Your Creative Partner

We are excited to announce the successful completion of a new website for Melrose Learning Trust based in Durham!

Project Overview: Melrose Learning Trust was in need of a new website to better communicate with its students, parents, and staff. The school’s old website was outdated, difficult to navigate, and did not effectively convey the school’s vision, values, and mission.

The Goals of the Project:

The Process:

The Results: The new Melrose Learning Trust website was a success! The modern, user-friendly design effectively communicated the Trust’s vision, values, and mission, and improved the overall user experience of the site. The website provided a platform for the school to communicate important news, events, and updates, and helped build a stronger sense of community among students, parents, and staff.

Conclusion: The Melrose Learning Trust website redesign was a successful project that met all of the trust’s goals and objectives. The new website has improved the trust’s communication with its schools, parents, and staff, and provided a platform for the trust to share important information and build a stronger sense of community. Our team is proud to have been a part of this project and looks forward to working with the Melrose in the future.

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We are a team of skilled professionals that are innovative and responsive to changes in technology and the way people view media.

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Your Creative Partner

As an agency we have learned a lot about e-commerce in the last few years. We wanted to move away from using ‘off-the-shelf’ plugins on WordPress, and offer clients something more bespoke and optimised for their e-commerce business.

We are now an Aero Commerce Agency Partner, meaning we can now build e-commerce websites that tick all the SEO and CRO boxes, delivering websites that make a significant difference to the clients business.

If your business relies on e-commerce for sales, it is safe to say the most important analytical data is conversion rate. Increasing traffic is great, but if they get there and fail to convert into a sale, the traffic stat means very little. The old idiom of ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink’ rings a bell with this…

When looking through your website analytics, if you find the traffic is high but conversions are low, it could be down to the quality and speed of your website.

Online businesses are familiar with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), the work done to get the user to visit your website in the first place. What we are now hearing more of is Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO), arguably the most important member of the optimisation family! This is all about gearing your website up to make the user take the choice you want them to.

Website speed plays a key part in all of this. We have all visited a slow loading, clunky website in the past. You might have landed on the site with the intention of buying, taken the credit card out of the wallet in anticipation, but then you are put off with the slow loading website. In a few moments you have moved onto something else and the online retailer has lost your sale.

There are many research studies available to back this up. They consistently show that fast page speed will result in a better conversion rate.

Developer Yegor Shytikov has put together a great blog post comparing site speed to conversion rate. Well worth a read to look at this in more detail. Click here.

Please get in touch for more information about converting your online traffic into sales.

From the studio

Read more about our latest client campaigns. Like what you see? Get in touch to see how we can add creativity to your next project.

What we do

We are a team of skilled professionals that are innovative and responsive to changes in technology and the way people view media.

Brand Strategy

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Design & Print

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Web & Digital

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Your Creative Partner

Do you have children that are starting to get into festive spirit? We have a series of fun, editable elf letters than can be downloaded, customised and printed at home.

How to edit the PDF files:

1. Open the file.
2. Type your message in the highlighted box.
3. Print at home.

From the studio

Read more about our latest client campaigns. Like what you see? Get in touch to see how we can add creativity to your next project.

What we do

We are a team of skilled professionals that are innovative and responsive to changes in technology and the way people view media.

Brand Strategy

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Design & Print

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Your Creative Partner

A lot needs to be thought about when designing and creating a school website. Every school uses their website in a different way, but a well thought out design can ensure the website is an integral part of your communication strategy.

A well designed school website can accomplish a number of things. It can help parents stay updated with latest school news, upcoming events and other important information. It can also key your selling tool, used to attract new students and make it easy for parents to contact you.

It can also help a school market themselves better by having an online presence. There is more competition for school recruitment than ever before so it is important a school promotes themselves professionally.

But unfortunately just having a website and hurrying together a site is not enough if you want your site to work for you and make an impact on your wider school community.

In this article, we will discuss 10 core features all school websites need to consider to make sure you stand out online.

1. Navigation

One of the first features to think about when designing a school website is the navigation. Each school tend to have a varying amount of pages. It is important a website is structured accordingly. As an agency with experience in working with a wide range of schools we can make suggestions. It is also important that the menu works well on both desktop devices as well as mobiles. It is important to ensure you have a fully designed and developed mobile menu.

2. Key pages

What are the pages most used by parents and other website users? If you don’t have Google Analytics on your website, ask your supplier to install this. This will allow you to analyse what are the most prominent pages on the website. If you discover term dates, school news and policies are the most viewed pages, make them accessible from the home page.

