You will find it helpful to draw your website on paper. Design one page at a time with layout and content. You may even wish to do this stage using a piece of software such as Photoshop or Paintshop. If you are stuck for ideas, browse the net and find some designs you like. Also create a flow chart showing how you want your pages etc. to link together. One of our biggest tips is to try to make as much information available within 3 clicks...if people can't find the information they want quickly they may not persist in looking! Another good pointer is that if people have to scroll down your site more than 3 or 4 times it can have the same effect and drive people to a competitor or similar site.
Seriously consider what you aim to achieve with your site; remember that as silly as it sounds, for your site to succeed as a means of generating business, you will need to advertise it. As well as considering advertising in other media such as magazines, think about how important it is for people to find your site and business searching the web with Google and the like. Only if your business is truly unique are you likely to reach the first page of Google without spending vast sums of money, but we do offer search engine submission packages that guarantee value-for-money results.
We do however provide basic search engine optimisation (SEO), and submission to the main search engines as standard on all our designs, along with a built in statistical analysis interface for you to track visitors to your site, including which search engines or other sites they visited from etc.
Once you have decided that you wish to take things further, give us a call or drop us an email. We will then discuss at length, with no obligation, the specific requirements of the site and any ideas we have that may help your site be even more functional.
When we have agreed upon your design and pricing etc., we will require upfront payment for the first page of the site, which will be produced for your approval and modifiication. The reason we make this charge is that as well as the considerable time involved in producing the page, we will have to commit to hosting the site etc. in advance. When you have approved the basic design of the site, we will create the rest of the design.
