Production of your web site is a fluid and interactive process, requiring consultation and revision. This document sets out what you can expect from us and the relevant technical specifications.

Most clients require:

HOME PAGE

Welcome visitors and capture their interest quickly

It is important that your home page tells visitors what you can do for them - they need to see a picture of your product, not your premises! Keep your home page simple. All your pages need to be clear and uncluttered and reflect a strong corporate image. We recommend the use of one consistent template for the whole site although there may be a case for the home page having a special layout or extra features.

PRODUCT OR SERVICE PAGES

Up to about 5 main pages setting out what you offer. Additional detail may require a further "layer"

A clear structure helps visitors find what they want (and to ask for it). Don't confuse them by offering too many choices on the Home Page. A few "overview" or "group" pages will guide them to what they need without them feeling they must wade through too many irrelevant items. If you have a lot of products to show them or need to give a lot of detail about your services, then offer that on a "third level" of pages.

CONTACT PAGE

Opening lines of communication

You will want to show people your telephone number and e-mail address. Visitors appreciate a form from which they can send a question immediately. Do not put them off by demanding lots of detail; requiring only a name and phone number (or e-mail) makes it easy for them and gives you a great excuse to contact them personally for further information and so begin to build a relationship.

The Companies Act 2006 requires that your website displays your business name, the name of a sole trader or partners and an address at which documents can be served. Limited Companies must show their registered office and number.

You need to supply:

YOUR TEXT

You must own, or be able to confirm that you have permission to use, any text, documents and images that you supply. We need an electronic copy of all the text you want included. This can be in "plain text" files or documents which can be read by MS Word. Please send tables and similar data as ".csv" files or Excel spreadsheets. Recovering text from .pdf files or from images or from paper may be expensive.

Web developers are not copy-writers or proof readers. While we may be able to help with the composition of what you need, that is a completely separate process with its own additional charges. We will, though, from long experience, give you clear guidance about what "works" on a web page and what does not.

YOUR IMAGES

You need to supply photos and artwork as .tiff, .jpg or .gif files. We may be able to convert other files or to scan paper etc. We can reduce images to fit but small ones usually lack enough detail for enlargement.

Web developers are not graphic artists. We can sometimes apply non-specialist skills to alter or adapt or even originate images for an additional charge. We can also help you find an artist or photographer and tell you what will be suitable and effective on-line. You can buy ready-made photographs and graphics.

We can download royalty-free images from public stock libraries, but appropriate pictures are not always available and searching for them can be very time consuming. Written permission may be needed to use some material; it may not always be given, conditions may apply and waiting for consent may take time.

A movie file can be uploaded to YouTube or a similar site and then run in a window on your page. You can send the file to us or upload direct to YouTube »

We offer you:

STANDARDS COMPLIANT CODE

We take pride in the fact that we supply web pages that conform to the specifications of the Word Wide Web Consortium ("W3C"). This means that your website will work correctly on all properly written web browsers such as Firefox, Safari, recent versions of Internet Explorer (IE 7+) and many others.

Those requiring technical detail should note that we currently deploy the XHTML 1.1 document type with CSS2. Text is encoded to utf-8 to enable multi-lingual content and international accessibility. Interactive content is normally delivered using php with MySQL and JavaScript. If you already have Perl scripts we can use those but will often recommend that we convert them to php to make them accessible long-term to a wider range of web developers. We can include multimedia presentations using Flash but advise that on "normal" websites they tend to distract the visitor's attention from more informative content. Similarly, while we can source Java applets, their use rarely adds real value to a website.

Our websites meet both the requirements and the intentions of the Disability Discrimination Acts by conforming to Level A of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. If your target audience requires a higher level of accessibility we will be happy to discuss how we can best meet their needs.

RELIABLE HOSTING

Your website will be hosted on our own Linux-based server which provides both open and secure (SSL) connections. The server is "co-located" at a facility providing a very safe and reliable connection to the Internet. Technically, that means multiple gigabit links to both London Telehouse East and Telehouse North, power from an independent, dual-fed HV substation backed by several on-site diesel powered standby generators, CCTV, dog patrols, a controlled environment and 24/7 monitoring and technical and emergency support. We are proud to share this facility with some very big, "household name" websites.

STATISTICS

When people arrive at your website we log which country they came from and whether they arrived via a search-engine enquiry, a link from another website or typing your web address into their browser. We try to detect whether access is from a "real person" or an automated scanning device. We note the number of times each page is visited. We don't believe that the length of time a page is "open" can be reliably detected or meaningfully interpreted. The information we record is available to you on an easy-to-read management web page.

WEB PROMOTION

Your website includes many features to make it easily accessible to search engines. While securing and improving your on-line listings is absolutely essential, we believe strongly that it is hugely detrimental to your business to focus on "Search Engine Optimisation" in isolation and to become obsessed with the pursuit of "high rankings". We encourage and support the involvement of reliable and effective SEO specialists but believe that real success comes only from total integration of your web presence into a thorough, effective and wide-ranging marketing programme. Use every medium available to get people talking about you; the resulting links, tweets and other people's blogs will raise your search engine ranking immeasurably faster than tinkering with your site or adding content that is of no real interest.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

As well as supplying complete websites, an important part of our activity is the design and implementation of "open source" software (freeware) for web applications. Under the GNU General Public License this work is copyright but available for use without payment. Please note, however, that the installation of free software and provision of resources for its operation usually involves significant charges. If you require special or bespoke interactive content on your website we may be able to consider developing it for you at a very low cost if the ownership of the code remains ours and we can add it to our stock of software modules. We take great care to separate and protect all of your data from any code that processes it. Our published open source applications include:

• Statistical collection and analysis for websites (published as "Yoss")
• Multi-lingual editing and display of website text (published as "Yeti")
• Shopping cart facilities (with integrated referral to your bank or PayPal for safe payments)
• On-site Forums
• On-site Blogs

We find that most clients prefer sending in an e-mail request for an update to undertaking day-to-day management of all of their website content ("CMS"). However, we offer modules for the easy maintenance of price lists, stock availability, news pages, events calendars etc.

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