The Design Process

This page describes the process that we will use to design and construct your web site. It is essential that we work closely with you at every stage so that the end result is a good reflection of your business and creative ideas. Your comments and suggestions are vital, particularly during the early phases where the contents and style of your site will be defined. We will then keep you informed of progress, and you will be given many opportunities to give us further comments and suggestions.

Initial Consultation

We use the initial consultation to get to understand what you want from your website, to sketch out some initial ideas about how this may be achieved, and to answer any questions you may have. The discussion can take place by telephone, email or preferably by meeting face-to-face, and usually takes about an hour. The consultation is completely free and without obligation. The objective of the discussion is to provide you with enough information to allow you to decide whether you want to go on to the next step - planning the project and estimating the cost.

Work Plan and Pricing Estimate

If after the initial consultation you decide to continue with us, we will spend more time gathering information, usually by email or phone. Based on your requirements we will prepare a description of the planned web site, a project plan with an estimated completion date, and a cost estimate. There is no formal contract to sign (unless you'd like to provide one), but I would like to receive from you written (or emailed) acceptance of the cost, and instructions to proceed.

Content Gathering & Research

Once we have written confirmation from you to proceed, we will start to gather together material for your web site. We will collect from you text and graphic information, such as marketing material, photographs, brochures, etc. If included in the work plan we will spend time at your location taking high quality digital photographs for use on your webpages. Although most material for your site will be generated at this stage, further ideas for text and graphical content will surface throughout the time we will be working together. This additional material will be added as and when it is needed.

Design

At this stage we make a detailed plan for the site's structure, and discuss with you your preferences for the website's appearance, colour schemes, fonts, and navigation methods.

Draft Website

We then develop a draft version of the main pages for your website. These will be placed in a secure, password-protected location on the Internet where you can view them at your leisure to see the proposed structure, navigation style and appearance. Once you have given us your comments and suggestions we will produce a second draft, and we will again ask you to review them and give us your comments.

Writing the Webpages

Once you have approved the draft page designs they will be used as templates for the remaining pages on your site. At this stage we also prepare the pages for indexing by internet search engines by including appropriate page descriptions and keyword lists.

Testing the Website

Your web pages are thoroughly tested on the destination web server using several types of client computer (Windows PC, Mac, Unix) and web browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Mozilla). Any errors are corrected and you have another chance to review the site for minor changes or corrections.

Site Launch

Once you have approved the completed website it will be copied to the webserver and so made publicly available on the internet. At this point we are able to submit the site to the major free search engines. We then present you with a copy of your website and any associated files (e.g., source images and text documents) on a CD-ROM, and give you an invoice. We would like to be payed within 1 month from receipt of the invoice.

Tuition

During our initial consultation you may have requested tuition on how to modify your websites pages, how to write simple new pages, and how to manage your website. If so, this would have been included in the project plan and would have been included as an item on the invoice. We can now give you that tuition using your new website as a concrete example.

Six Months Support

For no further charge we will make minor modifications to text or images on your website for a further six months from the date of its launch.

Please contact us to discuss your requirements.