Website Design and Customisation
Free design to give you your own unique look and feel
Our CMS Series Websites are not templates. Their functionality is standard, but that is where any resemblance to a template website system ends.
We do provide various design layouts as thought-starters to help you get an idea of what you would like your website to look like, but each site is manually designed by us, according to your specifications.
If you already have a design that you have had done, let us have it and we will replicate your website to look the same.
In this way every website design is different to the next and even if a client wants us to copy the look of another website, we will attempt to dissuade you - why follow someone else when you can create an identity that is uniquely yours?
If you have no clue what you want the end result to look like, we will endeavour to get inside your head and work with what we have. Once the initial design is completed, your feedback will then guide us through the final design your site.
Common Design Challenges
Hard-copy does not always translate well to the internet. Sometimes a design that looks great on paper looks awful on a computer screen. This is because some colours that work well on a printed page do not look good on a computer.
Sometimes it is a layout problem - with a printed page you have absolute control over the end result. With the internet, this is not true. Different people are viewing your site on different sizes of computer screen, using different browsers. All of these influence what they end up seeing.
It seldom works to use an absolute design. By "absolute" we mean a design that has exact size measurements.
When you are dealing with a dynamic website, the pages expand and contract according to content that is added. If the design does not allow this kind of flexibility, managing the site content can become a major irritation to you. We strongly reccommend that all design elements be flued enough to allow for good looking pages no matter how much content they have.
Using fancy fonts is another design problem, for two main reasons. The first is that the font that someone sees on your site is limited to the fonts that they have installed on their computer. If you use a font that they do not have, they are going to see your beautiful font as Times New Roman. Not only can this look ugly in itself, but if the Times New Roman happens to be a very different size to the font that has been used on the site, the chances are very good that your page is going to either be pushed out of shape or become an illegible mess.
Some web designers then resort to using images or flash instead of the written word. In this way everybody will see exactly what you want them to, but some of your most important visitors won't - search engines. If they cannot read your content, your site will not feature in search results. A search engine does not have a human eye and what it sees on your site is very different to what a person sees. The key is to find the right balance in keeping both sets of eyes happy.
There are various other "mistakes" that people make and we will advise you honestly on any design elements that could hurt your site, suggesting practical alternatives and solutions. Our job is to ensure that your site looks good to both human visitors and search engines alike and we take this very seriously.
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