Choosing a Website
Further down this page: Static Websites | Content Management Systems
If your website was designed a long time ago, or by someone with 'a little knowledge' just consider a few of these well known facts:
- 90% of web surfers don't scroll down!
- Source: Jack Powers, director of the International Informatics Institute - On average a visitor to your web site takes 7 seconds to decide whether to stay.
Source: www.w3schools.com - your website may look fantastic but if it loads slowly few people will see it! - Studies have shown that reading speeds are around 25% slower on a monitor than on paper
...as you can imagine there are many more "design principles" to consider when creating a website.
What will it look like?
Many designers and developers with point you to their portfolio and templates and offer you one of those designs. Of course, I can also do that, it makes things much easier for me!
However, each website should be considered and designed on it's own merits, and I prefer to work with you and develop to your design, so that the website reflects your business and preferences, not mine.
Questions to consider:
- Who are your target audience?
- What are you trying to promote?
- Do you already have a corporate image? etc. etc.
Your website creates a first impression on your vistors, and you should decide what that is.
I may offer opinions or design tips and will give advice on "best practise", but the design layout, images and copy (text) should come from you. I will write the code to make what you want appear on the screen.
Static Website
There are differing opinions about how to improve Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and this isn't the place to rehash them, but sometimes regularly updated Static Websites can perform better in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), as the pages are easier for Search Engines to index.
Static websites can be more difficult to update yourself, but they can give you greater control over the look and layout of the site. Your website can probably be coded to look exactly as you specify.
If you don't want to be concerned with updating the website, maintenance packages are available so that you can send me your updates and I will make the changes for you.
Content Management System (CMS)
Content Management Systems work by merging data held in a database with templates that control the way the website looks. Many websites (including this one) use a CMS: blogs, forums, news and eCommerce sites are usually maintained this way.
Depending on the package you choose, you can either select the look of your site from a number of pre-existing templates, or have a template customized or created specifically for you. However the layout of a CMS isn't usually quite as flexible as a static website.
A CMS makes it much easier for you to update a website yourself if you wish. Using a secure admin area of the website, a username and password allow you to log in an edit the content of pages (text and images), keeping maintenance costs down for simple updates. You can concentrate on the content while the 'look and feel' of the site are maintained separately.
If SEO is important to you, then there are methods to make Content Managed sites with dynamically created pages more 'Search Engine Friendly', I am happy to discuss these with you.
