Website Design Service
Introduction
Here at Aardstorm we believe in keeping things simple; we can provide you with a simple, easy to use website that is compatible with the major internet browsers and search engines, yet still get your message across effectively. Your site will allow your customers, clients or other users to get to the information they need with just a few mouse clicks, and a minimum of typing (ideally no typing at all).
Once your new site is up and running, you will then be able to direct your potential and existing customers to your site from your other promotional activites to describe in more detail the activities, services and/or products of your business or organisation. You will also be able to accept enquiries and even orders through your new site. Through our associated hosting and management service, we will handle any queries regarding your site itself, and will forward other, business-related messages for you to deal with. You will also be able to request changes to its content or even design as often as you like, so that you can keep your customers informed about your activities.
Our website design service is a semi-custom one. That is, we will adapt a standard basic site design to your requirements, by combining standard components. You will be able to choose characteristics such as the colour scheme, style of page navigation controls, and size and style of text. Unless you specify otherwise, we will endeavour to match the style of any existing promotional material you supply us with. This approach minimises the amount of work we need to do to produce your site, keeping the design and particularly testing time down, and therefore also keeping our fees (and your costs) low. It also reduces the need for multiple stages of a normal design and approval process. If, however, you require a more fully custom design, then we can provide that too; please enquire for details and a full quotation, or see our implementation service if you wish to do the visual design work yourself, or require detailed control of the visual design.
Our standard design process also expects you to provide most of the text, pictures and graphics for us to arrange into the page structure of your site, along with the standard components. You can, however, combine our design service with our document and picture services to commission us to produce some or all of the text and /or pictures used on your site. We can accept your data in a wide variety formats, both electronic and on paper or film, and will convert it as necessary for use on your site.
The rest of this page describes our design service in more detail, including a range of standard features that can be included in your new site, details of the information we will need from you to complete your design, and a description of how we will produce your site. See our fees summary page for details of our standard charges for this service.
Website Features
We can provide a wide range of standard features that we can incorporate into your new website. These features are mostly concerned with how visitors to your website move between its pages and interact with it. This includes both detailed page design features features, such as:
- how the pages react to changes in browser window size, including the division of individual pages into functional areas, such as header, footer, sidebars, and content columns, and how they change with window size,
- what controls are provided to link the pages to each other, and how they react to mouse movements and clicks,
together with major functional features such as:
- catalogue, library, or gallery sections, optionally derived from some form of database, which may be located either online or offline,
- shopping carts or other e-Commerce features,
- restricted-access areas, with password protection,
- newsletter or other mailing list subscriptions,
- competition or prize draw entry pages,
Our range of standard features is described in more detail here. If you require features that are not covered by our standard range, please enquire with details of your requirements (or request a quotation), and we will be happy to help.
Design Process
The design process used by Aardstorm to produce a website designed to your requirements will normally consist of the following steps:
1. Request Quotation
You request us to supply a quotation for the design of your website. At this point you need to supply us with sufficient information about your requirements for us to accurately estimate the work involved in producing your site. This will include such information as:
- The number and type of pages required
- The type of navigation facilities required
- The number of pictures or other graphics required, and an indication of how these will be supplied
- The amount of text required, together with an indication of how this will be supplied
2. Supply Quotation
On receipt of your request, we will use the information you supply about your requirements to estimate the amount of work involved for us to produce your site. If anything about your requirements is unclear, we will request clarification from you. We will then produce a firm quotation and send it to you. This will include a firm price and schedule for the work to be done (subject to no significant changes to your requirements), together with a summary of your requirements so that you can check that we have understood your request.
3. Place Order
If you accept our quotation, and decide to commission us to produce your new website, you then place a firm order, and pay a deposit of 50% of the total design fees, plus 100% of any domain name rental fees (see our hosting service for details). At this point you need to also supply us with the full text, pictures, and other graphics to be included in your site.
4. Produce Website
Once we have received all necessary information from you, we will design and implement your new website, and place it in a temporary location on our servers. We will test your site against a range of web browsers, and will exercise all input controls on any interactive forms to ensure that they work correctly. We will then notify you of the completion of your design, together with instructions for how you can view it in its temporary location. We will also at this point send you our invoice for the remainder of the fees due.
5. Approval
You should then carefully check the website that we have produced to ensure that it contains no errors, and meets your requirements. We will correct any errors against your original requirements free of charge. However, if you now require something different, we will be happy to accommodate your changes, but will charge you extra for the additional work involved - we will provide you with a quotation, and will only proceed with your changes once you have accepted the revised fees. Once you are satisfied with our work, you then pay the remainder of our design fees, together with our initial hosting and management fees.
6. Website Goes Fully Live
Once we have received your payment, your new website will be moved to its final location on our servers. A link to your site will also be placed in the 'examples' section of this site, so that the search engines can find your new site. If you have also commissioned us to do more extensive search engine notification, this is when we will do it. The cover that you have requested us to provide through our management service will also start.
Communication
Throughout the design process, communication between us will normally be via e-mail; you will therefore need to supply us with a valid e-mail address that we can use to contact you. You will also need internet access for web browsing, in order to be able to view and approve new website design. If you require one or more face-to-face meetinga, we will be happy to visit you, but will charge extra for the travelling and subsistence costs incurred.
Input Data Formats
We can accept the text, pictures, and graphics for your site in a wide variety of electronic file formats. These basically include those fomats readable by the Microsoft Office (2003 or earlier) program suite, and by the Adobe Creative Suite (CS3 or earlier) programs. If the amount of data you are to supply is relatively small, then these files can be supplied as e-mail attachments. Otherwise you can supply them to us on data CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. The text you supply will be placed into the relevant pages of your new site, and your pictures or graphics will be converted as necessary to an appropriate web format, and reduced in resolution to reduce download times for users of your site while retaining adequate quality.
We can also accept your text and/or pictures on paper or film (35mm negatives or transparencies only). However, supplying your data to us in this way will incur additional transcription or scanning charges.