Web Design | Web Development
Web Design and Development for business
Recent Projects
Here I've listed a selection of recent and current projects. I hope they will give you an idea of the very broad range of skills required in Web Development.
If you would like to talk about any aspect of the Internet, a Web Site idea you have or a current Web Site your not happy with, why not Contact me today.
Braemar Guest House
The Phone Mast Company
Brief descriptions
Recent Projects
Some recent projects with a brief description of some of the issues involved in each.
Braemar Guest House
The Braemar Guest House had an existing web site that had become slightly dated. Because of the speed at which all things internet are changing even a web site 3 or 4 years old can start to look dated.
The Braemar Guest House itself is a very up to date business with modern clean styling and an enthusiastic owner. The task was relatively simple, to bring the web site up to date, reflecting the values and style of the business and product being offered.
From the start, I wanted to produce a clean and simple web site, reflecting the style and quality of the rooms, enabling the visitor to see the product on offer, with as little distraction as possible.
The second major objective was to make the web site as current as possible. In the Hotel and Guest House business, customer reviews have become an important part of the decision making process. Customers now expect reviews to be a few days old rather than a few months old. I wanted to put the review system under the owners control so that reviews would always be up to date.
The third objective was to improve the natural listing position in Google. Google has evolved it's technology incredibly over the last few years and continues to do so. Consequently some of the 'tricks' of yesterday are no longer effective and may even be harmful to your listing. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) was a consideration throughout the redesign process.
The Phone Mast Company
The Phone Mast Company is a fast growing internet based business, relying heavily on its internet presence to attract new clients.
Although employing a large web design and hosting company to design, build and host their original site, the result looked OK but technically was very out of date. The web site suffered from regular hacking and the contact form was subject to spam attacks. The only action from the hosting company was to replace the hacked files, no changes to site security!!
There were also some smaller design issues in that buttons were not intuitive enough for visitors to identify and the banner area was far too large. Small style changes were required as well as content updating and maintenance.
Although the original designer claimed "SEO optimisation" there was no serious attempt to maximise the position of the page in search engine results.
My task was to tackle the issues in order of priority without disruption to the running of the live web site. The site was secured to stop the hacking attempts and monitored on a twice daily basis to ensure fast response in case of any problems. The design issues were tackled by designing more intuitive looking buttons that the visitor could easily identify. The banner area and navigation areas were reduced to make pages more visible before scrolling. Contact forms were coded and made spam proof to eliminate unwanted emails.
The whole site was re-coded, maintaining the look and feel of the current site. This was the same as maintaining the facade of an old building whilst completely replacing and modernising the inside. Search Engine Optimisation was a constant consideration during this process.
To reduce the risk of being entirely dependant on one web site, a second web site was set up to mirror the first. In case of failure of the main web site the second site will be used. The original site had no database backup facilities so these were added.
The result has been a stable web site, free from contact form spamming and often listed No.1 for its target key words.