Web Design

Web design is usually the first stage of a project. At this point, the project is not a web site at all, but layers of pixels within a graphics package. The first goal to achieve at this stage is to create a design with visual appeal. A recent study by Carleton University in Ottawa revealed that it takes as little as 50 milliseconds for a browser to decide whether they like a site. So if your site doesn't look good, the chances are it is not reaching its sales potential. For most web designers, once they have produced an appealing design their job is done. At Indigo, once we have created a design our job is only half done. A web site that is truly successful needs to meet all the following:

• Clearly shows what your company has to offer
• If the company offers a large number of products/services the most important should be prominently displayed
• The site's navigation(s) need to be intuitive (you'd be surprised at some of the navigations we've seen)
• Points of contact need to be clearly visible
• Points of sales need to be simplistic and intuitive
• Site should not be cluttered with useless or marginal information
• Text should be inviting to read

It might sound simple, but how many sites do you see that encompass the above aspects while looking good at the some time? However, we do understand that not all web sites need to meet some/all of these aspects - some sites need to be more art than sales.

Many sites suffer from lack of design variation, a lack of imagination and/or development ability. For this reason, we feel it is important to design individual sub-pages for some of our projects. These can help your site from getting stale and we make sure they are not too different from one another, so as not to confuse potential customers.

Web Development

For this section we have tried to keep technical jargon to a minimum, but as an overview of a technical service it needs to have a little. If you don't understand a few points or would like to know more about this service call 020 8959 8337.

Web development is broken down into two areas: front-end development and back-end development. Front-end developers are a mix of a designer and a back-end developer. They are responsible for turning designs into a web site, user interface and JavaScript widgets. Back-end developers generally have no artistic ability and have not seen the light of day since they first turned on a computer. They spend their spare time watching Star Trek and coding Nintendo DS emulators. Back-end developers are responsible for programming into existence all the functions of your web site that it's users will experience but never see - XML parsers, elaborate product databases, eCommerce integrations etc.

Front-end Development

The first stage of front-end development is to turn a design or set of designs into HTML and CSS. The majority of web developers will simply use a WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver to put your site into HTML. This is little more difficult than using Microsoft Word and results in an unprofessional end product. Web sites that have been constructed in a WYSIWYG editor will suffer from all of the following:

• Messy and bulky code, which is difficult to update and maintain
• Pages will not be geared for search engine optimisation
• Updates to the site will cause degradation to already low quality HTML
• HTML will be inflexible and suffer from accessibility issues, reducing your target audience
• Contain numerous coding errors, which can cause cross-browser incompatibility and confuse search engines, again reducing your target audience
• Only makes use of a fraction of HTML and CSS

At Indigo every single page is hand-coded using scaleable, semantic, keyword-rich HTML. This means:

• Our code is clean & minimal, resulting in pages that are easy to manage and update
• HTML is constructed in a way to best inform search engines what that page is about
• HTML is scaleable, meaning any content can be changed to fit any requirements and the size of the site can be increased infinitely without degradation (for accessibility & gee wizz purposes)
• HTML and CSS is provided free of errors and compatible with major web browsers
• Web site will be compatible with all screen resolutions

Just to give you an idea, 1% would be a liberal estimate of the number of sites on the internet that have a solid HTML foundation. In our opinion HTML is the easiest part of making a web site. So if so many development companies can't get that right what else are they going to do half-heartedly?

Once your site has been meticulously put into HTML, the next stage is to add features and facilities to the user interface. This consists of constructing light effects, such as the menu at the top of this page and more advanced facilities like the quoting system or the portfolio.

Back-end Development

Once a project has been through front-end development it is handed over to a back-end developer. This is the stage where all the 'behind the scenes' work goes on - the front-end of the site is connected to programming functions and databases that will make the web site actually work.

We have knowledge of and can support development using the following:

Markup Languages

• HTML & XHTML
• SVG
• XML
• XUL

Stylesheet Languages

• CSS
• XLST

Programming Languages

• C
• C++
• Java
• JavaScript
• Pascal
• PHP 4 & PHP 5
• Perl
• Python
• Visual Basic

Query Languages

• MS Access
• MS Jet
• MySQL
• PostgreSQL

Miscellaneous

• ADO
• AJAX
• JSON
• mod_rewrite

Protocols

• DNS
• FTP
• IMAP
• MIME
• POP3
• SMTP
• SOAP
• SSH
• TELNET
• TLS & SSL

If it is not possible for us to meet your requirements with one of the above languages we will definitely be able to using a combination of them.

Our approach to programming is modular and object-orientated. All of our programming is created with extensibility in mind. Most of our programming is done based on industry standard technology so it is understood by the wider community of programmers. With any website that we build we willl throughly test it against W3C Standards.

We will be more than happy to discuss your ideas over the phone or arrange a meeting at your convenience.

We are currently offering a FREE health check for your existing website with no strings attached. Please give us a call on 020 8959 8337 or email us if you are interested.

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