Tom Glass Creative Director at theEword

Tom Glass: Creative Director

Tom Glass co-founded theEword with CEO Al Mackin in 2006. As Creative Director, Tom leads the design and development team, planning and implementing client site builds and overhauls. The department aims to produce slick, eye-catching websites, which are easy to use and functional.

Most importantly, Tom's role at theEword is to ensure sites are commercially optimised, which lead to conversions and make clients happy by bringing in sales leads. Since working in this specialist field Tom has become a site conversion specialist, which means he is constantly looking at ways to improve sites or pages and continuously testing to increase conversions.

Early success

Tom has over 10 years' experience in commercial website design. Before the inception of theEword, he came to prominence in the role of Web Master at Incom Telecoms, the UK's leading distributor of business telecommunications products.

This challenging position required Tom to take sole responsibility for the marketing, design and site development of three websites belonging to the company: Incom, Onestopcoms and Topcomms. Creative thinking and technical expertise combined to great effect, and all three sites soared from relative online obscurity to the first page of Google. Tom also succeeded in optimising some of Incom's most competitive products to reach position one in Google.

Developing talent

Exhibiting early ambition, Tom originally worked as a graphic designer for 3 years in his native Somerset. He decided to transfer his skills to the web and completed a BA Honours degree in Multimedia at the University of Staffordshire.

After leaving university, Tom honed his skills in e-commerce with roles that required him to maintain sites for companies such as Shopdirect, Abound, Additions and Innovations. As a designer working alongside the development team, this is where he first came into contact with commercial web design. He also became aware of the potential benefits of driving conversions through design and usability. Tom later made use of this knowledge when he took a position at Celltalk PLC, where he led the online design team in creating sites, and optimising the user interface.

Tom has also designed websites for charities, combining his professional skills with a long-standing interest in fund raising.