Web Design

We understand that different businesses and marketplaces need particular types of search engine optimisation, which could mean completely different approaches or just slight changes in current emphasis. The point being we appreciate that one size does not fit all. Bespoke search engine optimisation services that accentuate your brand and complement your wider marketing strategy are the best way to cultivate new visitors and get better online exposure. We can outline a strategy that will give you prominence for key terms on search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing, whilst being transparent enough to accommodate your voice.

Engage and inspire visitors to your site.

As part of our proven approach to website planning and following on from identifying your goals and objectives, our design and usability experts will wotk closely with you to create a website design for your business which reflects your values and engages your customers.
Through usability best practice and our market and user orientated approach, we specialise in helping our clients maximise the number of visitor to customer conversions - again and again.

Our clients' visitor and sales numbers speak for themselves and with us, you'll find an experienced, business-orientated team with a personable approach...and we speak your language.

The Design Process

The Web Site Design and Development Process

There are numerous steps in the web site design and development process. From gathering initial information, to the creation of your web site, and finally to maintenance to keep your web site up to date and current.
The exact process will vary slightly from client to client, but the basics are generally the same.

1. Information Gathering
2. Planning
3. Design
4. Development
5. Testing and Delivery
6. Maintenance

Phase One: Information Gathering

The first step in designing a successful web site is to gather information. Many things need to be taken into consideration when the look and feel of your site is created.
This first step is actually the most important one, as it involves a solid understanding of the company it is created for. It involves a good understanding of you – what your business goals and dreams are, and how the web can be utilized to help you achieve those goals.
It is important that we will start off by asking a lot of questions to help them understand your business and your needs in a web site.
Certain things to consider are:

• Purpose
  What is the purpose of the site? Do you want to provide information, promote a service, sell a product… ?
• Goals
  What do you hope to accomplish by building this web site? Two of the more common goals are either to make money or share information.
• Target Audience
  Is there a specific group of people that will help you reach your goals? It is helpful to picture the “ideal” person you want to visit your web site. Consider their age, sex or interests – this will later help determine the best design style for your site.
• Content
  What kind of information will the target audience be looking for on your site? Are they looking for specific information, a particular product or service, online ordering…?

Phase Two: Planning

Using the information gathered from phase one, it is time to put together a plan for your web site. This is the point where a site map is developed.
The site map is a list of all main topic areas of the site, as well as sub-topics, if applicable. This serves as a guide as to what content will be on the site, and is essential to developing a consistent, easy to understand navigational system. The end-user of the web site – aka your customer – must be kept in mind when designing your site. These are, after all, the people who will be learning about your service or buying your product. A good user interface creates an easy to navigate web site, and is the basis for this.
During the planning phase, we will also help you decide what technologies should be implemented. Elements such as interactive forms, ecommerce, flash, etc. are discussed when planning your web site.

Phase Three: Design

Drawing from the information gathered up to this point, it’s time to determine the look and feel of your site.
Target audience is one of the key factors taken into consideration. A site aimed at teenagers, for example, will look much different than one meant for a financial institution. As part of the design phase, it is also important to incorporate elements such as the company logo or colors to help strengthen the identity of your company on the web site.
We will create one or more prototype designs for your web site. This is typically a .jpg image of what the final design will look like. Often times you will be sent an email with the mock-ups for your web site.
Either way, we will allow you to view your project throughout the design and development stages. The most important reason for this is that it gives you the opportunity to express your likes and dislikes on the site design.
In this phase, communication between both you and we will is crucial to ensure that the final web site will match your needs and taste. It is important that you work closely with we will, exchanging ideas, until you arrive at the final design for your web site.
Then development can begin…

Phase Four: Development

The developmental stage is the point where the web site itself is created. At this time, we will take all of the individual graphic elements from the prototype and use them to create the actual, functional site.
This is typically done by first developing the home page, followed by a “shell” for the interior pages. The shell serves as a template for the content pages of your site, as it contains the main navigational structure for the web site. Once the shell has been created, we will take your content and distribute it throughout the site, in the appropriate areas.
Elements such as interactive contact forms, flash animations or ecommerce shopping carts are implemented and made functional during this phase, as well.
This entire time, we will continue to make your in-progress web site available to you for viewing, so that you can suggest any additional changes or corrections you would like to have done.
On the technical front, a successful web site requires an understanding of front-end web development. This involves writing valid XHTML / CSS code that complies to current web standards, maximizing functionality, as well as accessibility for as large an audience as possible.
This is tested in the next phase…

