Website Design

Download this article!

The purpose of this article is to help you begin to think about the kind of website you want. It’s not necessary to have all the answers now – we can help fill in the blanks for you and come up with suggestions for your site.

Maybe you do know exactly what you want. In which case this document might help you structure your ideas for us to work with.

On the other hand you might have a lot of questions or only a vague impression of what you’d like. This document should help you think along the right lines so we can shape your site according to your priorities.

If you're reading this document prior to a discussion with us, there is space to record some of your ideas which we will use when we meet, and when a project commences you will be given a project survey to complete so that we can get a full idea of what you are looking for.

For any company, a website should be a benefit to your existing and potential customers.

Domain Names

A domain name is your internet address, such as www.google.co.uk.

Do you already have a domain, or do you have a domain name in mind already?

All domain names must be registered and no two domain names can be the same. Registering a .com address is more expensive than .co.uk, but your domain name should reflect your trading name if possible, either directly such as www.ajaysolutions.co.uk or indirectly such as www.imdb.com (the Internet Movie Database).

Steer clear of domain names that aren’t obvious, as these can be confusing. What do you think is at www.house.co.uk?

If you have a short-list of possible domain names, we can check their availability for you.

Your company name is often a good choice, other good choices are names that your customers may search for in a search engine such as Google, for example search Google for “mountain bike” and in the first few listings “mountainbike.com” will be listed.
(Disclaimer: mountainbike.com has nothing to do with Ajay Solutions and is merely used as an example). Other good examples could be a brand name, particularly if your company specialises in one particular product.

Do you already have a website or domain name? If so, we will need the contact details of the company or person in charge of it. Please be prepared to provide these to us.

Search Engine Optimisation

Although websites are useful in plenty of ways, if you promote your website, or tell your clients about your site, or include it in the yellow pages etc. as a way for people to find your site. Ajay Solutions believe that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is best thought about from the beginning of the project. It will influence your content, and it will influence how we design your site.

Keywords are the main part of Search Engine Optimisation. It is best if you brainstorm as many phrases and words you think your customers may use to find your business online. We will ask you to fill out these keywords in the project survey before we start work on the design phase. We will then do research on these phrases and liaise with you about our findings and what that means to the website itself.

Number of Webpages

It’s usual to have certain pages on all company websites. These are the pages many of your customers will be looking for. These might include:

About us

Some information about your company and what you do that reassures customers about your business.

Contact us

This is essential and should at least include the three most important methods of customer contact: address, phone number and email. You might also include directions and a map if it’s relevant.

Policies

If you have any particular policies or practices that your customers should be aware of such as refunds or promises, even if you recycle or support a local charity.

In addition to these, you'll undoubtedly have some ideas of your own of pages you want.

Bear in mind that the keywords phase of the project will have a lot of bearing on more specific page names.

Logos and Images

It's very useful if you have a company logo – perhaps already used for letter heads or adverts – if you can get hold of the computer image file of the logo for us to use.

Any other images you have that might relate to your business can be useful. For a plumber, for instance, a picture of a tap or you hard at work under a sink can be used for backgrounds or to add effect and break up pages of text on your website.

Any relevant images you can supply will potentially be useful.

Special Webpages

In addition to 'normal' website pages, you might want something more special. Perhaps you've seen an example somewhere before:

Photo galleries

If you have a lot of photographs you want to display to your customers, then a gallery with thumbnails can be very useful. Supply us your photographs and we'll do the rest for you. You can see examples of these on some of our customers' websites, linked from our website.

Email forms

Instead of customers sending you emails with any old subject and content, perhaps you want to get more structured responses, or there's information you want to capture. With an email form you can ask for names, email addresses, telephone numbers etc. and ensure these fields are completed.

Colours

It might be important that your site incorporates your company colours, in which case we will work with these. If this is the case then it’s sometimes important to maintain that identity on your website.

Alternatively you might have some ideas of colours that you’d like to use. This might fit with a ‘look and feel’ you have in mind for your website which might be corporate, professional, approachable, fun or themed.

When considering colours, it’s best to keep to a maximum of three colours. These should be colours which complement each other. Usually, these will either be adjacent colours or opposite colours from the colour wheel.

While two or three colours seems quite restrictive, they can be accompanied with black, white and shades of grey, so it’s possible to create the right impression without your site looking too psychedelic.

Navigation

Give a thought to how you would like people to find their way around your site. It's usual to have some consistent navigation across your pages which can always be found in the same place.

This could be horizontally across the top, or vertically down the left hand side. Think about whether you will want to expand your navigation structure in the future, and whether you want to show just one level or sub-levels of navigation.

We can help you by discussing the options with you and explaining the benefits of each type of navigation.

Inspiration

Are there any websites you’ve seen that you like? This could be any site that impresses you for any reason, such as:

• Easy to navigate
• Nice layout
• Good use of colour
• Useful pages
• The right content to draw you in

The Next Step

If you can begin thinking these aspects of your website, the next step is for us to work with you to meet your needs and manage your expectations. We'll begin with a consultation where we can begin conceptual designs on paper.

Once an agreement is made you will be required to fill out a project survey, which will enable us to create a complete design based upon your answers. It might be wise to brainstorm these questions with your colleagues to get an overall view on what is best for you and your company.

We'll then take these results and create an electronic design in Photoshop of what your new site might look like. You can then see how the colours work, how the space is used, how images look and feed back to us all your thoughts.

After making any appropriate changes and the design is signed off, we can begin work on your site. When the site is finished and you're completely happy, it can go online and you can begin letting customers know your website and email address. We will register it with search engines and directories to make your site available.

When we create sites we always try to design accessible web sites. This means your company doesn't flout disability discrimination laws and your users get the best experience possible.