Web Design

Web design is my core service and I see every project through personally from start to finish - no outside contractors or agencies.

I pay great attention to detail, so I guarantee you'll get something which looks great and works flawlessly in all respects, from the layout and design to search engine consideration and social share. I discuss and quote every project individually, providing full working demo versions of any open source CMS* applications I propose to use so you can try for yourself before any work starts. Because there are no set packages, you won't get charged extra for anything you don't need and won't see any benefit from. You will, however, find that SEO** is a standard feature, along with a year's free hosting and training where necessary.
  • Free phone and email support
  • Face to face meetings wherever possible
  • All pages optimised for search engine discovery as standard, not as an additional service
  • No mass use templates or generators
  • One year's free web hosting included with all new websites
  • Google Analytics integration and basic instruction to help you monitor traffic
  • XML sitemap submitted to Google Webmaster Tools to aid indexing
  • Full range of supporting services and ongoing help
*Content Management System (CMS)

Using a web based editor you can add, edit and delete pages without any coding knowledge. There are many on offer but the most popular include WordPress (which is also great for blogging), Joomla and Drupal. You don't need to have one, but the majority of websites built these days do because it makes the job of adding/editing content far easier than with a static website. It is especially useful if you have more than one person making updates, because they can have a separate login.

** Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

NB: This is a very brief overview

SEO is about trying to influence search engine results in your favour. Whilst nobody knows exactly how the algorithms work, there are two key areas into which we can focus - on site and off site. Both start with choosing a number of key words and phrases which are relevant to your website and which users may be searching. At the point of build these key words and phrases should be included in the content of your website, embedded in meta tags, heading tags, titles, anchor text and copy. For a site to be considered search engine friendly it's code should also validate (so far as is possible), page load times should be kept to a minimum and it should have a clear navigation system to aid indexing.

Because any website owner could load their pages with keywords they want to appear under, this is not the end of the job, although it is the limit of what can be achieved through in site SEO methods at the point of build. Google and other search engines start to look at popularity, much in the same way as we would seek recommendations from peers in the real world. Therefore, the number of people talking about and sharing your pages via social media avenues, and the number of other websites linking to you play a massive part in achieving higher rankings. This needs to be fostered over a period of time and can be carried out by an individual website owner or a company working on their behalf. Due to time restrictions related to my core web design work I am unable to offer ongoing off site SEO services, although I do provide training and advice for website owners who wish to do it themselves.