7 November 2011
This article outlines the process we take you through to build the perfect website for your customers; both to attract them, and then to convert them into a sale, an enquiry, a sign-up or whatever goals the website has.

How we design your website.

Our design process is here to make sure that your site is designed to do something, and to make sure that it does it, perfectly.

1. Target Market

First of all, we listen to you and find out who is intended to visit the website, and what the website is supposed to do for them.

Once we have established this, it's a case of providing a solution that's aimed at the target market, and discussing this with you until we have a list of requirements.

For example: for a purely corporate audience, mobile accessibility is less of an issue, yet having a site that works with Internet Explorer 6.0 and that displays perfectly without Flash (many corporate computers do not have this installed) is going to be vital.

2. Site Structure

We then look at how you are going to market the website. If you are relying on people finding your website, what would they search for on Google to find the products and/or services you provide? We help draw-up a shortlist of terminology to use within the copy on your website, and where to use it. This then helps us when it comes to making an effective site map which makes your site more intuitive to navigate for both humans and search engines.

By ensuring that these fundamentals are considered from the outset, we can make sure that the foundations of your website are going to support the design that sits on top.

3. Aesthetics

Now we know what the basis for the site is, we can move towards designing a bespoke solution. If you prefer, you can reduce your design costs by buying a cheap website template and having us build it for you, however (budget permitting) most of our clients opt for a unique design that is tailored just for them.

During this stage of the process we produce a wireframe (a basic line drawing) of the boxes that will divide-up the web page and what these boxes will contain. This way we can ensure that everything is where your visitors expect it to be. For example: your logo should be top left, and if you had a customer login area, it would normally have a "login" button in the top right.

A mood board will quickly follow this, where you can choose from a range of colours, fonts and buttons, hand-picked by our designers.

It's then a question of the team adding the chosen colour scheme and typography to the wire frame and producing the “web flat” (a picture of what the final website will look like, that is then sliced-up into an HTML web page).

4. CMS Conversion

All of our websites include a CMS (Content Management System) which allows you to add new pages, upload and manipulate images, add videos, links, and templates - in fact; just about anything you like. This puts you in full control of the website and means you don’t need to pay someone each time you want to make an amendment.

If this sounds a bit scary, fear-not - it's not only incredibly easy to use, but also comes with UK tech support on a normal phone number, not to mention a full training session either over the phone or at our offices, all as part of the package. Our team will talk you through anything, step-by-step over the phone so you know how to do it yourself next time, and there is also a "how to" video library on our website for out-of-hours support.

5. Add Content

After we've built the website and shown you how to use the CMS, it's over to you to populate any remaining pages with text and images. Of course we're ready to help, at the end of the phone if you do get stuck. We also advise where to use your keywords within your text for maximum impact on Google. You can even supply us with the content for us to add if you don't have time.

6. Usability Optimisation

This stage is a quick sanity check to use the website as a novice. We hand the website to a team member who has not been involved with the project, and get them to test the website, making sure everything is as clear and simple as can be. Any issues are quickly resolved.

7. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

One of the last things is to optimise the SEO tags on the website, to get the search engines really excited about it, and give you a great head start. If your website is a re-design of an existing website, this can have a very dramatic effect, and even on brand new websites it will make a really big difference to the speed and level of exposure that the site gets online.

If you are still hungry for more, we can help you find other ways to push the SEO further and look at other online marketing methods such as social media and pay per click.

8. Compatibility Testing

Here we go back to the first stage, and check that the site works on all the devices, web browsers, and platforms it was designed for, ensuring that the website looks perfect, no matter who is looking at it or what they are using to view it.

9. Finished Design

We run the site through a huge checklist and ensure it passes all our tests. We run the site through various pieces of software to ensure it meets our own internal standards, as well as W3C compliance testing and accessibility. This is the final piece of quality control before we set up any email accounts you need, and then with your approval, push the site live.

If you don’t already have one, we also set up a Google account for you, set-up Google Webmasters and configure Google Analytics so that you start collecting useful data on your visitors from day one. This helps you measure the effectiveness of any marketing that you are doing, and identify areas in which you can improve-on in future.


So that's the end of the process, but certainly not the last you'll hear from us. We nurture an on-going relationship with all our clients, and offer advice on all things web-related, whether it be synchronising emails between your PC and mobile phone, or getting more sales from your website.