My Philosophy in Web Design

I believe that the essence of good web design lies in simplicity, a clear hierachical structure of information, intuitive navigation and a well-thought-out page layout. This enables readers (ie potential clients) to easily find what they're looking for. Indeed, it also means the technology that search engines use can index your site better, and hence, higher search engine rankings.

I follow the standards layed out by the World Wide Web Consortium in my web design. This means that the content is seperated from the layout, so either can easily be altered without affecting the other. It also produces a page that is displayed pretty much uniformly regardless of what browser is being used; and this results in reaching as many clients as possible.

My Approach to Designing a Website

This is the order in which I tend to do things:

• You provide an initial brief via this page, and I will contact you via email as soon as possible.
• Assuming you have given enough information for me to do so, I will then give you a quote for the project.
• If you then decide to proceed, we can discuss some of the finer points of how you intend your website to look
• I will then usually design a few possible layouts for the website, and present them to you. I would encourage you to be critical here as this is your website I'm designing!
• Once you have decided that you're happy with a layout, I will start on the design of the site, and create any web applications you may require.
• For your benefit, it is best if you can provide much of the text for your website, as you know your company much better than I do!
• Once the design is finished, complete with content, I will contact you again for your opinion. Anything that you are not entirely happy with can then be fixed at this point.
• I then test the website fully, to make sure all is functioning as it should be.
• Now all that remains is to arrange hosting and a domain for you, assuming that you haven't already got that sorted, and for me to submit your site to various search engines.

Please note that this is generally how I will do it, but things may differ slightly depending on the scenario.