Web Design and Web Development

The process of producing an excellent web site that delivers on your business objectives calls on a variety of different disciplines. It is simply not sufficient to design a good looking web site and expect this to be enough to have any sort of return on your investment.

To make it easier to demonstrate the different disciplines and why they are relevant, think about why you want to review your online presence and what your business would hope to achieve from this.

Ask yourself the following questions (assuming you already have a web site):

  • Does your web site promote your business and your brand the way you want?
  • Does your web site allow potential customers to find you easily through search engines and other online directories?
  • Does your web site allow visitors to navigate your web site quickly and easily to find the information they want?
  • Does your web site make it easy for visitors to contact you where appropriate?
  • Do you want to sell online or generate leads for your business through your web site?

The creation of a web site is broadly broken down into three main categories:

  1. Aesthetic design: visual design, colour palette, visual layout, structure and organisation of information, navigation
  2. Internet Marketing Development: separation of content and design elements to separate files, html structuring, meta data
  3. Page technical development: web site build, implementation of design final, site performance, usability

Other technical areas (not always required)

  • Site database integration
  • Site payment processing integration
  • Other software system integration e.g. accounting package, CRM, POS, Bespoke back-office software etc.

So how do web design and web development disciplines marry up with your business objectives?

 

Promoting Your Business and Your Brand Effectively

Ultimately this is achieved utilising all the disciplines mentioned above. Most notably: aesthetic design. Web users tend to be impatient, skimming web sites and the information they contain. Research led by Dr. Gitte Lindgaard at Carleton University in Ontario showed that web site visitors took as little as 50 milliseconds to decide whether they liked a web site or not. Hence visual design, colour palette and layout are critical.

But to promote your business and brand effectively you need to ensure that once a visitor’s interest has been captured, they can use the information you are providing efficiently. Therefore structure, organisation, and of course meaningful, intuitive navigation are just as important.

 

Getting Potential Customers to Your Web Site

Very few businesses would not want their web site to drive sales leads, or better: direct sales, using their web site. Having said this, you would be surprised by the number of businesses we have spoken to that wanted a web site because ‘their competition had one’, or, ‘it’s the way things are going’! These are not business objectives and there will of course be businesses out there that don’t require a web site – albeit few and far between.

The truth is virtually all companies should be trying to drive money from their web site – either from increasing revenue or to a lesser extent reducing costs e.g. support/administrative enquiries. In the latter example the business objectives are normally both, but commonality is found in what matters to business the most – profit.

Our most important discipline here is Internet Marketing Development. It is the process of optimising your web site to drive visitors to your web site. Your fantastic new web site is useless if no one sees it.

In both designing and developing a web site, a fundamental understanding of its marketing is crucial as the marketing will typically be considered at all stages.

 

Allowing Visitors to Navigate Your Web Site Quickly and Easily

Unified with the aesthetic design, ease of use will be carefully considered during the initial design process. It is the initial wireframe design that allows your information to be collated and structured appropriately through layout and navigation.

Additional improvements can also be introduced within technical development, which is why our designers have a firm grasp of the development stages.

Web Design

Usability

Our web designers not only have terrific creative flair, but also grounded analytical attributes that allow them to create web designs that not only look great, but also work great! It is an old web design saying that ‘any piece of information on a web site should never be more than three clicks away’.

But it is not just about the layout. By separating design from content with cascading style sheets (CSS) we ensure pages not only load quicker, but also search engines prefer them. CSS takes the design elements out of the page, and reduces the page size leaving it content (text) rich.

 

Aesthetics

We have a broad portfolio of clients from a wide range of sectors. This has meant we’ve produced a diverse portfolio of web sites from engaging corporate to fun and informal. It is our ability to adapt to our clients wants that makes our designers unique. We believe you are the person who best understands your customers, and hence you tell us about them, and we help each other create the best possible aesthetic design for you. We will also review your existing literature, branding, competitor web sites, and any other web sites or design input you may have.

Web design packages from just £599* inclusive. Contact us for a no obligation quotation.

Web Development

Database Integration

Drawing on years of experience developing enterprise scale database systems, our developers are highly adept in creating database integrated web sites.

We predominantly develop databases to run in Microsoft’s enterprise-class database management system (DBMS): Microsoft SQL Server. This DBMS offers significant performance and functional benefits when compared to simpler database systems such as Microsoft Access or MySQL.

Utilising Microsoft SQL Server allows us to develop fast, powerful database driven web sites in a fraction of the time saving you money.

Database driven web sites from just £899* inclusive. Contact us for a no obligation quotation.

 

Online Payment Processing

Having developed a broad range of integrated payment processing web sites, we have direct and detailed knowledge of how to integrate your business’s web site for payment processing. We can advise you on merchant services with your current bank, timescales with your merchant service provider, what it all means, and what you need.

We can then advise you of the best integration options for your web site and, of course implement it!

There are a wide range of processing options with varying fees and commissions, and with our help we can point you in the right direction to get the best value for your business.

Payment processing on your web site from just £399*. Contact us for a no obligation quotation.

 

Systems Integration

If you are looking to integrate your web site (or a secure online web application) with your existing systems, we can certainly help.

With experience of integrating online systems with back-office systems such as Sage Accounts, customer relationship management (CRM) software, numerous third-party web sites/web-applications, as well as countless niche back-office systems, we can quickly evaluate and assist you with automating and integrating your operations.

Our in-house IT support department will also security check and carry out penetration testing to give you peace of mind that solutions are thoroughly security checked. It is this broad-range of technical expertise that makes Bright Digital a firm favourite in affordable systems integration.

Specialist systems integration at market beating prices. Contact us for a no obligation quotation.

 

*Prices exclude UK V.A.T.