GUIDE.

Web Design Guide...

Choosing a Domain Name

One of the first steps in getting a website is thinking about your domain name, this is your website name, your web address - for example. www.yourbusiness.co.uk. We'll usually sort this out for you. Try to keep domain names fairly short, if it's too long people will find it harder to remember and also there's more chance of them mis-typing it.

Web Hosting
Again this is something we will arrange for you. Hosting is basically a computer that acts as a server. All your files are stored remotely and it is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. When people enter your domain name, the server redirects their computer to your web hosting and your website appears. It's very important your hosting is safe, secure and reliable.

Think about why and what you want from a website?
Now that you've got your hosting and domain name sorted, the next thing to consider is what you want the website to do, what's its purpose, and why do you need it? - It might be that you need a website to be an online business card or advertisment? Your competition have websites and you need to be online to compete? You might want to promote an organisation or to display the products and services you offer to a whole new online market? There could be a million reasons to have a website, but it helps setting a goal or an objective as this will help you and the designer focus and build the website you want and need.

How do you want it to look, what to put on there?
This is similar to the last stage and equally as important. Thinking about the content on your site and how it looks will dictate the success of your website. Look at other sites you like, think about the things that work and the things that don't. Are they easy to navigate, show the information clearly, are they fun? - We always advise clients to give examples of the sites they like, look at their competition, see what could be improved. After doing this it makes it much easier to start selecting the colours, the branding, the whole look of the site and also the page content, navigation and site functionality.

Getting your web content to us
Once you've decided how you want the site to look, its function and roughly the page content - the next step is getting all this information to the web designer. Email is the best method because it allows for a quick and easy exchange of information backwards and forwards. Photos, logos, text, and documents can all be sent via email. Disk and memory sticks are also a good method of supplying information. If however you don't have access to a computer then it's just as easy to supply us with the actual photographs and documents required however this is a slightly slower process and can push the price up a little.

Designing and building the website
By this stage we should have a very clear idea of the website required. A quotation can now be given for the work. We then get on with the process of turning the client's idea into a fully functioning website complete with bespoke graphics, working menus, online forms (if required) and navigation. During this process we'll usually go back and forth to the client making sure everything is okay, letting them check the progress of the site on our webspace.

Setting up email forwarding
Towards the end of the project we'll normally set up the email forwarding as required.

Final checking of your website
Once you have approved the website, the uploading of the site to the clients hosting account begins. The nameservers for their domain are changed to point to the new working website now uploaded - www.yourbusiness.co.uk is now online!