Phase Five: Testing and Delivery

At this point, we will attend to the final details and test your web site. They will test things such as the complete functionality of forms or other scripts, as well last testing for last minute compatibility issues (viewing differences between different web browsers), ensuring that your web site is optimized to be viewed properly in the most recent browser versions.
A good web designer is one who is well versed in current standards for web site design and development. The basic technologies currently used are XHTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). As part of testing, we will check to be sure that all of the code written for your web site validates. Valid code means that your site meets the current web development standards – this is helpful when checking for issues such as cross-browser compatibility as mentioned above.
Once you give we will final approval, it is time to deliver the site. An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program is used to upload the web site files to your server. Once these accounts have been setup, and your web site uploaded to the server, the site should be put through one last run-through. This is just precautionary, to confirm that all files have been uploaded correctly, and that the site continues to be fully functional.
This marks the official launch of your site, as it is now viewable to the public.

Phase Six: Maintenance

The development of your web site is not necessarily over, though. One way to bring repeat visitors to your site is to offer new content or products on a regular basis. We will be more than happy to continue working together with you, to update the information on your web site. We offer maintenance packages at reduced rates, based on how often you anticipate making changes or additions to your web site.
If you prefer to be more hands on, and update your own content, there is something called a CMS (Content Management System) that can be implemented to your web site. This is something that would be decided upon during the Planning stage. With a CMS, we will utilize online software to develop a database driven site for you.
A web site driven by a CMS gives you the ability to edit the content areas of the web site yourself. You are given access to a back-end administrative area, where you can use an online text editor (similar to a mini version of Microsoft Word). You’ll be able to edit existing content this way, or if you are feeling more adventurous, you can even add new pages and content yourself. The possibilities are endless!
It’s really up to you as far as how comfortable you feel as far as updating your own web site. Some people prefer to have all the control so that they can make updates to their own web site the minute they decide to do so. Others prefer to hand off the web site entirely, as they have enough tasks on-hand that are more important for them to handle directly.
That’s where the help of a we will comes in, once again, as they can take over the web site maintenance for you – one less thing for you to do is always a good thing in these busy times!
Other constant maintenance type items include SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SES (Search Engine Submission). This is the optimization of you web site with elements such as title, description and keyword tags which help your web site achieve higher rankings in the search engines. The previously mentioned code validation is something that plays a vital role in SEO, as well.
There are a lot of details involved in optimizing and submitting your web site to the search engines – enough to warrant it’s own post. This is a very important step, because even though you now have a web site, you need to make sure that people can find it!

Typical Web Site Design and Development Milestones

We are often asked how long it takes to design and develop a web site. There is no exact answer to this, as the time will vary based on the complexity of the project, how quickly you respond to requests for feedback and approval of certain stages, as well as how large your web site is.

For the most part, however most web sites can be completed within 4-6 weeks. There are a number of variables involved – in addition to your timely response to feedback and approval requests, the scope of work will greatly affect the timeline, as well. For example, if you are having us design and develop a custom theme, and plan to add all of the content yourself, the average turnaround time will be considerably shorter than if you are having us develop all of the interior pages for you (based on your provided content).

Below is an typical timeline for the design and development of a web site.

Preliminary Design: 1 Week

After we have discussed your web site needs and decide on a plan of action, we send you a contract and invoice. A signed contract and 50% deposit reserve your start date on our development schedule.

Once your start date arrives, we begin working on the preliminary design for your web site. This takes 1 week for us to complete. At this point, we give you access to our Client Studio, so that you can review the preliminiary design for your site.

Design Revisions: 2-3 Business Days to 1 Week Per Round (Rinse and Repeat)

Once you’ve had a chance to look over the initial designs, you have the opportunity to provide feedback or request changes. Ideally you’ll get back to us in 1-2 business days, but we’ve had some clients take a week or more to get back to us. This is the type of thing that delays the project completion date. So how long this stage takes is really up to you…

However, once you do get back to us with any revisions, the typical turnaround time for relatively simple changes is 2-3 business days. Major changes to the design or requests for an entirely new design concept will take 1 week. We continue this process of fine tuning the design until we have your approval.

