At SimpleUsability we take our social and environmental responsibilities seriously, and we’d like to help others do their bit too. We are great believers in, and wish to support, eco-friendly causes that value the environment we live in. We also appreciate that smaller companies promoting such causes often lack the knowledge, time, money, and other resources to invest in the services and assistance they need to progress. We therefore want to give these companies a helping hand in developing their business and building their audience.

To mark World Usability Day on 14th November 2006, SimpleUsability Ltd launched a new website mentoring service offering free advice to small businesses with eco-friendly, fair trade or sustainable products or services in a bid to help boost moves towards environmental sustainability. Over the course of the next year a total of 12 companies will be offered up to three months’ of website mentoring by the specially created subsidiary, SimpleUsability.org.

The WEST Yorkshire organic clothing company ‘Makes a Change Ltd’ and York based solar heating company ‘Positive Planet’ are the first to sign up to the free mentoring programme. The companies will receive help with website usability, search-engine visibility and visitor traffic analysis from SimpleUsability.org, working to make the websites as effective and commercially-successful as possible.

Founder and Managing Director of SimpleUsability Ltd Guy Redwood comments

“Most people who launch eco-friendly, or fair trade, businesses do so because of their personal ideals. Very often they have fairly limited marketing resources compared to mainstream, less environmentally-aware rivals, and hope that like-minded people hear about them and business eventually takes off.

“This creates a huge imbalance between what must happen to achieve sustainability and how people can find out about eco-friendly products and services which are more desirable in the long-term interests of the environment.

“Our mentoring will give these companies a far higher web profile and improved usability which can have a huge impact on their business success.”

Check www.simpleusability.org for more information about our new ‘eco-friendly’ service and how to get involved.