3. Three click rule

Always work to the three click rule. If a user can’t find the page or information they are looking for within three clicks the chances are they will become frustrated and leave the site all together. This links into your navigation design.

4. Your school branding

The use of your school logo and colours are very important on your school website. Your school logo needs to be placed properly on your site. It is what gives your school its recognition and allows your website users connect with you. Traditionally websites display a logo in the top left of a page, but this shouldn’t be the only please it appears. If your school logo is not digitally designed, look at updating this with a modern version.

5. Updates

It is hard to stress the importance of keeping your website up to date. If your website becomes static, your viewing figures will soon fall. Look at creating a content strategy with a timeline for when updates will be made. This might be a weekly update each Friday with news and galleries. This will keep parents up to speed with school life. Social Media links are often linked onto web pages. Just like the rest of the website, it is important this is updated.

6. Promote the website

The website is a great tool for providing information. If you align the website with your other communication methods this will mean more people use the website. If you send a SMS update to parents, link the full article back to the website. Use a website like bit.ly to create a shorter link. You can also add other downloads on the link.

7. Translate

Depending on the demographics of your school, many schools now decide to offer translate facilities on the website for accessibility. This could be a Google translate plugin that instantly translates the content on your website to any language.

8. Mobile use

Again, looking at your Google analytics data will show how many of the users of your website do so on a mobile phone. Based on schools we work with, we would imagine this is around 80% of all traffic. It is important this is considered in the design. Whilst lots of images on all pages can look well on desktop devices, it is not always mobile friendly. A well designed mobile gallery would work much better.

9. Save as PDF

We would always encourage schools to uploading files as PDF when using on the website. PDFs can be easily viewed on all devices unlike programmes such as MS Word. Try avoid uploading newsletters in MS Publisher as very few people actually have access to this programme.

10. Ofsted Check

What Ofsted require schools to publish online changes regularly. When building a new website is important to start with the statutory requirements and expand the website from there. Bookmark key pages on the Ofsted website such as:
– What maintained schools must publish online
– What academies, free schools and colleges should publish online

Want to know more about creating a well designed school website? Get in touch to find out more.

From the studio

Read more about our latest client campaigns. Like what you see? Get in touch to see how we can add creativity to your next project.

What we do

We are a team of skilled professionals that are innovative and responsive to changes in technology and the way people view media.

Brand Strategy

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Design & Print

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In 2015 MMD supported the UK & Ireland SAP User Group on a major rebrand, the first of its kind in over 20 years of trading. Their existing brand was dated and not designed with digital use in mind.

After a great deal of consultation with staff, directors and members, the MMD design team set about creating a brand that was relevant, valuable and memorable. Predominantly seen by those in the IT sector, the brand needed to appeal to their audience.

The brand was launched at the 2015 Annual Conference, an event that has continued to grow. Now called ‘Connect’, the event brings together members for a large-scale conference held at the ICC in Birmingham

Five years on from the rebrand it is great to see the logo in a range of uses and helping to grow the business.

MMD have a great working relationship with UKISUG and look forward to another five years of supporting them.

From the studio

Read more about our latest client campaigns. Like what you see? Get in touch to see how we can add creativity to your next project.

What we do

We are a team of skilled professionals that are innovative and responsive to changes in technology and the way people view media.

Brand Strategy

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Design & Print

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Web & Digital

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Your Creative Partner

During the Covid-19 pandemic we were approached by Tees Valley Sport who were looking for ideas on how to support residents during lockdown.

They were keen to provide sports equipment to encourage people to keep active whilst at home. What we suggested was a Z-card that would fold out and have a series of activities that matched the sports kit. MMD also supplied the bags that the various pieces of kit were distributed in.

Also included in the pack, and part of a wider project was supporting Tees Valley Sport with their Virtual School Games. The school games usually attracts around 1500 students who take part in an event held in Middlesbrough. During the pandemic this was not possible, so Tees Valley Sport decided to run the games online.

We designed and printed activity cards that showed how to take part in the competition and where to upload results. Over 20,000 young people took part across Teesside which Tees Valley Sport were delighted with.

Mark Skirving, Digital Director, MMD:

“Whilst lockdown has clearly been a challenging time for MMD and our clients there are some great examples of businesses adjusting to how they would usually work. This is a fantastic example of that.”

From the studio

Read more about our latest client campaigns. Like what you see? Get in touch to see how we can add creativity to your next project.

What we do

We are a team of skilled professionals that are innovative and responsive to changes in technology and the way people view media.

Brand Strategy

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Design & Print

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Since the start of the Coronavirus epidemic MMD have supported a number of businesses across the UK and Ireland as they look to transform the way they operate.

