was £500 to £5,000.

What!

That got my interest – how can the same job attract such a range of estimates?

So I did some research, then some more. I went out and bought Microsoft Front Page and a week later I published my own website. It was a steep learning curve I have to say but the resulting website did exactly what I wanted it to do. Apart from my time the only cost was Front Page – not sure how much that was, but it wasn’t anywhere near £500.

How did it look? By today’s standards and requirements it was awful, but back then it looked as good as a lot of other sites. And, after a while, it was on the first page of results of a Google world search on my key phrases and top in the UK. Not bad for a novice!

Designing that first website led me to do various college courses on web design, Adobe Creative Suite etc.

With that training and the experience of the Internet since then I have a pretty good in depth knowledge of what can be done, what should be done and what works. I also understand what legal standards websites and their owners must attain to be fully within the law.

Less of the backgound, what about now