You may be asking why should I employ someone to build a web site for me when there are a plethora of free site building packages available?
Basically you get what you pay for. The majority of these free, or cheap, packages use templates, provide little in the way of guidance to 'best practices' and mainly employ "drag'n'drop" techniques. The outcome 
is that most sites produced by these packages are 'look-alikes', generally badly written and are not search engine efficient.
I prefer to hand code a web site, using the industry standard 'Dreamweaver' software package. I therefore have much more control over the look and feel of the site. I will also ensure that the site meets the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) compliance standards for both (X)HTML and CSS. What does that mean? Your web site. built to a consistent standard, will render correctly and efficiently in all major browsers and be accessible to the all important search engines.
So what goes into building a web site.?
Content is King - As implied the most important feature of your web site. is content. It is what gets and keeps your visitors interested. It is also vital for search engine rankings. Your site should be content rich and well written. I do not know your business and therefore ask you to provide as much content as possible before work commences so I can understand your business and produce a design accordingly. An existing brochure or web site. is an ideal place to begin.
Images - Images are important is making a web site. visually appealing. These can be your logo, products 
or any other relevant images. These are best supplied in digital format, preferably GIF or JPG. I would recommend any photographs are taken professionally.
Search Engine Optimisation - SEO is life or death to a web site and relies on the "web-crawlers" sent by the search engines to feed back information from your web site. This information determines your web ranking. Anything that obstructs these crawlers from accessing your site content is a bad thing. SEO is not easy, nor is it a bolt-on afterthought. SEO starts with good efficient design and well thought out content. Search engines do not publish a "do it like this" list, rather they prefer the "don't" guidance list. Trying to cheat the system may produce short term results but can result in loss of ranking or even being banned. Good SEO technique is therefore important to every web site.
A web site., if left to its own devices will be picked up by the search engines in 8-12 weeks. Once your site has been completed I will submit it to the main search engines for registration which will substantially reduce this time.
HTML & CSS - These are the basic building blocks of the vast majority of web sites on the internet. HTML provides the structure, CSS (cascading style sheets) provides the style. This separation of style and structure gives a more efficient site. It uses less bandwidth and will load quicker, is more SEO friendly and reduces maintenance costs.
Customer input - is not only important - it is vital. It is no use to you or me if I produce a polished and ready to go site that is exactly unlike what you want. Getting an abstract idea of a design across is not easy, I therefore request customers to provide details of a few web sites they do - or don't - like, and why, as a starting point. Before starting a design I will also discuss your requrements with you, things that may be obvious to youmay not be to me and visa-versa.
If you are asking for a Bespoke quote, I will, at this stage be able to give you a price for the work.
I will also make available at various stages of development the site and invite clients to review it. If, at any time, your requirements change let me know as soon as possible, as with all development processes changes to requirements cost less and have lower impact on delivery schedules. It is after all their site and they must be happy with the end result.
Hosting - Your web site. can be hosted on our own UK based servers
Domain Names - ideally should be short, memorable and meaningful. I can register a domain name of your choosing if required