Our Web Design Expertise...
Vital Principles of Website Design
Some examples of our design may be located lower on this page.
Poor website design damages customer confidence. We ensure that your site will serve you as an attractive, engaging and functional brochure, enabling you to reap all the benefits of the Internet.
Graphic Design of your site
We design websites that perfectly express organisations’ corporate identities while meeting the needs of their market. Successful sites are achieved by balancing strong, eye-catching design with user-friendly navigation. Graphics might well play a part but it is now widely recognised that the over-use of graphics is harmful to a website, causing a page to load slowly and taking space urgently needed to quickly impart helpful information to the enquirer. As an example, the use of flash introductory 'splash pages,' so popular and much-demanded around 2-5 years ago, is now widely seen as the utter nuisance which such glimmicky things are to 98% of web surfers. We are interested in stabiity and reliability but not in gadgets, gismos and 'quick-fixes.' We know what works effectively on 98% of web browsers. We can still employ some quite stunning things but we avoid those over-the-top flashy things which can make a page unreliable and slow to load. To take one more example, the over-use of php and similar programmes on certain web pages makes them slow, hard to scroll, annoying and unstable. If we design your website it will be reliable, plus easy to use.
More on General Usability
Apart from the over-use of annoying 'extras' on a web page, your visitor shouldn’t have to work out how to use your website — all too many websites are just like that - it should be simple and intuitive. Websites should meet the informational needs and requirements of potential visitors. The system of site navigation should be crystal clear on the very first screen view which your site visitors see. You think that is obvious? Well you would be surprised at how many expensively-designed pages of large companies would immediately fail this very obvious general usability test!
Accessibility of your website
All our websites are tested to be accessible to the highest levels of accessibility, increasing the visibility of your site to search engines and making sure that as many people as possible can interact with it. This includes users on a range of browsers, screen resolutions and operating systems. It is still easily possible to find expensively-designed websites which simply do not function correctly on some of the most popular web browsers - surely simply unforgivable! We test cross-browser compatibility before we even deliver your new site to you. Of course, it is true that, in carrying out such tests, preference must be given to the browsers which most people actually use! Over 95% of your visitors, in 2008, will be using either one of the more recent versions of Firefox, or Internet Explorer 6 or 7 (In 2008 Netscape is only being used by 0.6% of people and IE 5 by 1.7% and both browsers will be as good as dead within months). It follows from this that if a tool or device one particularly wants to use is not really functional on, say, Netscape, one should probably still go for it. The most successful homepage we ever set up (receiving well over 100,000 'hits' per year) does not load at all on Internet Explorer 4 and appears somewhat off-set to the left on Internet Explorer 5 but we consider those browsers are now pretty much redundant, so in cross-browser testing one obviously has to employ some wisdom and balance.
Approach to 'templates'
Some nonsense is sometimes spoken on this subject by people who really should know better. What is a "template"? Originally it was a wood or metal pattern which enabled shapes to be cut accurately - a bit like a paper stencil. In the case of the web, a template is simply a page structural system which enables the written word and pictures to be reproduced on a web browser - that is all it is. It has been said that every single internet page which has ever been electronically produced is only a variation on about four different markup plans (or, templates). There is one column, two columns, three columns or (more unusually) four! Sure, there are many, many variations, and effects can be achieved either with tables, css (cascading style sheets), or neither (that is: if only one column is wanted). Yet however experienced the web page designer, one of these systems will be needed - no way around it. So to use a web template is simply to apply a web page structural pattern in order to produce a web page upon a browser. Yet some have the strange notion that the top web designers don't use templates - not so, they simply must base everything which they do on an established and proven web design structure system. In short, they use templates! The page you are viewing was designed by us and it uses two columns (one broad, one narrow) very simple but still the most successful format for 'visitor friendliness' - specifically our design yet according to the proven rules of the internet. If I design a totally new and different web page would it really be a 'non-template' system? Would it be a really be a "new" template? Not really. Everything we do on the web still amounts to variations on a proven theme. Sometimes web designers themselves, somewhat dishonestly, purposely tap into the the 'non-template top designer' myth which some people hold.
Some Examples of Our Work
Here is an example of a homepage which we set up for a motor museum some while ago, delivering them from the direly unappealing and unattractive homepage which they were using at that time. Below are more examples of our work (these will all open in a separate window):
UK Christian Websites
The Best Christian Links on the Net
Evolution Gradually Losing Public Support
Museltof Countercult and Apologetics
New Witness to the Word
My Christian World
Mock Up website 'homepages' (the purpose here is simply to show what is achievable):
Example One:
St Winifred's Church, London
(A typical church website homepage - just a mock-up, of course)
Example Two:
City Pharmacy
(An imagined chemist/pharmacy website).
Example Three:
British Parkland Trust
(An imagined countryside environmental information site)
Example Four:
Nat King Cole
(A Nat King Cole fan club-type site)
Example Five:
Benton's Motor Museum
(An attractive mock-up car museum site)
Example Six:
Fran's Fresh Food Restaurant
(A mock-up restaurant site)
Example Seven:
Restoring My E Type Jaguar
(A mock-up site appealing to classic car restorers)
Example Eight:
Haverfield Bridge Club
(A mock-up bridge club site)
Example Nine:
My Penzance
(A mock-up Penzance enthusiast's website)
Example Ten:
My French Impressionism
(A mock-up French Impressionism enthusiast's homepage)
Example Eleven:
Countryside Joys
(A mock-up Country rambling homepage)
Hopefully these make-believe homepages will make it clear what a good web designer can achieve.
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Solutions...
AT LAST - A solution to the web site needs of 95% of shops, restaurants, schools, small businesses, clubs, societies, churches and charities!
We not only design your site with a minimum of fuss and bother but we will host it for you! Many web designers will simply design your site but will not also host and maintain it - we do! Result? We remove all headaches from having a website!