A New Beginning

CHANGING times at Mascarandy Media towers with this fantastic new site designed by the fine people at Made by Amplify.

When I was approached by Allan at the firm about a new website I was sceptical. Yes, I needed a fresh look to the old version, but I wasn’t sure how radical a change I wanted.

There’s no hard sell with Allan. He took me through the existing site, made pointers to where it could be better and how best to present what I do.

The main issue was the fact my forthcoming – and now published – Yorkshire’s Three Peaks: The Inside Story of the Dales had some fantastic landscape images and the site wasn’t doing them justice.

He also presented a strong business case for an improved store, better home page and integrated SEO.

It was a no brainer. How can I write about going for a wild camp when I can’t display my pictures well enough? How can I promote my work without an effective platform? How can I make best use of the audio clips and video footage I have?

What you have in front of you is thanks to Allan and Amplify. The site is his work – pictures and words by myself – and the patience and pragmatism is certainly all his.

I would recommend him and his firm to anyone.

Allan’s view: “Mike’s new website provides him with a professional communication mechanism and marketing tool to easily share his latest news and promote his range of services.

“The idea behind the design was to showcase Mike’s latest titles on the homepage whilst allowing users to easily access his latest news. Supporting pages provide information on his services and ecommerce facilities, amongst other features.

“Content can make up 50 to 70 per cent of website pages. In this project we created a web content management system with powerful features, but it is Mike who has populated this and turned it into what you see now.

“It’s always great to work with people who are excited to use our creations and turn them into useful tools for their business.”

This site will evolve over the next few weeks. It will have trip reports, walking blogs, video and podcasts of the Yorkshire Dales book. I will review products too as well as muse upon writing and the media.

So look around, visit the store, buy some prints and send me some feedback.