Great web design is a very powerful thing. The visual impact that your site makes when people very first land on it creates that vital first impression – and influences whether they stay to find out more… or click away. And the quality of the visual design plays a key role in the quality of your visitors’ experience of every page on your site.

The best, most successful web design, however, goes even further than how pleasing your site looks. It’s about beauty with purpose – which means great content, flawless functionality and a whole lot more.

We work in close consultation with you to design – and build – your bespoke website to meet your business objectives… And to ensure that it will:

• yes, look beautiful – to attract your target market to your business
• be readily found through Google searches – unless your business doesn’t need to attract new customers online
• present key information clearly – visually, verbally and with media, such as video, suited to your business offering and your customers
• present information in a sequence and style that suits your customers
• reflect your brand identity and preferred tone of voice
• be easy for visitors to navigate
• be a pleasure to visit, whatever devices your customers are using
• be straightforward to buy from, if it’s e-commerce
• include appropriate interactive features (such as downloads and email sign-up, for example) to engage your customers
• integrate with social networks and other software tools
• be distinctive and memorable – to distinguish you from your competitors, and
• actively earn its keep at the heart of your skilfully integrated on- and offline marketing activity.

The ideal starting point for the process of creating your website is your brand strategy as this defines your business objectives and identifies your ideal customer and market position.

If you don’t have a brand strategy, we’ll ask you at the outset to answer the questions in our initial website brief questionnaire. This is an efficient way of familiarising us with what your business does (or will do), who your customers are, who your competitors are and what you want from your website.

Creating a website to meet your business objectives involves a number of processes. Very broadly, these are:

• content planning: deciding what goes onto each of the main pages (both visual and verbal)
• writing the copy – to convey the right messages to your customers, in the right way
• building the right structure (putting design before structure would be like choosing the wallpaper before you’ve built the walls!)
• designing the pages to reflect your brand identity – and the way you want your site to look
• creating and editing elements such as video, animation, graphics and photography
• uploading all content onto the pages
• coding the site with all the right functionality
• testing and making the site live.

The scope of each of these processes depends on what you want – and on your budget.

Some businesses, for example, need a fully bespoke site in order to have the functionality and create the look that they require. For others, a simpler ‘build’ with some bespoke features will suffice. And for others, a site with no bespoke features may be the best option.

There’s much more to making these decisions than meets the eye and, in some cases, what looks like the most cost-effective option at the outset may have cost implications at a later stage. We explain the options and help you to weigh up what’s best for your business.

The scope of the processes also depends on whether, for example, you need your site to be ‘search engine optimised’ (SEO’d) to rank as high as possible on search engine pages. Most businesses do – but not all. We advise you. If you do need search engine optimisation, writing the copy will involve researching what people in your target market search for.

We work closely with you to identify precisely what you need, what you want from us and what you can supply (such as photography, for example.) We give you access to an interactive online schedule, specifying when we’ll need to sit down in meetings with you, what we’ll do by when, and precisely what we’ll need from you at each stage. As the job progresses you’ll get email prompts for your input and approvals. And we’re here when you need us.

When your site is finished, approved and goes live, you’re not on your own. We don’t walk away. On the contrary, you can count on us for:

• whatever training you need to manage your site on a daily basis
• ongoing website support and maintenance for your peace of mind that your site is backed up, the software is fully up-to-date and you’ve got support when you need it, and
• ongoing digital marketing (such as Adwords and email campaigns, for example).