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Quick Start Guide

Understanding your business

This may sound like a pretty straight forward question, but it's amazing how many business' don't ask themselves; "what do we want from our web site?" More »

Understanding your audience

Develop your web site around the needs of your audience.Wait! "It's our web site, surely we should build it around what we want?" WRONG More »

Developing site content

Always remember: content is key. In most cases this is the only reason people visit web sites. If the information they find is of poor quality or out of date then you will soon lose them as a site visitor. More »

Web site design

Designing web sites is a complex business, as a designer you have to put yourself in the shoes of both the intended audience and the owner of the site. So what do you look for in a web designer? Before we go in to that it's worth turning the clock back to the early days of web site 'design'. More »

Ongoing development

A web site is like a puppy - not just for christmas, for life. You may have spent months preparing the material for your web site, once that information is live however you need to devote time to keeping that information up to date. More »

Promoting your site

Creating a well-designed website is the first step in your internet marketing strategy. Once the website has been created and optimized, there are further techniques to employ that will drive traffic to your website for successful, long-term results. More »

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Site Design

Web site design: what to look for
Designing web sites is a complex business, as a designer you have to put yourself in the shoes of both the intended audience and the owner of the site. So what do you look for in a web designer? Before we go in to that it's worth turning the clock back to the early days of web site 'design'.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, web sites were primarily made up of text, very simple logos and some form of back ground image. The 'design' aspects of the early sites were minimal, more often than not they were put together by 'techies' who considered function to be more important than design.

Since those early days we have seen a tremendous increase in the computing power of the PC and also the increased bandwidth that is available to the everyday user. It used to be the case that the only place you saw a 512Kb internet connection was in the Universities, these days 2Mb is common place. Why is this important for web design? Well, PC's that can display a greater number of colours on bigger and bigger screens and internet connections that don't clog up with large graphic files means designers can, if they wish, be a little more creative in their designs.

These days there are a plethora of different designs out there for users to clap their eyes on, some work, some don't. While I would never argue that the original web site designers (ie the techies) got it right, one aspect of their approach however is worth remembering: a web site must have function, it must allow users to carry out their business on a web site with minimal fuss.

Our approach to web site design is Keep It Simple, if you consider the following issues when looking for a web designer you shouldn't go far wrong:

• Look carefully at real live web sites that they've developed, never look at them on their screens - always get a list of web site addresses from them, take them back to your office or home and look at them in your own time and on equipment that may not be as super slick as their own. This will give you a good idea of how well their designs work in the real world, it's easy to make a web site look great on a big screen and download super fast when the web site actually resides on the designers PC instead of the internet.
• Ask them what their thoughts are regarding:
  • Site navigation: remember it must be as easy as possible for users to navigate your site, your aim is for the average user to find what they are looking for within 3 clicks.
  • Download times: while the advent of high speed broadband has made this less of an issue, it is still important to remember that you need to deliver your web site to your audience as quickly as possible. Super high resolution graphics and images still need to be downloaded when you view a site and only hinder progress, such graphics should never be placed on the home page: when users visit your home page they have not implicitly requested to view large images, they simply want to go to your home page. If they subsequently click on an image to view a larger, higher resolution, version then fine but don't make them download anything that could be deemed unnecessary on the home page.
• Ask them about their background: have they trained as an out and out web designer or are they a traditional designer (for print) who has turned their hand to web design? While there is nothing wrong with traditional, print based, designers designing web sites, in our experience they tend to forget the overall picture and go over the top with the design. Remember, when designing for print the design has to be big, bold, beautiful and glossy - this doesn't necessarily work for the web.
• Ask them to story board or sketch a few ideas off the top of their head: this will give you feel for their design flare.
• Have a good look at their own web site: is it easy to use? does it show off their skills? Sometimes you find that web design agencies develop their own web site to be a showcase without giving much thought to what their potential clientele want from their web site (hopefully you won't have found that with ours!).