When looking to engage the services of a website design company or website design agency it is important to have a clear understanding about the various options available when it comes to the design and development of your website, it is also important to have a clear set of objectives and to define exactly what you are looking to achieve through your website.  

·         Custom Website Design - There are many web design companies on the internet stating that they do custom website design, a word of warning if you are looking for a unique website design then you will need to ensure that the web design company is actually creating a unique one off web design as opposed to the customisation of a template.  Many website design companies utilise existing templates and then just change things like colour, insert your company logo, your supplied text and some photo’s specific to your business.  The end result you end up paying far too much money for a website that does not take very long to create and the design has been utilised time and time again for many other websites.  Certainly no way to promote the uniqueness of your business. 

·       Website Development – Will your website require a backend system a database, would you like to provide a search facility so that a user can search for information, sign up to newsletters, add articles, incorporate an ecommerce system with a payment gateway so that you can sell products or services online?  These are just some of the things that you will need to take into account with regards to whether or not your website require web development.  Speak to your website design agency or website design company so that you can ascertain more about website development and whether or not it is something that may be of benefit for your website.

·       Content Management System – A CMS system provides an easy way of being able to update content within your website, if you are going to have content on specific pages that you would like to be able to update yourself you may want to enquire about having a content management system. 

·       Website Loading -  It is important to ensure that your website and each web page within your website loads quickly, you do not want to loose potential clients as a result of a slow loading website.  

·       Flash Web Design – Although flash looks interesting on a website, you need to ensure that if you would like to incorporate flash within your website design, then a few flash elements such as flash images or banners are far better than a website that is 100% flash.  The search engines do not like flash and as a result a website that is 100% flash will not be easily indexed or found.  There are some ways around this though you will need to take this into account when working with a website design agency or website design company and ensure that whoever you choose to do your search engine optimisation is knowledgeable in this area.

·       Navigational Structure – It is important to ensure that anyone who accesses or utilises your website is able to quickly and easily find exactly what they are looking for and as such you should spend some time mapping out the various paths available for a user when they access your website.  You should map out all the available paths to ensure that wherever possible you are able to provide the user with the minimise number of clicks from point A to their final destination within your website.  You want to ensure that when the user accesses your website that you think of all potential paths and provide them with the correct information along the way.

·       For example if a user accesses your website via your home page and wants to find out about what you do; you should have a button so that a user can click straight to the page about what you do (think about the other sorts of information that a user may be looking for that may help with their decision about purchasing from you or deciding to contact you to make further enquiries about your product or service.  If you sell products you should ensure that you have a product page that includes details about your products, possibly product prices (unless you want to get a potential customer to contact you to request a quote in which case you will need to ensure that a user can easily get from the product page to a request a quote page, if you have information about product guarantees or warranties these should also be easily found by the user.  Always try to ensure that a user can access data in as few clicks as possible you do not want your website to be a maze.  If your website is large, complex and full of data you may want to enquire about persona marketing.

·       Persuasive copy - There is no point having a 100% customised website design that looks good and is totally unique if you let your website down with the content, you want to ensure that your website copy is succinct and to the point so that it provides an interesting read for the user.  Any content that you include within your website should be accurate and up to date, if you utilise persuasive copy you will persuade the user to continue reading your website and may even encourage them to make a sale or at least contact you to discuss your product or service further.

·       Search Engine Optimisation - You will also need to bear in mind that copy also has to be relevant for the search engines and as such this is something that you should discuss with whoever is doing your search engine optimisation.

·       Contact - You must ensure that you have contact details on your website and that they are  clearly visible not hidden away somewhere for no one to see.  If you intend to utilise your website as an income generating tool – a means of generating new sales enquires and business then you will need to ensure that you have a easily accessible contact page with all your contact details.

·       Privacy If you are going to be collecting any personal information from users on your website then you should ensure that you have a clear decisive privacy policy included within your website.

·       Copyright © A website design agency or website Design Company should automatically include a copyright symbol on your website this symbol is utilised to protect the content of your website so that it cannot be copied or utilised on other websites.  

If you would like to enquire about website design and website development options for the creation of a truly 100% unique website then contact
Brand Art to find out more.