Providing the building blocks

TO COINCIDE WITH A SET OF THEIR SUPERB WEB TEMPLATES ON THIS MONTH’S CD, WE CHAT TO THE A4FLASH TEAM ABOUT WHY THEY STAND OUT FROM A PRETTY COMPETITIVE MARKET AND HOW THEY DO SUCH A GREAT JOB

Firstly, how would you describe the service that WebUnion Media Ltd /a4flash.com /a4desk.com provides in your own words?
We provide a wide range of ready-made design and multimedia programming solutions for developers worldwide, empower them with our professional design skills and programming expertise, and help them focus on their core competencies.

How would you classify your majority customer base, and what kind of requirements do they generally look for in your products?
Most of our customers are website developers, advertising agencies, and business consultants from the US, Canada and UK. Some of them just buy a template for quick usage. Many of them are interested in our customisation services and require fast turnaround, responsive customer support, and most importantly – an ability to understand their requirements and deliver on time.

In a web world where creative originality over content is so important, how much emphasis do you place on providing templates that can easily be personalised?
We update our templates gallery on a weekly basis, and customers can purchase the full source code file of their selected template to customise it in any way they might want. Our easy Flash-building software – A4Desk – provides over 130 templates which can run directly on your desktop or notebook, and can easily adjust colour, sound effects and font sizes through simple mouse clicks.

Which products or template types are proving most popular with punters these days?
A4Desk is a hot selling product now, as many customers like its ability to build websites in minutes without any coding! This is an excellent way for them to create sites for entrance level clients, or the first ‘mockup’ or ‘demo’ for more advanced projects. They can later purchase the full source code file of their selected template for full customisation, or contact us to customise the template for them.

From the little guy starting his first home page to the serious eCommerce outfit, what price points do you have for delivering great site templates?
For starters, our A4MenuBuilder package with six Flash menu headers is available for just $19.95 (£11). Or he can download our entire A4Desk software, with over 130 templates for free trial (it shows a Demo button before registration). With just $89.95 (£48), he can register any number of templates during a threemonth subscription period. We have many customers starting their first web design company by using these two packages.

Are your template products designed by an inhouse team or are you purely a reseller? How does that work either way?
After reading the above, you know we are a true development team – we develop our own templates, which differentiate us from those resellers.

Would you ever accept original template submissions from budding designers if they were commercially viable?
Yes, we always welcome exchange of ideas.

If you weren’t doing what you do, what business would WebUnion Media Ltd /a4flash.com /a4desk.com take on instead and why?
Again, we’re not just in the template game – our advantage is that we have a strong team of designers, plus a strong team of web programmers and Windows programmers. Our goal is to develop web and software solutions for developers worldwide, in order to help them deliver web projects more easily, more quickly and more professionally.

What is it in general that sets WebUnion Media Ltd/a4flash. com/a4desk.com apart from other web template vendors in this market?
We understand that every developer’s needs are different and the template is just the very first step for them to start a website or multimedia project.
We do not see ourselves as just another template vendor who provides fancy template designs. We position ourselves as the ‘invisible development team’ behind our customer, working with them to develop their website and multimedia projects.
In addition to hundreds of Flash and HTML templates available on our website, we often work with developers closely to help them with their entire project, including template customisation, programming and database integration. We have a strong programming team, and have developed PHP and Windows software products which help designers to develop Flash websites and utilise our templates faster and more easily, without any learning curve.
Many web template vendors on the Internet are really just vendors who buy and sell templates. Our customers find it much easier to communicate with us about their customisation needs, because they’re working with the actual developer of these templates. We often have customers who have bought templates from another template site, but then come to us for customisation services because our developers can truly understand their needs – and more importantly, are able to deliver what they really require.