Advice: friendly, useful,informed

If you want to build — or rebuild — a Website, there'll be a lot of things to think about. We're here to help you identify what you need to know and do, so the development goes as smoothly as possible.

We work hard to understand your needs and to match our advice to the best way of meeting those needs. We're careful to communicate what needs to be done, whether a major technical specification for a large, mission-critical database-driven Web development or simply suggesting the most readable font or colour mix to suit your desired image.

We want to build sites and software that we can be proud of and, as part of that, we will make recommendations based on industry best practice. This can mean we will gently discourage using "flavour-of-the-month" approaches in the interests of building a site that will not rapidly date, but we will always let you know why we recommend one approach over another.

Some things to think about

There's a lot to consider in developing a Website. We try to make the process as smooth as possible by talking with you and — more importantly — listening to what you need to do and what you want to be able to do with your Website.

Here are some common desires for Websites, whether small sites for individuals or major corporate efforts, and whether you're starting from scratch or trying to improve an initial effort that hasn't been up to scratch:

• appropriate design for best presentation, loading, readability and navigation
• establishing a style sheet for consistent use of fonts and presentation
• an appropriate site structure to minimise maintenance and assist site development
• ensuring easy-to-use navigation complements good site content to attract and keep site visitors

• using images consistently and effectively
• supporting an appropriate selection and presentation of images
• ensuring that any video files present well across major browsers, with appropriate compression and placement to facilitate loading

• ensuring Home Page content is attractive and informative for your target market
• highlighting current offers, news or other time-critical or important items
• making appropriate use of client testimonials and case studies

• manual submission of the site to major search engines
• the use of appropriate titles, descriptions and meta-tags throughout the site
• a certain degree of time to allow acceptance by site engines and location by spiders and other automated site indexing facilities

• provision of templates and relevant instructions
• support for uploading content, including PDFs and images

Helping you throughout

As part of a standard services, we can provide advice on and operational support for a large range of Web-related activities, including:

• integration of Web marketing with any current strategic plan
• assistance with link exchanges and email-based outreach
• site traffic analysis
• meta-tag analysis to aid search engine placement
• specialised search engine submission
• support for personal recommendations, testimonials and case studies

We are happy to provide a range of Web services on a contract basis, including:

• site updating
• processing and uploading new content
• production of new graphics
• automation development
• training for your own staff in Web-related areas

Many of our clients have been with us for more than a dozen years, reflecting the strong focus we have on long-term strategic planning and establishing good working business relationships. Take a look at some of our work in our portfolio section and you'll see what our clients have said.

If you want a better understanding of how a Website can tie in with your business operations, take a look at this.

What can a Website do for me?

Websites are typically created to serve one or more of these purposes:

• information: providing a service to specific groups or to all-comers
• communication: publishing news items and circulars or promoting dialogue on issues of interest to the host
• promotion: giving a good impression of the site's owner, and their activities and possibly extending into electronic commerce

The following table covers the kinds of information, promotion and communication activities likely to be carried out by different kinds of Websites: