>SERVICES
Your Business on the Web
A company's website presence has never been so important. People now look for businesses websites & homepage for information about the company, it's prices and products. If that information is not there, they'll simple search for another company who do have the information they are looking for.
With the current economy being so bad and many local businesses struggling, it is important to maximize your business potential in every way possible. If you don't have a website, you may be losing a significant proportion of sales to a rival business who do have a web presence.
Absolute Websites can help you with this and for half the price than other web developers. Prices start from just £80, yes £80!
Website Development
Absolute Websites produce top quality functional websites for great prices. Have as much or as little input into the design as you wish.
All websites are designed to be W3C compliant. This means that the website will be accessible on all platforms including different browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, mobile phones, screen readers and more.
What you get for your money
- A website built & designed and uploaded to your server or one provided by absolute websites. For more information on website file storage are stored please see the hosting section.
- Your website will be coded with XHTML and CSS.
- A comprehensive navigation menu linking all your webpages together
- Interactive colour changing menu links - when a user hovers over a link, background colour changes so user knows he is selecting a link
- A search box on the site so users can search your website
- Your website added to the search engines database such as google, yahoo, ask.com
- A google friendly sitemap uploaded to google to enable all of the pages on your website to be recognised and stored with google
- A sitemap on your website at no extra charge to enable search engines to index your website easily
- Access to an extensive set of statistics on your website. Statistics such as most popular page, page most people exit on, how people find you and many more are available, as shown below
The process from start to finish
- You contact Absolute Websites with your enquiry
- I get back to you and ask you if you would like to arrange an appointment. We can either meet in person in a location to suit you (Holmfirth, Huddersfield or elsewhere), talk over the telephone or talk via email or instant messaging. During the appointment session I will gather what you want on your website and how you want it to look. Please be aware that you need to supply all text content and any images and/or videos that you want to appear on your website. I will also discuss your hosting and domain name requirements.
- A project proposal will then be drawn up showing the project's aims and how Absolute Websites will meet these aims. The proposal will also include the quotation and details of what we both have agreed will go into the site and it's design. This will sent to you for you to sign.
- I will then produce a mock up design of your website in a graphics package. I will then send this to you by email or we can arrange an appointment to discuss it. If you are happy with this design, I will ask you to sign a print out of the design to confirm your agreement. A deposit of 20% of the quotation amount will then be due to confirm your commitment and to cover the cost of any disbursements such as domains name registration and hosting facilities.
- If required your choice of domain name will then be registered for you
- The site will then be built
- The completed website will be shown to you, if everything is to your satisfaction, the files that make up your website will be uploaded to your hosting server and your website will be online!
- An invoice for the remaining balance will be produced.
Website Extras
I can also provide you with extra features for your website. Features such as:
- A drop down menu - when the user hovers over the menu, additional links are displayed relevant to that menu section as used on this website
- Expanding sections. Maybe you want a page full of pictures of your products and don't want to spoil the look of the page by adding text to it. You can have a line of test or a simple small cross that users can recognise as an expanding section. When the user clicks this cross, text or other image, the text appears. If they click the cross again, the section disappears. This is great for achieving a clean clutter free design. You can see this effect on the prices page on this website.
- A quotation program or some other kind of interactive program. A program can be built that asks the users for some information and then based on this information, it feeds back to them with some data. For an example of this please see the car insurance program or our own estimate program.
For examples of websites designed by Absolute Websites please see the portfolio section.
Flash Websites
Flash websites for your business
Absolute Websites have Flash templates for websites. To view them please click on either one of the pictures below. Of course they can be customised to any way you want them to look
The only problem with flash websites is that if a user doesn't have flash player installed or doesn't know how to install flash, they wont be able to see your website. You therefore have to clearly identify your target market and their technical ability when thinking about having a purely flash website
Hosting & Domain Names
Hosting
Hosting refers the storing all the files that make up a website. The place where these files are stored is on a server. A server is connected to the internet when enables people to access the files that form your website. It may be that you already have a host and simply require absolute websites to develop your website and upload the files to your host server.
You may not have hosting facilities, in which case Absolute Websites can arrange this for you. If you want Absolute Websites to obtain a server host for you, this can be done for the small fee of £20 which includes completion of all of the hosting account registration process, access to 6 email addresses e.g. info@yourdomain.com, admin@yourdomain.com, johnsmith@yourdomain.com.
Domain Name Registration
You may already have a domain name in which case I wont need to register one for you and can bring that domain name to your host server if you require one or simply leave it with it's current server if you already have one.
If you don't have a domain name then we can discuss the best name for yourself and your business. I need to take into account things like search engine optimisation, your business name, what domain extensions are available, how easy the name is to remember (important for retaining customers), any special characters we could use to get as close as possible to the domain name you want if the one you want is already owned.
Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation is the term for maximising a website's exposure on search engines. There are many different factors that affect a websites ranking in Google and other search engines. Whilst building your site, Absolute Websites will code it in such as way in order to maximise it's optimisation with search engines using a variety of different techniques. This is provided at no extra cost.
You will also be registered with Google's Local Business Centre which is a service that shows local business's details to people based on their location when they type suitable keywords in google search.
