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these pages outline our web design objectives and the process we would go through with you to develop your new website
Web design objectives
We normally design websites based upon the following principles:
- The web site should be designed to suit the Target Audience
- The main focus of the website is good, useful content
- The web site presentation should be clean, clear and attractive
- There should be common Navigation elements on every web page to ensure everything is easy to find
- The web pages should be designed to work well in Search Engines
- The web pages should be design to be universally accessible
- The web pages should be designed to download quickly
In practice this means
Our websites focus on content and clear presentation. The graphic design elements are normally subtle and complementary rather than the main focus.
Our websites are designed using CSS style sheets extensively rather than using the traditional table based design techniques used by most web designers. This results in inherently more efficient web sites that appeal to search engines and are fundamentally accessible on all web enabled devices and therefore designed to satisfying the Disability Accessibility legal requirements.
Our websites do not usually include any animations, intro pages, flash movies or other toys. They have their place of course, but are usually not suitable for most commercial web sites.
We pride ourselves on knowing how to build effective websites. We focus on good presentation and content. We know what makes a website work effectively in search engines and understand all about disability accessibility requirements.
So what is the web design process?
The web site design process we adopt is flexible and will be adapted to suit clients and projects however it is likely to follow a pattern something like the following:
Meeting:
Design Ideas: We will ask you for your ideas on the look you want for your website. If you are unsure, it is a good idea for you to pick a small selection of websites you like the look of and we can use these as a basis for discussing possible web designs for your site.
Content: We will ask you for your text content. It is a good idea to draft your text content upfront. It helps focus us on what your website is really about and gives a better basis to design the website around - otherwise it is likely too much emphasis will be put on the graphic design. It also means that your website is likely to be completed much faster.
Search Engines: We will discuss search engine rankings and the impact on your draft text content. We will explain what works best in the search engines and give you pointers on how to amend your text to target people and search engines. By default the design and coding of the web pages will initially give good Search Engine results.
Disability Accessibility: The the impact of the legal requirements on your website will be discussed with you. By default the design and coding of the web pages are made to current Disability Accessibility best practice.
How do I submit the content and ideas of the site to you? - You can write the content into a word document or as a PDF then email it to us. Or you can just write it down on a piece of paper and post it to us. Photographs and pictures etc can be emailed or put on a disc and posted. Most clients also have some idea of the type of site and how they want it to look - this often ties in with company brochures or logos etc. or we can work entirely from scratch. (Please be aware of copyright - it is your responsibility to check that all content, photos etc are not copyrighted).
Draft Web page graphic Designs:
Several (3 normally) design concepts based on your requirements will be produced. It will usually take around a week to provide these initial web site designs.
These will be graphic designs and not real web pages. (They will represent a snapshot mockup of web pages and will not look exactly like the real web pages - they can't as they are fixed, nothing changes and text renders less clearly on graphics - but they give a reasonable representation.)
The draft designs will be available online and we will ask for feedback from you - good or bad - design is a very personal thing so we don't expect our clients to necessarily like what we like.
Refine Web Designs:
Then based on your feedback, revised graphic design(s) will be completed until the final web design concept is acceptable to both parties.
Create template web page:
We will then create a template web page - this will be a real working web page which will be the basis of the website. This will normally take around a week. We will ask you to review the design again at this stage as you will now be looking at a real web page not a graphic mock-up. Hopefully at this stage design amendments will be minor.
Hosting and Domain Name:
At this template stage a hosting arrangement and domain name will be required to put the web pages on. They are placed temporarily on our site but we would prefer to work with the actual hosting arrangement as it saves doing some things twice and ensures the web pages actually work properly from the hosting arrangement.
Create web pages and review text content:
After we have a working web page template we will then start creating the rest of the web site pages and put their content in place. At this stage we will also review the text content you have provided and likely to make suggestions for changes for search engine optimisation.
Each web page or section will be made available for you to review as soon as they are ready.
How long will it take to create my website?
This is only a general idea and it is likely your website might not follow the general pattern.
You may be thinking you want your website completed in the next 2 weeks - well if it is a small number of straight-forward pages, you know exactly what you want and have the text ready - it may be achievable.
Our experience is that it is seldom this straight-forward as most clients need to be guided through the process of deciding what to put on the website and drafting content. This is your website and we will require significant input from you in terms of defining the objectives of the website, providing the text content and possibly images, reviewing designs, discussing search engine optimisation requirements and so on.
