I spent some time thinking about my service offering and how I would market my services. My website needs to be in place although I don’t expect it to have every bit of required content on it to start with.
I have looked around at other web design companies to get some ideas. My own personal preference is to have a clean looking website with limited animations and it must be uncluttered. A good example of what I like and don’t like are the Companies Made Simple website, which is clean, clear and with a good layout compared to the UKCorporator site, which, in my own humble opinion, looks too busy. I wonder if they would let me redo it?
Any web designer worth their salt will have knowledge of how a user views a page and where their eyes go. I don’t like sites that are all style and no substance either. Having whizzy graphics that don’t really do anything just uses up bandwidth. I still find pages that take over 15 seconds to load even on an 8Mb broadband connection.
I am also a firm believer in compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. There really is no excuse not to comply here. Why not show your audience that you have bothered to plan your site with accessibility in mind. And while we are on the subject, let’s throw usability into the mix too.
I recently started working on my own website, wspsolutions.com, with a view to putting some ideas together and seeing where I ended up. I have come up with a basic layout although not all the pages have been created yet, just some basic information. I will be adding to it as my service offering grows. You will notice that it lacks anything fancy!
Thinking purely about the layout and design, I would welcome your comments, whether they be good or bad. I know my views will not always be the same as everyone else’s, but I am always open to suggestions on how to improve the “customer experience”. My first questions would be, does the lack of whizzy graphics and animations make it appear less professional? What would you expect to see on a the website of a web development company? Does it need more colour? I think it does…
My website is likely to change over the next few weeks as I will be able to spend a little more time on it, this one took 40 minutes, so consider this Version 1.0. It’s quite possible that it will look nothing like it does now, but that’s design and evolution for you!
Until next time…
Hi,
I started off with a similar design to the one you have. However, if you look around on the wordpress free templates there are some super one’s around. Some of them are three-columnar and, of course, are friends at wordpress have some add-ons for purchase.
Best wishes,
Mark
Hi Mark,
Many thanks for taking the time to comment. I have always found it easier to design other websites but struggle with my own! I’ll take a look at the WordPress ones and see what they have. I need the layout to be CSS-driven so if they do them then that’ll be a bonus!.
Kind Regards
Peter
[...] 3, 2009 by wspsolutions I posted recently about my website, wspsolutions.com. The site is hosted with Redstation, the company with whom I registered the [...]