Website development: key elements to achieving a successful site
Careful Planning & Development
Understanding who you are & what you do - we work with you to create the framework "brief", establishing what your business goals are and how the web can be used to achieve those goals and outcomes.
Built with your visitors in mind - preparing information that will appeal to your target market will ensure you convert potential clients or customers to acting on your desired goals. Not only does the information need to be clear, it needs to highlight the key benefits and features of your products or services.
Making sure your site stands out from the crowd - has integrity, credibility, impact and is accessible. Consideration of your competitors and investigation of sites that you are attracted to will help to identify elements that will enhance your own site. Integrating your research we refine the brief to achieve a website that is uniquely yours, communicates who you are and sets you apart from your competitors.
Plan the promotion of your website both on & off line - as well as people searching online, consider marketing your website though advertising and printed media.
A carefully planned & organised project from the outset will achieve efficiency.
Professional Design & Build
Make your website integrate seamlessly with the rest of your business. Consider your current branding and incorporate this into the design of your site. Integration of your website profile with marketing material and advertising campaigns ensures that your branding and key messages are being communicated consistently across all areas.
Uniquely styled and well coded. On the technical front, a successful website requires an understanding of front-end web development. This involves writing valid HTML / CSS code that complies to current web standards, maximizing functionality, as well as accessibility for as large an audience as possible.
Intuitive user interface & navigation with primary navigation above the fold and repeat navigation in the footer applied consistently across all web pages.
Site map critical for sites that are over 10-15 pages long, this benefits both visitors and search engines trying to crawl your site.
Fast loading & web optimised images enable your pages to download quickly. Avoiding music, video, flash animation and large images, which can cause you to loose visitors with slow connections.
Quality Content
The quality of the information on your website is key to your site’s success. Cloake Design can work with you to develop your content so that it clearly and accurately communicates who you are, what you do and what the key benefits of your product or service are.
- Interesting and informative copy will grab the attention of your visitors
- Well-organized and easy-to-read copy will help to retain your visitors
- Motivational copy will help to move your visitors towards achieving your website goals
We have the technical skills necessary to ensure that your content has full functionality on a web page and is appropriate for on-line readers.
Reading on screen is a completely different experience to that of reading a page. You want your on-line information to attract and retain scim-readers, to be accessible to stressed visitors, to convince the skeptical and to appeal to active readers.
Investing in the development of quality web content will enhance the out-reach of your site, maximise impact and stickiness and achieve results whether that be sales, contacts, enquires or promotion.
Optimisation
Valid HTML / CSS and cross browser compatibility
Fast loading & web optimised images make sure your pages download quickly. Avoid music, video, flash animation and large images, which can cause you to loose visitors with slow connections.
Creating effective and fast loading web pages for your site, requires an in-depth knowledge of HTML, how web browsers work and how they differ, how having a Mac vs. PC effects a site, are some of the technical issues to consider.
Search engine optimisation. Ensure that the site is optimised for search engines, so your target audience can find it, and make sure the site is optimised for visitors, so that they can easily and quickly find the information they need once they reach your site.
Statistics, tracking and analytics. We use Google's free tools to provide you with useful information to determine how your site is being used and its success.
Site performance. All pages load (you will never land on "Page Not Found" page).
Think about long-term maintenance and plan to keep it fresh. Updates are vital to keeping your site "alive" to your viewers, continually add value - and credibility - to your site.
Hosting. We can provide professional website hosting services for you. Where your website is hosted geographically is also very important for Google. We ensure your website development cost is within your budget and that you will get a Return On Investment (ROI).
Google friendly. Google has certain requirements, we build your site with this in mind so it is Google-friendly and your website can easily found.
