Spicy Web Designer Interview with Pete Stubbs of 2am

Pete Stubbs is the managing director at 2am a company in Wesham, Preston in England in the UK. 2am has been in business for the past 20 years. The business currently provides services for PPC marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Web Design and Graphic Design and has an extensive portfolio available online. 2am is an “AdWords Qualified Company” meaning that they have been qualified by Google to provide Adwords consulting on how you can use Adwords to run your advertising.

1. How many people currently work at 2am?

There are currently nine people here at 2am

2. On your site it says “we are an award winning agency…”  What awards have you won?

There is a local Cheese maker Dewlay Cheese for whom we won the award for their cheese labels.

3. What is your company known for and what business problem are you trying to answer?

We are well known for our creativity and brand management skills. We want businesses to succeed and therefore we answer the age of problem of how our clients communicate within their sector.

4. How long has 2am been in business?

2am has been in business for over 20 years.

5. Where did the company name come from?  2am – is that when the best web design work is done?

The name 2am was created by the original founders who both had the initial AM thus the two AM’s! Nowadays of course, this is when the best ideas pop into our heads!

6. Have you developed any in-house technologies that you use to market to your customer that give you a unique advantage in the web design marketplace?

Our in-house SEO skills together with our experience in design give us the edge over most competitors!

7. Why should someone hire 2am for their next web or graphic design project?

Basically 2am create work which exceeds our clients’ expectations and our designs always aim to push the boundaries of creativity, as-well as communicate effectively – this may be an obvious answer but it’s surprising how many designs applications there are out there that are frankly utterly shit. The client should always receive design solutions that work effectively!

Some web design companies are good at development but terrible at design. Others are good at design but not too hot on development. Most don’t have the in-house capabilities of SEO – 2am have it all!

8. What do you feel is the biggest barrier to overcome for a web design company like yours currently?

I think the biggest problem (which also links to the question above) is that many clients have had web sites created without the end user in mind and therefore just don’t work.

Too many websites not only look rubbish but don’t function to the browser, search engines or user so its our job to educate the customers and give them the confidence back!

So the biggest barrier therefore is trust!

9. Being an “Adwords Qualified Company” what advantages does this give your company in developing, managing and working on PPC projects and do you find that a lot of people are interested in your company because you are “Adwords Qualified”?

We feel that with the experience we have in developing ”Adwords” campaigns speaks for its self and we would only offer products and services which will benefit our customer. We feel that customers are interested in 2am because of our experience and the fact that we offer all these services in house gives the customer the complete package.

10. What is the “Dream Analytics & Reports” feature all about on your company’s website?  I see that it’s coming soon but what can you tell us about it now?

Dream will be a service that analyses data from search engines and allows us to identify strengths and weaknesses in our customers campaigns enabling us to ensure that either fixes are made or areas are developed and capitalized upon. We will be giving complicated statistics and analytics the human touch!