Peterborough Website Design

Lincolnshire & Cambridgeshire Website Design Service

Based in Peterborough (Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire) I am a freelance website designer and provide my services to small and medium businesses.

Please view my website design portfolio by clicking on the link to the right.

If you wish to make an enquiry, please contact me to discuss your requirements and arrange a meeting. You can contact me via e-mail to mail@peterboroughdesign.co.uk or via telephone to 07763939715.

Date: 19th May 2012
 

What do I know about website design?

Useful information when considering a new website

What a website does for a company

The main use for a business website is to provide potential customers with information about the company and its purpose.

Many homes and offices have a computer with access to the Internet and, thanks to search engines, choose to search for their needs online. An Internet search costs nothing, it's easy, fast and potential customers can browse information and media (such as pictures, audio and even video) from any where in the world. The Internet is an interesting and cost effective way to advertise to any target audience.

How a website attracts visitors and gets listed on search engines

New websites can be advertised to get people interested in visiting them, but the best way to get visitors is to be listed on search engines.

Search engines list websites automatically by scanning web pages with programs called "robots". A search engine robot examines a webpage and gives it a rating which effects the position that it appears in a search. It also follows hyper links to find more pages and scans them in the same way. The best, cost effective way to appear at the top end of search engines is to design a website with the robots in mind.

By applying my knowledge to present information, content, and infrastructure in the correct way, I can make it easy for search engines to catalogue a website and compete with other top listed websites. Clients are also listed in my website design portfolio.

Choosing a domain name for the website

Domain names are simply text references that point to specific places on the Internet; they're what people type in when they want to visit a website. When you choose a domain name you should consider the following.

Long names are hard to remember and can take a long time to type in. It can be difficult to read out long names over the phone and fitting them in on documents.

Domain names must be at least two characters and no more than 68. They can only contain alpha numeric characters which means only a to z, 0 to 9, and a hyphen (or dash "-"), but cannot start or end with the hyphen.

A meaningful name can be better than a label, for example "PeterboroughPlumbers.co.uk" would be better than "gppc.com" (Greater Peterborough Plumbing Company). It helps with search engine listing if a keyword is part of the domain name, and people will remember it more easily.

It is possible to check if a website is available for registration and this can be done on UKReg.com.

Try to keep it quiet until it is registered because anyone can register a domain name, making it profitable to "squat" on your name and sell it to you for more than it's worth.

Normally I will register a domain name (at cost price) for new clients and will arrange for it to be pointed to the correct hosting server.

Sorting out website hosting

Web pages are files that are "hosted" on an Internet server. The browser software on a receiving computer downloads these files and processes them into a webpage to be displayed.

Normally I will set up hosting for new clients websites with Hardlink Hosting, who provide flexible hosting and email services. If a company already owns hosting, all I will need is FTP (file transfer protocol) access to upload the website.

E-commerce websites and other applications

Some businesses sell their products using a website to provide a powerful catalogue of products. This online shop format is called E-commerce, and I can provide and customise such an E-commerce website to a company's requirements.

Websites are also becoming more powerful as programming languages such as Java, Perl and PHP are developing. By using programming together with a database engine like MySQL it is possible to create online applications for data such as an image gallery, an events calendar or a forum.

If a company needs such an application then I can provide it, having designed and built applications including an image gallery, an audio archive and an organisation schedule. For content that is to be made dynamic like a forum or image gallery, bear in mind that such applications may need monitoring and administrating.

Deciding on the content of your new website

It is very important that the content of your website is relevant, interesting and quick to load. When a website is found from a search engine, first impressions make the difference between gaining a passing visitor and gaining a new customer.

The textual content has to be enough to interest the average search engine robot, but not too much to bore the average human reader. If a large amount of text is needed it can be broken up with images and subtitles.

Large websites should be easy to navigate so that different visitors can find what they need quickly. A good infrastructure should mean minimal clicks for the visitor to find the information they need.

Items on a website are downloaded before they are displayed, so webpages with large images can be slow and lose the patience of a visitor.

When I design and build a website, the first thing I must do is to research the subject (the company or theme). Understanding what the business does will help me to design pages that together make a fantastic new website.