The NSS Mystery Surfer trawls the internet to find the latest website developments by companies involved in the stone indstry. This month he discovered powerPerfector have launched a new website at www.powerperfector.com.

I know powerPerfector is not really anything to do with the stone industry, but most quarries and stone processing companies would benefit from installing a powerPerfector Voltage Power Optimisation (VPO) unit to reduce their electricity consumption and, therefore, their bills. I figured that was justification enough for spending some time looking at the company’s new website.

According to the new website there are around 180,000 powerPerfector VPO units installed worldwide in all kinds of businesses from pubs, prisons and hospitals to nine of National Express bus company’s garages. If 180,000 sounds a lot, consider there are about 5million businesses in the UK alone.

Nevertheless, 180,000 is impressive and powerPerfector has maintained its ‘Greenguage’ ticker from the old website to show just how much electricity, money and carbon dioxide emmisions all those installations are saving.

The Greenguage appears on every page with the continually accruing savings increasing in real time as you look at the website.

When I visited, there was a saving to date in electricity of around 1.4billion kW hours. That had reduced clients bills by more than £120.6million and reduced CO2 emmisions by more than 750,000tonnes.

The Greenguage is a clever little device. It means there is something with a pound sign on it showing a large and continually growing number – and marketeers say the £ sign draws almost as much attention as the word ‘sex’.

The device also means the page has something on it that is constantly changing, which, again, adds interest – and some of the second and third level pages are text heavy and benefit from a little light relief.

Not that the text ever becomes overwhelming. The site is comfortably designed with a green a blue theme (who said blue and green should not be seen?) with areas that you pick out specifically for your field of interest – the case studies, for example, are organised under headings such as ‘Government departments’, ‘Leisure and tourism’ and ‘Manufacturing’.

When you go to the case study section that interests you, the case studies scroll through with, as far as I could see, no way for the viewer to move on quickly to a company of interest.

There are, however, the logos of the companies included on display and clicking on them downloads a PDF of the case study to your computer.

Clicking on ‘Read more…’ as the case studies scroll online has the same result, rather than just taking you to another web page with the full story. I know that irritates some people. Personally I don’t mind that much. It is no great effort to have to sweep them into the Trash when you have finished looking at them.

One thing I do like websites to include is contact details. Some of the biggest companies demonstrate their ‘sod the customer’ attitude by making it all but impossible to contact them. powerPerfector has the company’s postal and email adresses on every page. It also has a phone number, even if it is an 0845 premium rate one, so you will have to pay extra for the privilege of using it.

Typically, 40%-60% of the call fee on 0845 numbers goes to the organisation answering the phone, so I suppose eventually all companies will have these premium rate numbers.

Overall, the new powerPerfector site is a good example of what a company with confidence in itself and its product can do. It is clean, straightforward, includes a lot of confidence-inspiring customer testimonials and tries to provide information not obfuscation. The aim of the site seems to have been well defined and achieved.