When you know something it can be difficult to remember that other people don’t and avoid sneering at or patronising them. It can also be difficult to avoid using the language of your expertise to explain what you mean.

New Image Stone in Staines, Surrey, have managed to avoid the pitfall on their new website… mostly.

Their description of slate as “a naturally laminated metamorphic rock“ or sandstone as sedimentary rock might just send some consumers off to Wikipedia for enlightenment, but basically this site covers a lot of ground without slipping into the stone industry vernacular.

It is easy to navigate and easy to understand. It answers a lot of questions many visitors will not even know they wanted to ask. And it does it in a way that does not alienate the layman visitor who the company want to convert into their customers.

There are tabs across the top that take you to categories explaining the materials, products and services offered by New Image.

Within each of those categories are more tabs that slide up bite-size packets of information in intelligible text with (generally) appropriate pictures.

There is enough information to produce the instant experts that customers like to become when they are buying products and enough pictures of projects to inspire them to choose stone for their projects.

Elements of featured projects that use stone are clearly identified and the name of the stone used stated. For example, where a bar and a floor are shown it is pointed out that the bar is the quartzite and the floor is ceramic tiles. And in a bathroom, it is stated that the Crema Marfil forms the floor and walls in case anyone might confuse it with the dark wood of the furniture, perhaps.

You can also click through to a good selection of swatches of stone under the separate categories of marble, granite, limestone, etc.

New Image say their stone comes from around the world but do not address issues of ethics or carbon footprinting. If the comments of the designers who wrote about their work in the November issue of this magazine are anything to go by, they are probably right not to do so, as these do not seem to be issues that are concerning customers. Prices do concern them, but there are no prices on the site.

The issues they do mention are the naming of stones (they say they do not rebrand anything), maintenance (they have a link to the Lithofin website), and their membership of Stone Federation Great Britain (again with a link to the Federation’s website).

Search engine optimisation is not bad. Enter “stone Staines” and they appear on the first page of Google, although if you use “marble”, “granite” or “worktops” instead of “stone” they do not – or, at least, didn’t when I tried. But then, this is a new site.

And a good site it is. Rating: 88%