design and build

Your website is your shop window to the world, the design must have instant appeal. A visitor will judge a site and whether or not they want to transact with it, in a few seconds.

Building a strong online brand

Communication your business offer and sales message in an instant is vital. Whether it's on a website or in print, a well projected image of what your organisation does, showing its personality, strengths and benefits, will make the difference between success and failure.

A good brand is one of a organisation's most valuable assets. It should be simple, flexible and highly recognisable, showing exactly what your buisness does. By consistently projecting your brand online, its recognition builds, so will your audience's familiarity with your organisation, making it easier to develop trust, aiding communications and sales. For further information on branding and corporate design visit www.helix-design.co.uk

Process

We design and build our websites using a series of stages through which the project evolves. 1st define brief, 2nd design visuals and 3rd build and test.

This enables us to develop ideas, ensuring that nothing is missed and we deliver a website that is not only a buisness tool but also the centre of our clients marketing and communications. Before we do anything, working closely with the client, we will define the function of the website and what it is there to achieve. After writing and agreeing a brief and specification, we will start ordering information and defining navigation. We will then design concepts that will stand out amongst the competition. When a design concept has been approved, we will write copy, source and commission pictures and start constructing the site. If features, like e-commerce, editable catalogues or other online functionality are to be used, they will be developed alongside the work being done at this stage. As the site progresses, it is up-loaded to a hosting server and tested and reviewed before it is fully commisssioned and any promotion begun.

W3C website standards and accessibilty

We take the view that all websites should conform to W3C website standards and recommendations for the following reasons

• The website will be future proof, and will work in new browsers developed in the..
• The website will have scalable text for viewers with visual imparment and also compatible with screen readers
• The website will function on other devices like mobile phones and PDAs
• The website will load quicker as there is less code behind the page
• The website will be more search engine friendly, as the content is seperated from the presentation
• Pages can incorporate different styling for printing

And where required we can implement an accessibility standards (WAI) based design catering for very diverse audiences.

Functionality

E-commerce, catalogues, bulletin boards and sites that can be edited online.