Marketing & Adverts
Adverts on the Web
Absolute Websites can also arrange to have your website marketed online. Have you ever noticed the coloured adverts that appear at the right of search results on google? These are google adverts, known as Google AdSense and Absolute Websites can set these up for you. You only pay for these adverts when someone clicks on them, there is therefore no fee if no-one clicks the advert during a search request. The fee is per click is minimal. A daily budget can be set so that once people have clicked on the site a certain number of times, your ad is no longer displayed to save you incurring costs beyond your budget.
Also available is the ability to advertise on social networking sites such as facebook. This is also a pay per click service. What's good about advertising on social networking sites is that you can actually target your audience by age, gender, location and other factors. The more exclusive the target audience, the less the cost per click will be.
If you would like Absolute Websites to set up any online marketing for you, please contact us.
Banner Adverts
You may have notices on some webpages that they have an animation advert at the top or the left or right of their page. This is known as a banner advert. One of these can be designed and built for you in a program called Flash. Simple things can be made such as your products fading in and out of the banner to show what you have for sale, or even an interactive 3D product carousel, where the visitor can see your products going round in a 3D space and can affect choose different products to display by clicking on next and back arrows in the banner advert.
If you have an idea for a banner advert but aren't sure if it can be built then please contact Absolute Websites and we can discuss this further.
For an example of an advertising banner designed and built by Absolute Websites please see the portfolio section
Design & Branding
Design
Your site can be designed for you around your existing brand and logo. Your logo can be uploaded to the site so that visitors instantly recognise they have come to the right place.
There are many important things to consider and take into account when designing a website, not just what is aesthetically pleasing. Here is a list below of what Absolute Websites consider when designing a website.
- Organised Page Hierarchy - your webpages must be organised clearly so visitors can find things easily. If you have a page about what products you sell, it is important to have this page under a clear menu title so visitors automatically know where to find the product section
- Visual Hierarchy - Visual elements should be arranged so that the visitor's eye is drawn to the most important thing first. For example if you are promoting a product sale, the information banner about this should be prominent enough that it draws the eye to this first then to the other elements, such as text, images, video, in order of importance. Similarly the page must make sense visually too so that the customer can quickly scan it and find out what your site is about.
- Readability - certain colours can make reading difficult, for instance trying to read red text on a black background is hard work, the eye needs to strain to focus on the letters. Similarly, red and green should never appear as text and background colour because colour-blind people can't read the page, not to mention the difficulties it poses for non colour-blind visitors trying to focus on the words. It is important to avoid these design no-nos as you will just lose customers. If someone is finding it hard to read text or can't quickly scan your page and know what you are about they'll simply go somewhere else who's site is easier to read.
For examples of websites designed by Absolute Websites please see the portfolio section.
Branding
If you don't already have a brand and/or logo, then one can be designed for you and approved by you before incorporating it into the website. I will look at how you want your company to look, who your target market is, what feel you want your brand to have, what's your unique selling point. All these factors will help to develop a concept for your brand, from which your logo, tagline and brand colours will be developed. For more information on this please contact Absolute Websites.
For examples of brands designed & developed by Absolute Websites please see the portfolio section.
Photography & Photo Editing
Photography
Most likely you will want some photos on your website, perhaps photo's of your products, your business, your staff etc. If you don't have any pictures and aren't comfortable with taking them yourself then Absolute Websites can do this for you. The charge is just £2 a photograph. A good photograph can mean the difference between someone venturing further into your site and someone going to another businesses' site. Important things to consider are framing, exposure, size, contrast & aesthetics.
Photoediting
Photoediting or photo-manipulation is commonplace nowadays. You often hear of people being "photoshopped" for magazines, billboards etc. What this refers to is the editing of a photograph in someway way to make it look different to the original photo. Some examples of situations where photo manipulation may be used are:
- A common use of photo editing is improve someone's appearance. Fine lines, wrinkles & spots can be minimised or removed altogether. Hair colour can be changed, or a completely different hairstyle can be added.
- People in different photos can cut out and combined and made to appear like they are in the same place.
- People are sometimes put in different background, for example a photo of someone taken in sunny Huddersfield could be edited to show the person in Paris in front of the Eiffel tower instead. Obviously attention has to be paid to lighting in the different pictures and they have to be edited so the photo appears real
- Pictures of products are usually manipulated in some way before being marketed,. Strawberries may be brightened to look more red and vibrant for a supermarket promotion, pictures of houses for sale can be changed to make the rooms look brighter than they are, or to change the sky to a bright blue sunny day
- Images can be re-sized to make them smaller, more rectangular, to cut something out the picture
- Coloured filters can be applied over pictures to make them look warmer, cooler. Colour can be removed to make the picture black and white, or colour saturation can be increased to give the image more vibrancy.
For an example of photoediting by Absolute Websites please see the portfolio section.
Video
You may want a video produced for your website. Many companies now have video's made about their products, about the company, location and more. If you want a video for your website then please see the prices section for an idea on the costs involved.
I can also add a video from youtube if desired. It can embedded directly into your website. contact Absolute Websites for more information.
