Our approach to web design and development projects
 Most businesses or organisations when considering the design of a new website tend to start off by approaching web designers more with a view as to how they expect it to look, rather than how they expect it to work, or indeed how their customers expect it to work.
The web designer then has the unenviable task of translating the client’s ideas into something that functions properly and meets their visual expectations.
Unfortunately this approach often fails to deliver the desired results as all too often a key aspect of the project design is either overlooked or compromised - that of search engine performance. Our approach is somewhat different in that it places search engine visibility at the heart of the design and development process to ensure that not only does the site look right and work properly, but that it will also be found from the search engines.
To fully understand the importance of our approach one needs to consider these statistics:
• 85% of web site traffic is driven by search engines
• 55% of searchers don’t go beyond the first page of search results
• 85% don’t go beyond page 3
• 52% don’t go back from the first site they find
These statistics highlight the critical importance of making site promotion and search engine strategy an integral part of web site design. All too often this requirement is not properly understood by either the business or organisation commissioning the site, or the web developer whose core skills are usually focused around the design and technical implementation of the site.
Our marketing based approach
One of our main specialisations is in search engine marketing, and this means we take a rather different approach to a web design project.
The primary difference lies in that we take a search engine marketing orientated view of the project as a whole, first placing it in a strategic context, then approaching the practicalities of the site design from a promotional and search engine perspective. This places promotion and search engine optimisation at centre stage of the design process.
Essentially our approach is to break the development project down into three broad phases:
Phase 1 – Planning and Specification
This involves setting the overall parameters for the project, and our approach to this is to work with you to assess the business need for the project and set the objectives for the site design. Areas typically covered in this process could include:
• Evaluation of your strategic business need
• Identifying benefits for you and your site users
• Feasibility studies
• Objective setting
• Consideration of levels of integration with your existing systems (IT and business processes)
• Budgetary assessment
• Quantitative analysis of online target audiences
• Visitor projections, revenue and profit modelling
• Return on investment (ROI) and cost benefit assessments
• Positioning within the existing marketing mix
• Search term analysis and optimised site structure design
• Planning and budgeting of ongoing promotional requirements
• Preparation of technical specification and design brief
Phase 2 – Design and Build
Once the design parameters and objectives are established, we move onto the design phase. Some web design companies work up intial concept designs as part of the pitch (sales) process. We tend to try and avoid this (not because we're lazy!), as we consider that the site specification should come first, as presenting a visual idea too early can have a negative impact on the creation of a design that meets the objectives identified during the planning phase. This can be particularly important with content managed websites where the design has to allow scope for growth over time.
External designers, or in-house design?
What makes a great looking design is a very personal thing - "what one thinks great, another will hate". And to give us the best chance of not being hated, we have established very effective relationships with two external design companies based locally to us in Hampshire which complement our own in-house design skills. The Cradduck Design Co based in Alresford and Elixir Projects in Basingstoke betweeen them bring great experience and design innovation to our web site designs. And of course if you have your own designers you want to use, then that's not a problem either, as we are perfectly happy to work with them to create a web site with just the right look for you.
Of course the project doesn't end at the design stage! Once the visual design is decided, this has to be turned into the HTML templates required by the content management system, and the system itself has to be installed and configured. Then comes testing and adjusting for cross browser and operating system compliance and the loading of the page content. Finally onsite training for your own staff, and the site is ready to go live.
Phase 3 – Promotion
Once your new web site is launched we will handle the promotional needs for the new site, implementing the promotional plans set out in the project scope. In most cases this will include a phase of intitial search engine optimisation of the key pages followed by visibility reporting and a period of adjustment. This might be accompanied by a range of complementary activities such as:
• An ongoing programme of deeper search engine optimisation (SEO) and reporting
• Pay per click advertising
• Link building programmes
• Online media placement
• Affiliate marketing programmes
• E-Pr and E-Newsletters
The aim is that at the end of this process, you will have a website that is meeting its strategic targets and that is a working business asset rather than a patch of wasted cyberspace!
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