Web design process

	Brief - Design & Functionality Before we start any web design or development work, one of our account managers will contact you by telephone or by email, to discuss your new website. We will ask questions about your new website, target audience, required functionality and more. This discussion will give us an insight in to your project and allow our designers and developers to tailor their approach to suit your target audience, and thus increase the productivity of your website. The following should always be considered during the design and development of a successful website: Target audience and market sector Ease of navigation and access to appropriate information Relevance of information published on each page Visibility of contact information Search keywords (see below - Search Engine Optimisation) Throughout the web design and development process, we will continue to ask questions to ensure that we deliver the very best and most appropriate website for your project.
	Design Studies have shown that an internet user will decide if he or she likes a website within seconds of viewing the first page. It is therefore very important that the look and feel of your website is suitable for the intended audience. With this in mind, our web design team will use your brief to create an initial design template for your website, including any graphics, layout of menus and page content. We will then request your comments and revise the design template as many times as necessary, and, if you don't like the layout, we will do it again and again until you do. We will turn the design in to a functional website during the development stage, by hand coding each one in HTML. We do not use any third party tools to create our websites, giving clean error free HTML and CSS pages, optimised to work with different web browsers and screen resolutions.
	Development When you are happy with our web design template, we will develop the back-end of the website. That is, we will create the code that makes the website work, including any databases, secure systems, login systems, eCommerce applications and other programming required to make the website function as specified during the briefing stage. Please see below for a list of the technologies that we employ during the development stage. Markup and Styles Lanuages HTML XHTML XML CSS System Tools mod_rewrite openssl sendmail .htaccess Scripting Lanuages PHP 4 and 5 PERL Java JavaScript C Visual Basic Query Languages MySQL PostgreSQL MS SQL
	Test and Publish Testing is an essential part of any website system, particularly with E-commerce and secure database driven systems. We will fully test every piece of code written for your website, both seperately during development and as part of your website system. We will also ask you to be involved with the testing process, to ensure that the website functions as required. Any bugs or errors found will be corrected and the relevant processes tested again. At this point, you will be invited to specify any modifications or additions to the website. These will be implemented by following this process again. Following the successful testing of your website, we will make it available on the internet after which the website will be ready to use.
	Search Engine Optimisation Getting your website known is a key part of it's success, and is often overlooked during the web design development process. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process by which your website is optimised to increase it's visibility on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. The SEO process begins as soon as we start to develop a website and continues for the life of your website. Many SEO campaigns focus on optimising the meta tags of a website. Traditionally, these lines of code were an effective method for achieving favourable rankings on search engines. Today's more advanced search engines, however, take little notice of meta tags. Instead we will ask you for a list of the keywords that your customers are likely to be entering, whilst searching for the products or services your website will be offering. Compiling the initial list takes a small amount of guesswork and some common sense. For example, if you are advertising climbing ropes, users are likely to be searching for "climbing rope" or "climbing gear". These keywords are used on every page of your website, to tell search engines exactly what the website is about, through semantic html. We will later use collected statistics to determine which keywords and phrases are most frequently used to find your website, enabling more effective optimisation of your website. Additionally, our web design experts we will give advice on techniques such as paid links and link baiting, a process through which users are drawn to creating a link to your website from other websites. Wehn combined with keyword optimisation, this is an extremely effective method for increasing search engine rankings, and an essential part of the web design process.