Design
The web design is behind what you see on the screen when you arrive at a site. Web sites are viewed through a 'web browser' ( for example Internet Explorer or Firefox ), and these browsers 'read' a web page from a server out on the internet, and translate the commands to diplay the various images and text onto the screen.
Web pages can be as simple or complex as required - large complex pages can slow down the display of that page, and hence irritate the viewer.
| Complex graphics (for example 'flash' animations) can also make the page take longer to appear, and again cause some irritation. | JARGON WARNING |
Web pages can be written in various 'languages' (the commands used to create the picture that you see).
| The basic language used is HTML. | JARGON WARNING |
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More complex pages may use 'javascript' or 'php', especially if they are using a database such as 'mysql'.
As a web site 'owner' you do not really need to know about such subjects as they are typically handled by the site designer. |
JARGON WARNING JARGON WARNING JARGON WARNING |
The key to the success of a website is its design; first impressions experienced by someone arriving at the site are critical, and can make the difference between deal or no deal.
Of course, the web site is very much ‘your site’, and as such layout, colour schemes, wording, images and menu structure are yours to define within the limits of whatever package you wish to have us develop for you.
On the other hand you may wish to give us a few ideas and leave us to develop the details of the site for you.
In either case the site is yours, and you alone ‘accept’ it as and when we agree it is complete.
There are some guiding design principles that we endeavour to work to, and these are described here. Different types of site require very different features and characteristics – colour, layout, content – but what is common is that first impressions are critical, those first few seconds when someone lands on your site, is when they make an immediate judgement about whether to continue looking or hit a button and go elsewhere.
Of course if they arrived there searching for ‘hard’ information about something then they’ll probably continue looking. But if your site is not well designed and structured then while the visitor may stay, they won’t come away with a good feeling about it - this may be a subliminal response, but it could easily affect their decision to use you or not if you are a business.
It is very easy to get carried away in the design process over the use of what we call ‘pretties’ – flashing / scrolling text, flash graphics, moving images etc. But this can easily lose the actual message of the site.
Our design ‘bywords’ are clarity, simplicity and subtlety.Business Sites
While some of the more ‘over the top’ web styles are acceptable for personal web sites, ( ‘interesting’ colour schemes and wide use of ‘pretties’ for example ), business sites, in our experience, are very different.
Business sites are not only providing basic information about your business – who you are, what you do, and perhaps what you sell and at what price – the site also represents your business philosophy, how you work, and what relationships a customer can expect to have with you.The way the site is laid out, the colours used and in particular the language used all go towards building up a picture in the customers mind about what sort of supplier – what sort of person – are they about to deal with.
Prospective customers could well make judgements about your honesty and reliability based on what they see and feel, as well as the words used.
Our designs are based on a common structure, programmed in PHP / MySQL – two technologies widely used and supported for content driven web sites, They include a number of standard features :-
- Menu System
- Multiple page sites
- 'templates' to manage the site look and layout
- ‘About Us’
- Newsfeeds
- Advertising Banners
Some examples of optional features, which can be configured into the packages for a small fee if required :-
- 'Flash' graphics
- Mailing List
- Forum
- Blog
- Safe commenting system ( spam free )
- Photo Gallery
Standards
We always endeavour to make our designs compliant with current standards for Web services. They are checked using the W3C CSS and XHTML validators to be standards compliant.
What can we do for you ?
Here at RedShiftPlus, wed design is our speciality. Check out our portfolio for examples of our work, if you are interested, then please contact us
