Websites Designed With A Purpose

For a website to be successful, it needs to be carefully planned. Simply throwing together a few pages with a pretty design is not going to work. On average, about 60% of the effort put into designing a website (excluding actually writing content) should be taken up with planning. (see our article on planning a website)

Planning a website is a collaborative effort; we have the experience and understand how to plan a website, but nobody knows your business like you. You need to set the goals of the website, provide the content and take the necessary decisions, and we'll make sure you know what decisions need to be taken, and implement them.

In light of this, we approach the standard website building process in these steps (obviously, any unusual or advanced requirements will involve additional steps):

• Initial meeting:
  We meet for the first time, and discuss what you need from your website. We'll lay out the goals of your website, and discuss what is required to achieve these goals. We'll give you a quote, and should you accept it, we'll leave you with a list of things you need to supply us with in order for us to begin. These will usually be things like written copy for the website, any relevant images, logos and other graphic material your company has, etc.
• Plan the site structure:
  We'll take all the content you provide, along with keyword research and other market research techniques, and draft an initial plan for the website, keeping all the goals and requirements in mind. The plan will define not only the structure and content required for the initial website, but also a roadmap for the growth of the website in the future. It is highly likely that you will need to supply more written copy to fulfil the requirements of the plan. Once you are happy with the plan, we move on to the next step.
• Design the site:
  Once we have a finalised plan, we'll design a template, or look-and-feel for the website. We'll probably offer you a couple of options, and you can pick and choose the various aspects that you like the most, until we have a final template for your site.
• Build the site:
  Now that we have a finalised plan, a template for the look-and-feel and all the required written copy, we can build the site. We'll also finalise any domain name and hosting requirements, and publish the site.

Our preference is for designing websites that you can manage, update and add to yourself, possibly using a product like Microsoft FrontPage. This will give you the maximum control over your own website, and save you money in the process. If, however, you would prefer that we manage your website, we are happy to do that.

Just having a website is just the first step; you now need to market your website, and we can help you there too with ongoing search engine optimisation consulting, and pay-per-click advertising campaigns. (see Internet Marketing)

Contact us for more information: gareth@cornishweb.com