Based in Stockton-on-Tees, The Old Butchers Shop is a catering business that offer a wide range of services including a traditional shop, mobile catering vans and on-site kitchens.

However, when the pandemic started they had to change the way they run. The main switch was introducing Sunday Lunches to the menu and delivering across Teesside.

Over 200 online orders were placed in the first week and new items have now been added included afternoon teas and weekly meat packs.

MMD designed and built an e-commerce website for The Old Butchers, integrating the popular Stripe payment gateway.

Click here to visit the website.

From the studio

Read more about our latest client campaigns. Like what you see? Get in touch to see how we can add creativity to your next project.

What we do

We are a team of skilled professionals that are innovative and responsive to changes in technology and the way people view media.

Brand Strategy

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Your Creative Partner

Over the past 12 months MMD have supported Irish-based Carrakennedy National School on the design, build and support of their school website.

Carrakennedy is a small rural school in the West of Ireland, with 45 pupils attending.

MMD continue to be heavily involved in the education sector, working with schools across the UK. This was the first overseas school to benefit from the new school website platform, aimed to improve communication between schools and their communities and also be easy to maintain for non-IT professionals.

Aideen McPaul, Principal, Carrakennedy National School:

“We have been working with MMD for over a year now. We were having difficulty designing an easy to use, accessible school website and decided to look for help.

In a matter of days MMD designed and built our website from scratch. No task was too much to ask of them- at all times his responses were rapid and willing.

At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic MMD contacted me and immediately updated our website adding a home learning portal for our pupils. If I ever have a query (which is quite regular as I am not a tech savvy person) they are only a phone call or email away.

I would highly recommend using M Media Design as their professionalism and customer service are second to none.” 

From the studio

Read more about our latest client campaigns. Like what you see? Get in touch to see how we can add creativity to your next project.

What we do

We are a team of skilled professionals that are innovative and responsive to changes in technology and the way people view media.

Brand Strategy

Brand Strategy

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Design & Print

Design & Print

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Web & Digital

Web & Digital

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Your Creative Partner

We have supported Stockton Rugby Club for many years on a wide range of marketing projects. Over recent seasons the club has seen considerable growth, with over 200 minis and juniors representing the club and we are proud to have played a part in promoting the club.

Perfect for primary school children, we have designed a series of rugby-themed Activity Packs to keep young ones busy, particularly when stuck indoors.

We would love to see your work, so please share any drawings and completed puzzles on the club’s social channels – don’t forget to mention @stocktonrugby, or by using the hashtag #ourtownourclub.

You can download the full activity pack by clicking the link below. Contact team@mmediadesign.co.uk if you would like one sending in the post.

From the studio

Read more about our latest client campaigns. Like what you see? Get in touch to see how we can add creativity to your next project.

What we do

We are a team of skilled professionals that are innovative and responsive to changes in technology and the way people view media.

Brand Strategy

Brand Strategy

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Design & Print

Design & Print

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Web & Digital

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Your Creative Partner

MMD now offer our customers the opportunity to carbon balance their print by taking part in the Carbon Capture® Scheme.

Most companies; through industrial processes like production, manufacture, and distribution; are responsible for the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. CO2 emissions become trapped beneath the ozone layer, heating up the Earth’s atmosphere and leading to climate change.

One of the most effective ways to combat this is by planting trees. Trees not only absorb CO2, but they also release oxygen into the atmosphere, which improves overall air quality and cools down the atmosphere.

How does the Carbon Capture® Scheme work?

When you order from MMD, we make sure to capture the carbon emitted by the production, manufacture, and distribution of your print.

The amount of CO2 generated during this process is calculated, and the figures are passed onto the Woodland Trust along with the Carbon Capture® surcharge, which pays for the plantation of new, native UK woodland by the Woodland Trust.

The UK only features 13% tree cover, compared to a 44% average in Europe. Increasing tree cover as part of the Carbon Capture® scheme, supported by the Woodland Trust, helps to:

How does this benefit you?

Because all of our products are produced and distributed in a completely carbon neutral manner, you can display the Carbon Balanced logo on all your print.

Plus, you can rest assured that all of the paper we use is either FSC or PEFC accredited and sourced from managed, sustainable woodland.

We also offer:

From the studio

Read more about our latest client campaigns. Like what you see? Get in touch to see how we can add creativity to your next project.

What we do

We are a team of skilled professionals that are innovative and responsive to changes in technology and the way people view media.

Brand Strategy

Brand Strategy

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Design & Print

Design & Print

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Web & Digital

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