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East Sussex Web Solutions |
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Web Design
Many web design companies fail to take into account the fundamental building blocks which make up a good, sustainable, growing online presence.
They also fail to take into account the end result, after the building process has been completed, the 'fancy looking websites' often result in failure to get their clients sites ranking within all the major search engines.
Also some old school developers tend to be stuck in the past and rely too much on what they learned a long time ago, here at McIntosh Communications we have a wider view and take everything into account, we know that the internet is an ever evolving community, it is both an art and a science, there are many factors which grow and compliment each other, but what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow,
You could have a really nice fancy web site that will look great and sound even better, (depending on the music you like) whilst in the background it might take a very long to time load on many consumers browsers, or even worse the search engines cannot even read the site due to errors in the coding or code choices such as complex “FRAMES” or “FLASH”.
Then again you could have a site that is not so all singing and dancing that the search engines pick up on, yet visitors leave straight away because they don't like the look of it or think that you are just a cowboy!.
We prefer to build websites from the ground up, whilst taking into account our clients preferences on such things as colours, overall theme, content, images and layout.
However, if you want us to suggest such things as we see relevant to your industry we are more than happy to do so. We like to minimise the onsite coding by using W3C Mark-up Validation, CSS ( cascading style sheets), good navigation and relevant content, as we think that “content is king”.
McIntosh Communications have proven methods which work across all industries; we are however open to specific requirements even if we do think we have a better way of doing things.
For example, we have clients who need to use such technologies as PHP and other database driven content platforms. It is not necessarily the way we would choose, as it may be more difficult to promote certain disciplines; however we do not ask our clients to make their sites fit our requirements.
Many of the successful and most expensive SEO companies require that you fit their criteria before they will take you on! That is an easy way to achieve results - as your site is nearly ready, they do not actually have to do much work, only point your site in the right direction, thereby creating only simple success stories.
We promote all our clients with equal dedication and energy. Our success stories are all of our clients whether their sites are difficult or not.
We will promote you from a difficult platform as we believe that to restrain the creativity of technology at this point, is to restrict the useful and innovative nature of the internet.
On signing up for one of our packages we can supply you with an easy to use tick sheet, this will help you to think of everything, and rethink if necessary, before we start building your new website, it will cover things like:
- What do I want to achieve from my website?
- How would I like it to be marketed?
- To whom am I targeting the website?
- What colour schemes would I like?
There are many factors you need to decide upon; what will your new site look like and what it will actually do for you and your customers. This is another area where we can help, we think ahead “always one step ahead” as they say, we can take much of the mental stress away and produce exactly what you want without the headaches.
For every design job no matter how small or large, we always take into account the promotion, building search engine optimisation into the site as we go, building you a solid directory structure that will enhance your promotion at a later date. We verify every page we create, thus giving you a nice clean site with helpful content and code it so you can learn to update it yourself if that is what you want, a site that will work with both the search engines and your customers.
There are three basics of web design and here we have outlined them:
- An intuitive user interface
All websites in our view should be non-technical and predictable enough for visitors to use easily, unless of course it’s a technical site.
All sites should have more than just a navigation system, thereby making it easy to look at and navigate from a clients point of view and making it easy to rate and score from a search engines point of view.After all if you can't find your way around your own website, (and you know your business!) what would it be like for a first time visitor? This is how you must think; you need to look at everything from an outsider’s view, what’s not good for you will definitely not be good for a visitor.
- Attractive design
Whilst the navigation of your site should be relatively simply and easy to follow the eye candy (look) of your site should be simple yet eye catching, a tip from McIntosh Communications if your site "looks professional” you cant go wrong. We have designed many sites over the years, some which we think are great sites, some we consider not so great, we know what to do and what not to do, we have seen the good, the bad and the ugly, you cannot go wrong with a professional looking site. It’s a statistical fact that visitors are more likely to purchase a product or a service from a professional looking site rather than a site that looks like it has been thrown together by an amateur in order to save money.
- Optimised code
Surfers that visit your site normally have no interest in your code or the building blocks of your website, however, search engines do! If you have a great looking professional web site, with attractive graphics, an easy to use navigation system and lots of code errors, how do you think this will affect you? Apart from the obvious client dissatisfaction when trying to move around a page with errors, you have to take everything into account, the whole package, and not simply one or two things.
How we explain; it’s like this!
Imagine an A4 piece of paper, with lines, each line has to be filled in correctly and ticked, it’s no good having some ticks as that will not fulfil all the criteria: it will not work properly. If your aim is to rank on all the major search engines you need to fill in the sheet as fully and correctly as possible.
Of course there are many other factors to take into account when thinking about a new website but in our opinion the things we have mentioned are the first and foremost.
We have 2 levels of feedback service. You may be happy enough just to see your sites rise in popularity (an obvious rise in visitors) or you may wish to have reports on such things as PR (page ranking) search engine positioning, statistics on any combination of data collation etc. We always assume that our packages do not contain these reports as a matter of course. They are expensive both in valuable man hours and the areas of other resources.
We are happy to perform this service if you require it, but it will be at an extra cost. Please ask us for details.
Related subjects
Web Design With McIntosh Communications |