Development of Primary Theme Files: 1 Week

Once we’ve received your approval on the design, we are able to move onto the development stage. This is where we take the design and create the XHTML, CSS and PHP code that make up the functional website theme files.

There is a core set of PHP files that make up the basic website theme, including (but not limited to) the header, footer, content area, and sidebar, as well as default blog index template, regular page template, and individual blog post template.

We create a demo installation of website in your Client Studio, so that you are able to view and interact with the theme files as they are being developed.

Development of Additional website Page or Category Templates: 1 Week

The website development access gives you the ability to create additional ideas & page template styles – for example on a single site, you could have one 2 column template with the sidebar on the left, a 2 column template with the sidebar on the right, and a 1 column template without a sidebar.

If you’ve requested any templates in addition to the base website theme files, we will take this second week to develop those and upload for your review. If not, you can skip this step of the milestone dates and move onto the next one…

Development of Interior Page Content: 1-4 Weeks

This is where estimating a timeframe gets tricky, because the content and number of pages will vary greatly from site to site.

The beauty of website is that as a CMS (Content Management System), you are able to easily create all of the interior content pages yourself, without knowledge of HTML. In most cases, clients will just need a custom website theme that they take and continue to add all of the content pages themselves.

If that is the case with your project, you can skip over this step entirely. However, if you prefer to hand off the entire web site to us, we will gladly add all of the interior pages for you (based on your provided content).

The timeline for this phase varies greatly depending on the number of pages you are having us develop for you, and if you are prompt with providing us all of the content for the site. If you have a 1-10 page site, for example, we can have the interior pages completed within 1 week. On the other hand, a 50 page web site will likely take closer to 3-4 weeks to complete.

Of course, if you are not prompt with providing all content for the pages, or if you frequently make revisions to previously approved content that you had already provided us with, that will slow down this stage as well.

Launch of Web Site (website / Plugin Installation and Setup): 1 Week

Once we have your approval on the website theme files and any content pages we’ve created for you, we will send you a final invoice for the completed work. We do require final payment of the invoice before transferring everything from our Client Studio to your server. Once we receive the balance, however, we immediately get to work installing website, a core set of essential plugins, the custom website theme files, and any content pages that we created for you, over to your own web server.

After the transfer is complete, we run through a final set of tests to be sure that everything is functional, and you are all set! This marks the official launch of your web site, making it “Live” for the viewing public.

Web Site Maintenance: 2-3 Business Days to 1 Week

With a website driven site, you will be able to easily add and update content on your own. However if you want to hire us to make future updates for you, or to perform upgrades as new versions of website and various plugins become available, we are more than happy to continue working with you.

We offer several Maintenance Plans where we will update your web site for you, on a regular basis, at reduced rates. Alternatively, we also offer hourly maintenance if you only anticipate needing infrequent updates on an as-needed basis.

Simple updates to your web site are completed within 2-3 business days. Larger changes can take up to 1 week or more, depending on exactly what you need to have done.

Website Design Scheduling

Please note that we typically book projects 3-6 weeks in advance. You’ll want to keep this in mind for planning purposes so that we can get your project scheduled as soon as possible.

The process generally starts out with a design inquiry, after which we put together a detailed proposal for you with several options to choose from. Once you receive the proposal, we can discuss it further in order to address any questions you may have, and to decide on the best plan of action for your site.

Website Re-Design

Most internet users will judge your business in the first few seconds of visiting your website. If your site isn't portraying a professional image for your company, or is difficult to use or hard to find, then you should think about having a website re-design.

We have improved many websites in a variety of ways, including:

• Improving search engine results by restructuring and optimising a website
• Redesigning the website in line with a company's corporate identity
• Cleaning up or generally revamping a website to improve the design
• Lowering the page loading times for a faster website
• Improving usability to help users find your products or services

Website Maintenance

Keep your website fresh, updating information at least once a month. I can offer cost effective annual or monthly maintenance contracts that will help you keep your web site moving.

Website maintenance services may include:

• Essential HTML and image management
• Web sever administration and hosting services
• Website development updates using a wide variety of web technologies