Web Design Services

If you can't find what you want just ask.

Websites for Small to Medium Businesses

This will be the starting point for most of you, whether you’re just starting out or already own a business, your website should be an ever evolving part of your company matching the growth of your business and customers alike.

For the most part I specialise on working with start-ups and small to medium sized companies, purely with a point of view that from experience these seem to be the clients who are most passionate about moving their web based business forward along with being some of the most rewarding clients to work with.

How much will a website cost? This will depend on what you’re after as no two businesses are the same. The best way to find out is to get in contact and I’ll reply to you within 24-48 hrs. There’s no hard sell, annoying phone calls or repeat emails, once you get a reply back it’s up to you to decide yes or no.

Website Maintenance

Do you need work carried out on your current website? Do you want a special promotion for your front page? Maybe you just need to take the strain off some of your in-house web designers, whatever the task is I should be able to help.

Website Audit

Are there any underlying problems with your website? Does it display correctly? Are there usability problems? This service isn’t to be confused with an SEO Audit, which will look at factors relating to your positioning on the search engines, but this is usually the best place to start looking as some search ranking issues stem from the actual quality of your website build. Also you may be unaware of certain issues, which are causing your valuable customers to turn away as soon as they hit your site.

Content Management and Ecommerce

This website is a prime example of what I can do. It’s actually a Wordpress blog that I’ve pulled apart and rebuilt to my own specification, why? Because it’s the best tool for the job and why re-invent the wheel, as content management systems go the Wordpress platform is always being improved upon and is arguably one of the best around for small to medium sized projects. If you do want something a little more feature rich there’s always Drupal or Joomla but at the end of the day it all depends on where you want to take your website as to which system you’ll need.

Most ecommerce systems are built around the requirements of the client, as you’ll appreciate no two businesses are the same so websites for selling 5 products and 1000 products are going to be entirely different. Forsham Cottage Arks is one of my main ecommerce projects and yes, it’s a very successful website but this is also down to the SEO work that’s been carried out on the site too. Whatever you want I’ll do my best to help, if I can’t help you I’ll almost certainly know someone trustworthy who can.

Layout Templates

Maybe you already have the designers, programmers or even copywriters but no layout specialists. A simple concept, you design the layout I’ll code it up for you (I’ll even do the design work if it’s not your thing). My X/HTML and CSS skills are second to none, I’ve not actually come across a layout I can’t code, and to add to this all templates are built to the latest web standards requirements.

Website Recovery – Help!

I really hoped nobody would be in the position to use this service as it is the nightmare of most businesses but someone did come to me recently where their web design / hosting company had lost everything including all the site files. Within a week the whole website was back up and running.

Do You Want to Learn More About Website Design?

• These are some of my own personal favourites from the world of web design, without these my work life would have been 10 times harder and just as uninspiring. For anyone involved in building websites or thinking about taking it up as a career you really can't fail not to be impressed by these sites.
• Smashing Magazine: A really useful source of information and inspiration, there really isn’t enough room in this little box to describe what’s actually contained inside this site and it’s best you go and look for yourself.
• Veerle's Blog: For anyone looking for some top notch Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials, this is the first place I’d direct them to. As well as a wealth of other web design articles Veerle’s website is one of the best designed blogs I’ve seen.
• Sitepoint: Any web designer stuck for information can’t go wrong at Sitepoint, the forums are really useful and cover almost every aspect of web design and programming plus they also publish some handy books and articles.
• Lynda.com: If you’re finding it really hard to work your way through book after book of web design tutorials then Lynda.com is a great place to visit. Full of video tutorials aimed at the starter to mid level designer / developer market.
• Vitamin: Probably aimed more at those who’ve got the basics under their belt, with article contributions from some well respected names in the web design world. Well worth a read just to see what’s going on at the sharp end of the internet.
• Web Pro News: The news channel for the web industry. There are a few sites in this format about but this seems to be the one I’ve stuck to over the years with plenty of video blog posts too.
• SNOOK.ca: Website of Canadian web designer Jonathan Snook, with lots of interesting articles most of which are aimed at the more advanced front end designers with more than just XHTML and CSS experience.
• Styleboost: Personally hand picked sites by Johan Bakken showcasing some of the best designs on the internet, definitely not your general run of the mill showcase site.
  
  
• CSS Reboot: Another really nice web design gallery but only showcasing those sites built around CSS, there are a lot of these sites around but this seems to be the one I keep coming back to.