Clear, concise website promotes commonsense approach to SCADA

Paul Hurst, managing director of P4A explains the design principles on which the site was built: "We started out by asking what do working automation and system integration engineers want to know and made sure that information was prominent on the site."

To this end the site has a home paged designed to lead visitors directly to the information they want. The site is structured to give clear information about each of the various industrial control software packages available from P4A, and then separate sections detail the literature and other support materials available.

Another section gives clear and concise pricing information, which Paul says is something of an innovation: "Buyers like to know about costs, but too many websites are coy about this. Our pricing policy is straightforward, avoids hidden costs like licence renewals and service charges and is pitched to ensure we are always very competitive in the market."

There was a balance to be struck when it came to the "˜About P4A' section. When choosing sophisticated, long-life, mission-critical products like SCADA, clients need to know enough about their supplier to have confidence in the products, expertise, and service provision - both now and for many years into the future. Thus, P4A needed to include a lot of pertinent information about itself.

However, it was also noted that many sites are little more than vehicles for companies to sing their own praises, P4A worked with users to identify what details to include and what would be better left out.

Paul says: "We also included similar information about our principal supplier Progea, Italy's leading innovator in software for industrial automation and visualisation. A separate section focuses on its main product range, Movicon. In the same section we also give general technical information about control technology, SCADA in the UK, industrial PCs and HMI (human machine interfaces). Thus, all the relevant background information is grouped together in one section."

The site also maintains an ever-expanding news section that is designed to provide insight into the uses and capabilities of P4A's products, its services and support provision. The aim is that new stories will be added regularly and that they will be well written and interesting so that visitors keep coming back to the site, where they will learn a little bit more about SCADA and P4A each time.

Paul sums up: "We think we have developed a site that reflects our no-nonsense, simple and practical approach to control engineering. It is based on user requirements and designed to that they can easily find the information they need."

Visit the new website at www.products4automation.co.uk.