introduction

All businesses, large or small, need a well designed website. Apart from ensuring your website is professionally designed and complies with industry standards and that it will be found in a search, it is important to think carefully about the purpose of your website and what outcomes you are seeking.

We always start from scratch, working with the client to understand their business, what the purpose of their site is and so on before coming up with a design. We never use templates. Your design will be unique to your website.

In this section of our site we'll give you lots of things to think about together with some examples to illustrate what we mean ... if you have time, we hope you will enjoy this overview.

key words

Your website should be consistent with and complement your business. The way that it looks and feels to your site user says everything about you and your business.

It's useful to have a few key words ... think about how your customers/clients would describe your products, services or organisation e.g. traditional, trendy, sophisticated, fresh, organic, zesty, sophisticated, original.

Once you've done this think about the words you would use to describe the look and feel you would like from your website. Are the two lists compatible?

In our portfolio, you can some of the keywords we used when designing our sites.

colours and fonts

Key words help to define the overall look and feel of your site but the colours and fonts used play a criticial role.

Below we've created two themes using exactly the same layout. if you click on the images to take a detailed view you can see that the fonts, colours and transparency we've used make a dramatic difference to the overall feel.

images

Good looking images make a huge difference to every site whether they're used to be merely illustrative of your business or organistion or to provide detailed imagery of your work or products.

Images can also be altered to change the feel. The example below show just one of the ways we can change an image to fit the mood. The original image is on left hand side as you look at the screen.

image display

Images can be displayed as stills, in lightboxes, in galleries and slideshows. There are so many options and we will help you decide the best way to display your work or images.

As an example, one of the best ways to display a detailed image is in a lightbox. Click on the following image to view the full original image displayed in a lightbox.

navigation

Menus control the navigation of your site.

Menus can be horizontal or vertical, with or without backgrounds, borders and dividers. They should be as helpful as possible allowing the viewer to know exactly where they are and where they can go next.

online forms

Online forms are the ideal way to gather information from your customers or clients.

Single lines of text, text boxes, radio buttons, drop down menus, check boxes and of course, submit buttons can all be included.

icons and wallpaper

If you are currently viewing our site on a desktop or laptop computer, you should be able to see in your browser bar, a small icon in front of the website address. This is our favicon. We can also design your ipad/iphone icon and even your device wallpaper ...