simonmoss.co.uk - web design and development

An effective web site will:

be planned carefully before it is built ... more

An effective web site is a tool - that is, it should be designed to meet definite aims and objectives. The first step of any web site project is to define the purpose of the site. This focus is the design in the term "web design". I believe in working closely with you to establish what you want your site to achieve right from the start of the project.

be easy to find ... more

Word of mouth will attract some traffic, but in most cases visitors will find your site by using a search engine. When coding your site, I aim to create "search engine friendly" pages. This doesn't guarantee you good page rankings, but it does give your site a fighting chance. Creating "search engine friendly" pages is sometimes called SEO - Search Engine Optimisation. Find out more

be easy to navigate ... more

Good navigation is critical to a successful site. Where possible, the "3 Click Rule" should be followed: no page on your site should take more than 3 clicks of a mouse to get to. On larger sites this is sometimes simply not possible. In that case the site needs to be made searchable.

contain pages which download quickly ... more

In 1999, research showed that the majority of people on the web waited for no more than 8 seconds for a page to download. While Broadband should make download times far faster, the majority of people online in the UK at the moment are still using dial-up. For dial up visitors, a 30KB page takes about 10 seconds to download. This is a good argument for keeping pages simple - graphics are larger in file size than text, and Flash animation and video are generally larger than graphics.

contain pages which work on as many browsers, platforms and screen resolutions as possible ... more

One of the biggest challenges of good web design is to build web pages that work on all the major web browsers - Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Safari (for the Mac). One way to achieve this is to follow the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Standards (you can see their validation marks at the bottom of this page). This isn't the whole story - web standard code must still be tested on as many browsers, computers and monitors as possible. Nothing looks worse than a "broken website".

contain content which is clear, simple and fresh ... more

The saying "content is king" is often used to describe the most important aspect of any web site. Content must also be clear and easy to understand at a glance. Most people don't read web pages - they scan for information. Short and sweet gets the message across. Finally, no-one wants to re-read the same material all the time. Regular updates of content are critical if you want visitors to keep coming back to your site.