Introduction

 

In our website design we pride ourselves on coming up with a look that reflects the character of the featured business or individual. Our friendly personal approach should appeal to anyone daunted by the technicalities, and a small but expert team means we can offer very competitive rates.

Our websites are loosely based on templates, but if you find something totally different on the web that you would like to emulate we will be happy to discuss it and quote a price.

If you require a website that is frequently updated with new text and/or images, we can provide an easy-to-use Content Management System (CMS) that allows you to do this, with or without our assistance (e.g. you might prefer us to edit your digital photo's).

Whatever your needs we can guarantee you a visually impressive site with perfectly formatted text. For an e-commerce website we can easily create a custom solution using the Google Checkout service, or if you are not currently VAT registered we recommend Paypal – contact us for a price quotation.

To see what we are offering please check the websites of some satisfied customers...

lizsutherland.co.uk is a 'Basic' site with a click slideshow which allows easy viewing of all images in a category.

Handstandfilms is a 'Basic' site with added features – a Flash video clip and a Flash fade-in graphic.

Adshaw-sci-art.org is a 'Basic' site with some extras – an animated Flash header, two video clips, and one page with a tiled image background.

Karenwilliamson.org is a ''Standard'' site, featuring a click slideshow.

Content Management Systems

For any text changes you might want to make in future we supply an easy-to-use CMS, PT WebEdit (£66), which allows you to edit your webpages online. As well as keeping your site up-to-date you will also improve your search engine ranking, and of course avoid our site editing fees. Free email and phone technical support is included.

For a comprehensive CMS that allows you to change images and other linked media as well as text we have developed PT SiteManager, (Mac or Windows, from £130, depending on the amount of flexibility you require).

Please note that although CMS software can in theory allow you to do all your own website maintenance, there are some tasks it is unsuited for, in particular image editing, as this requires specialist skills and an expensive dedicated program like Adobe Photoshop®. If you don't have the ability to do this in-house then we will be happy to do it for you, see table below for rates.

How We Work

At an initial consultation we will discuss the navigation, general design and layout of webpages. If you live in the vicinity of London or Cambridge we can visit you at no charge. If travel is not feasible we can liaise with you by phone, email, or web chat. At this stage we would expect you to have most of your material ready as either digital photo's or text documents. We work on Macs and Windows PC's, so almost any kind of CD or DVD is suitable for transferring files to us, and email attachments are OK if you don't have CD/DVD burning capability.

We will agree a schedule for the work, consisting of (1) the Graphic Design Completion Date, (2) the Website Design Start Date, (3) the Website Check Date, and (4) the Final Completion Date.

Graphic Design (1) involves choosing suitable colours and, crucially, the design of the header image and text, seen at the top of each webpage and greatly influencing the character of your site, so we take care to get this right and submit our design for your approval before we start on any other work.

We require all necessary files from you by (2) the Website Design Start Date, so any additional files you don't have ready at the first meeting should be sent to us as email attachments, for which we can give instructions if you are unfamiliar with the process. On this date we will register your domain and pay for one year's webhosting.

Photographs you supply don't have to be perfect - we can correct for perspective distortion and crop out backgrounds. We can accept text in most common formats - Microsoft Word, Quark Xpress, Excel tables, or simple Wordpad, Notepad or TextEdit files.

According to the site option you choose and total size of files, (3) the Website Check Date will be between 1 and 7 days after the agreed start date. On this day your website will be ready for checking - we ask you to look it over online and tell us of any changes you require, and (4) the Final Completion Date will be not more than 4 days later.

Prices in detail