How we work to design a website

What are the main steps in making your website?

  1. Contact us to discuss intial ideas for a new website or a re-design of an existing one.
  2. Choose which domain name and extension (your web address, for example www.bestB&B.com) you would like for your website. We can check for you if your preferred domain name is available.
  3. Download and complete our web design interview form (as pdf / as Word document)
  4. Supply us with the text and images, now if possible.
  5. Discuss with us details of your website project (first 60 minutes free), after which we will provide you with an estimate of costs.
  6. Sign the web design contract and send it to us (mail or fax), together with the initial project payment (30 % of the estimated costs). We'll make a first draft for you to check on a temporary website.
  7. Provide feedback to us so that the remaining pages based on the agreed draft can be completed and the whole site uploaded to the temporary website.
  8. Pay the final balance.Your website goes live.
  9. Get your website known and found by customers - Promotion and Maintenance
    ( >>> more services we offer>>>).

In more detail:

1 Contact us to discuss intial ideas for a new website or a re-design of an existing one. It is completely free.

2 Choose your domain name and its extension. This is the location of your website on the Internet (for example www.yourname.co.uk). Each domain has what's called an extension. The most well known are .co.uk or .com. The whole is called URL (Uniform Resource Locator). We'll check for you if your preferred URL is available, or we'll discuss alternatives.

3 Download and complete our web design interview form (as pdf) / (as Word document), providing us with essential information about structure and look of your website.
This will tell us how many pages and which page titles you would like to be added to the website. In our design form, we will ask you for a number of things, including (possible) corporate colours, fonts, copies of stationery/brochures and any ideas you have regarding layout.
We've found that it's usually most cost-effective and beneficial for both ourselves and our clients if we can review your responses to the web design interview form before discussing your project in more detail.

4 Supply us with the text and images of the website, now if possible. Pictures should be of high resolution (min. 800-1000 pixels), so that we can edit and optimise them for the internet. Photos as larger files should be sent to us on CD. Texts have to be supplied as Word documents and can be sent as an email attachment or on CD.

5 Once we have received the interview form filled in by you, we offer an up to 60 minutes cost-free discussion of your website project , either by phone or personally. After this pre-design discussion, we will give you a cost estimate.

6 Sign the web design contract and send it to us (mail or fax), together with the initial project payment (30 % of the estimated costs). We will now design just the homepage of your site.
This is for you to check that you are happy with the look and feel of the site before we proceed forward. This first draft will also include a design of a clear navigation system (links to the other pages) which is key to a successful website.
Designing the first draft might take between 2-3 days after having received the details we need. We will upload the draft to a temporary site for you to check.

7 Approve the design of the draft, and we will complete the site.
Based on your feedback, we'll continue to polish and tweak the design. When you are completely satisfied with the design and navigation structure, we will produce a working version of your website ready to add your content (which means that we must have received by then at least 90% of your site’s text, photos and images).
We will then upload the whole website to a temporary location for you to go through to make sure you are happy for it to go live. During this stage, we'll keep in close contact with you, providing you with updates, asking you questions, and giving you occasional previews at how things are coming along.
Minor changes, clearly articulated, are still possible at this stage.

8 Your website goes live
Once final payment for the completed work has been received, and after you have gone through the website and made any alterations (if required), we shall make the site go live on the internet. Included in our web design contract is the service of submitting your new website to the main search engines.

9 Promotion and Maintenance
The marketing of your website is absolutely key to its success. Without it, your website will not be found by the public.
By a separate maintenance contract, we can regularly submit your website to the major search engines in order to get it ranked higher within the search results, eg. with Google or Yahoo. We can also update your website whenever required.
Alternatively, we can set up a content mangement system for you to easily update text and images on your website yourself.