History

Ross Knight has been at the helm of Digital Design Scotland since its inception in 2001.

In the early days the services provided by the business included both website and graphic design. The company developed a diverse client base between 2001 and 2004 and during this time it carried out work for a number of large organisations, these included a Scottish Premiership Football Club (Heart of Midlothian), a national Retail Lighting Outlet (Cotterell Light Centres), a multinational Property Group (IBS-Group), a Theatre Company (Stellar Quines) and a number of renowned Photographers, Artists & Designers (Dan Tuffs, Martin Hunter, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert). Projects were also completed for many local businesses including those involved in the Hotel, Restaurant, Engineering and Golf industries.

In 2004 the business expanded its services to include large format digital printing. It became the first design studio in Scotland to produce ‘ready to hang’ fine art canvases for retail customers. The demand for this product was so great that the firm shifted direction to take advantage of this expanding market.

Between 2004 and 2008 Digital Design Scotland became highly respected throughout the UK as a top quality producer of canvas prints and photo gifts. The business received unbeatable customer feedback. Ross was responsible for building an eCommerce website that competed against large international competitors in the print industry. This website regularly appeared high in Internet search engines, much higher than some sites belonging to companies that had marketing budgets running into many thousands of pounds.

Ross’s skill in optimising the website resulted in approximately 80% of Digital Design Scotland’s turnover being generated over the Internet.

The success achieved in obtaining orders over the Internet led to a new service being offered to existing clients. This involved Ross visiting customers to analyse the effectiveness of their own website sales strategy. If it was found to be lacking in any way a proposal was submitted on how best to promote and develop this area of their business. An accepted proposal would result in Ross optimising the customer’s site to improve its visibility on the net.

This service proved so popular with clients that a decision was made to extend it to include a feature that included new website design and build. The new sites being built were fully maintained by the client, but analysed and optimised monthly by Digital Design Scotland. The popularity of this extended service was so great that the print side of the business was gradually wound down to allow the firm to focus on developing closer working relationships clients who were looking to maximise their business’s online presence.