Design: Form & Function
Hopefully you will have looked at your competitors websites and started to build a mental picture of the style of website that you are looking for, think about layout, colours and the number of pages.
If yours is a fairly straightforward business, maybe you are a tradesman, or a professional who deals in a particular area, then it may be that you only need a couple of pages to get your message across. A main page with key information about what you offer linking to a contact page containing all your details and a form with which to your customers can request more information or send you a message. This is sometimes all that is needed, if appropriate take the 'less is more' approach. Don't feel that you should have multiple pages, if the content is poor it will serve only to alienate your audience. Conversely, if your business is multi-faceted, you should consider dedicating specific pages to each area of your business with clear navigation to enable your customers to find what thay are looking for easily.
OK - lets think about some colours for your site - if you already have some branding or logo's that you use, then this should obviously be incorporated into your website design. If possible any signage and stationary etc should always feature your chosen imagery, even if it is simply your business name in a special font or colour. These colours can also provide 'design cues' for the overall appearance and colour scheme of your webpages, blocks of colour in navigation or header bars, page borders and backgrounds etc. If you have any original artwork let us have copies and we can resize etc as necessary. Where these are not available you can supply us with a letterhead and we'll do our best to recreate it. Scanned copies are not suitable for web reproduction, grainy or pixelated logo's will only serve to devalue the image of your both your website and your business.
If you have no business identity, use your imagination, think about what you do and adjust your design theme to suit. If you are not comfortable with this, then leave it to us and we'll use our creativity to generate an online identity for you. In this situation we'll often create a 'mock-up' before we start building your site so that you can approve the design, which we'll be happy to amend until your satisfied. Our sites are not just templates that we simply 'drop' your identity into, but are designed specifically for your business.
Lastly, images are a great way of breaking up text and adding some flair and interest to your pages. If you have any good quality pictures relating to your business, you should definitely consider adding them to your site. Alternatively, we can source high quality generic 'royalty free' images relevant to your content for a nominal additional fee.
By now you should have plenty of ideas for your web design, giving us a fairly clear picture of your vision will make our job as web designers much easier and enable us to deliver to you a website that we know you'll be happy with.
Nearly there now, just one more thing to consider.....
