Successful Websites

I-Tech Web Design will discuss your requirements in detail and give you advice and guidance to help you formulate the best design for your website. We will send you a website planning document pack which will encourage you to start thinking about your website and how it can assist you and you business. This gives you the opportunity to think of various scenarios and possibilities so that when we meet up for your free consultation you can be prepared and we can spend our time effectively.

Some of the aspects when thinking of getting or redesigning a website is:

The aspects of domain names to consider

Choosing a domain name is one of the first aspects to take into consideration when planning to design and implement a website for you or your company.

Website Branding

Brands are greatly affected by the ability of the company to obtain the matching domain name. If a company builds a brand around a name to which it does not own the domain name, it can end up directing traffic to another domain owner’s site. If it is a competitor, this would be a problem. In today’s advertising development of a great brand is strictly confined to the availability to synchronize the brand with a domain name. Any confusion might result in a competitor gaining valuable internet traffic and possible customers.

Identity

Your domain name is how you / your company will be recognised and found online. Your domain name is you website address and your email address will contain your domain name i.e. myname@mywebaddress.com

Designing a good website

Here are a few good website design features to take into consideration:

General

  • Your website should conform to the latest standards to make sure it is compatible with the latest operating systems, browsers, and mobile devises.
  • Use trial and tested technologies such as HTML, CSS, XHTML, PHP
  • Websites should be accessible to users with disabilities
  • Pages download quickly
  • All pages should look like the belong to the same website.

Text

  • Background does not interrupt the text
  • Text is big enough to read, and scalable
  • Information is perfectly clear and easy to find
  • Columns of text text should be narrow enough to read as a book

Navigation

  • Navigation buttons and bars should be self explanatory
  • Navigation is consistent throughout web site
  • Large sites should an index or site map

Links

Link colours coordinate with page colours
Links should be underlined or a different colour

Graphics

Should enhance the site, not distract the user from information
Every graphic has an alt label
Every graphic link has a matching text link
Graphics and backgrounds use browser-safe colours
Animated graphics turn off by themselves

Optimise your website for search engines

There are various ways and “tricks” designers can try to optimise their websites for search engines. At the end it is down to just a few, but important techniques:

Use HTML and CSS code as specified by W3C
Use good strong keywords in the meta tags and content
The content must be relevant to the website
Use good reciprocal links from good websites
Links must be explanatory