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Web Design

Having a web site is like other forms of advertising; it provides information about your business and encourages customers to choose you rather than your competitors.

Internet use is growing rapidly. More and more people are using the Internet to search for businesses that provide the goods and services they are interested in, so having a website can be compared to a phone book entry. It gives potential customers a way to find you, and gives you an opportunity to present information that they may be interested in. But unlike a phone book entry, having a web site allows you to present a great deal of information attractively and effectively - ensuring that the information contained is always current.

Your web site can also perform a function unlike any of these traditional forms of advertising. It can interact with your customers. For example, it can obtain and record their comments, retain survey results or respond to their search request.

In addition to its usefulness as a promotion tool, a web site has the potential to provide your business automation benefits, including increased convenience for your customers and possible reduction in costs for you.

Because the Internet is available to a global audience, it's sometimes thought of as only being useful for mail-order businesses or huge companies. Businesses that serve a specific geographical area may overlook the benefits described here. Remember that your customers are using the Internet along with the rest of the world!

Our Philosophy

Our approach to web design is heavily based around standards and accessibility. We believe in clean designs that display consistency across all web browsers, in addition to other devices such as PDAs, braille readers and mobile phones. We don't use flashing backgrounds and animations and will not consume a visitor's bandwidth to display something that could have been simply text based. By adhering to standards and accessibility our sites are fast, attractive, affordable, easy to maintain and above all scalable.

What are Web Standards?

Standards on the web are governed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which comprises of member groups from around the world. These groups set the standards for the various types of code and technologies that may be included within a typical website. Although not mandatory, we believe that supporting these standards in our website projects, helps to advance standardisation and allow new standards to be introduced and eventually implemented.

All of our website projects adhere to these standards, either to a transitional or strict level. You can learn more about the differences between Transitional and Strict document types by clicking here. We use XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Stylesheets) when implementing a design, which helps us to separate content and presentation.

If you would like to contact us to discuss more about your web design project then please click here or get in touch directly on 01633 647832.

Why Use Standards?

  • Speed - As content and presentation are kept separate, page source code is kept to a minimum, which consequently improves the speed at which a site is displayed
  • Maintenance - Presentation code can be edited without having to make changes to the page content, resulting in extended maintainability. In addition to this, shorter development times not only reduce costs but free up resources sooner (thereby increasing opportunity)
  • Portability - Due to the way we code our sites, they are viewable on a varierty of browsers (including those older than 4 years) in addition to a number of other devices such as mobile phones, PDAs and braille readers
  • Reduced Bandwidth - Standards compliant sites are less bloated than traditionally coded websites and benefit from reduced bandwidth benefits. The file size per page saved by switching to a standards compliant design can have a significant imact on larger sites
  • Improved User Experience - Its no secret that a user would prefer to visit a clean, fast website than one that takes an age to load an introduction animation. By allowing visitors to access the information they are looking for quickly and easily, they are more likely to return.
  • Search Engines - By using cleaner code, our sites are more likely to be indexed by the leading search engines.

What is Accessibility?

We believe accessibility is a way of ensuring that a website is available to those visitors with disabilites and at the same time to people using various operating systems and web browsers. When designing websites, it is important to reach as large an audience as possible. This includes those who may have disabilities or those not using Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. Designing with web standards goes some way to resolving this issue, but there are accessibility features that can also be implemented into a design. All of our sites encompass a number of of these features that those with disabilities can utilise if they so wish.

Click here to view our Accessibility Statement

Our Approach

  • Assessment - After initial contact, an assessment of what you require is carried out. Information regarding any content you have is gathered and if necessary, research is undertaken for any specialist areas. If you have an existing domain name and / or hosting service then details of these will also need to be obtained.
  • Plan - A rough plan is produced for your approval, which will indicate a loose sitemap (collection and order of page links), proposed file and folder names and a basic layout.
  • Design - The home page is coded to a compliant level and will include elements such as page titles, colours and a navigational components to illustrate how the various categories and sections will be displayed.
  • Implementation - The site is constructed to include the various content that has been provided. A suitable standards compliant stylesheet is produced to control the overall look and feel of the site. A test location is provided under which the site will be contained.
  • Feedback - Your thoughts and comments, in addition to any changes that need to be made, are gathered and implemented. This section is closely linked to the Testing section.
  • Testing - Thorough testing will be carried out to ensure that the site works correctly in a number of different browsers. User friendliness (such as navigation) is also tested. All pages are validated against the W3C's coding recommendation.
  • Deployment - Your site is uploaded either to your preferred web hosting service or to one of our approved web servers.
  • Search Engine Optimisation - During the design process, your site would have been optimised for search engine indexing purposes. Further steps are taken once your site has been deployed to ensure that you are reaching your target audience. If necessary, you will be advised on more advanced forms of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) such as pay-per-click schemes and Google AdWord campaigns.