Marcus Richards
Reactive are an award-winning London digital agency established for over 17 years. Our services include web design, brand identity design, online marketing, web site hosting and maintenance. Our target markets are premium SMEs and small enterprise level companies.
We have considerable experience in B2B design, especially financial and property sectors.
Tell us about yourself?
I began my career in web design and development in the late ’90s, and I noticed that all businesses, however large or small, need a website.
I wanted to create a design agency that is dedicated to web design and brand identity creation. I was fortunate enough to begin working in digital design when web design and digital design were first taking shape as a new medium.
The internet was just becoming accessible to consumers. It was an exciting time.
I started my own digital agency in 2004. Since then we’ve concentrated on web design and brand identity design. Online marketing plays a big part in what we do too.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
When I started my business, I worked alone from a home office. It made sense. I wanted to save money and to do that I needed to keep my overheads low. With the benefit of hindsight, I think that was a bad idea.
The reason is, when I did eventually move out to a shared office, I met a lot. of business owners who needed London web design services. The money I spent on rent easily paid for itself. I wish I had begun networking sooner.
What problem does your business solve?
We help businesses and organisations present their products or service online to their chosen marketplace.
A typical client of ours are either a startup who require a new brand identity and website design from scratch, or an established business or organisation with a need to refresh their existing communications, either because the brand identity and website appear dated, the technology is no longer supported, or often because a business has changed direction and as a result needs to refine its message.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
Our creative solutions are guided by key marketing principles, ensuring that the work we do for any company is aligned to the needs of their chosen marketplace.
As such, all our projects begin with the careful writing of a design brief, which is the document that will underpin the project from concept to completion.
It is within this briefing document where we take care to understand the client’s marketing objectives and target audience. We also discuss any competitors and the typical user journey within the website for each stakeholder group.
What is your magic sauce?
Web design is a competitive marketplace and very often our challenge is to distinguish ourselves from smaller agencies, freelancers and outsourcing companies who deliver work at lower cost.
Once a client sees the quality of our work then I think they realise the difference that hiring a professional web design agency brings. However, for smaller clients who have a limited budget we understand that it is difficult to make that financial commitment to employ a design agency.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
The business is currently run by the founder who is also the creative director. Our plan is to bring in an operations manager so the founder can concentrate more on the design side of the business and will be more able to build a larger team of creatives so that we can take on more work in future.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Design & technology are constantly evolving and we need to respond quickly to changes in business as well as keep up with design trends and technological advances. Our staff are young and ambitious and keen to keep up with new and emerging trends in both website design and branding.
Like all businesses we faced challenges during the pandemic mostly relating to staff being off work and the unpredictability of knowing whether we would be working from the office or from home.
Fortunately, our London web designers were busier than usual during the pandemic as businesses shift attention to working online. We’re now hopefully in post pandemic phase now and we’re seeing a return to normality with flexible working being a popular choice amongst our staff.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We work best with those clients we know well. These have primary been in financial web design and the design work we have done in the property sector.
In particular, we work with private equity clients, and investment houses. These are the sectors that we have concentrated on most over the years mainly because they suit our design style which is professional and discreet which works well for premium businesses operating in these market sectors.
Check us out at: https://www.web-designlondon.co.uk/
