WebSmiths

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Whether you ultimately choose us as your Web Designer or decide to go with someone else, we believe that what you will learn in this Presentation will prove invaluable to you in the future in terms of your understanding of how professional web design should be done and what it is possible to do in terms of the available graphic technology.

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As we pointed out on the homepage, any website consists of two main features: Content & Presentation. The content will be largely driven by you, as you know your business, group or project better than we do. But the presentation of that promotional and/or informational material should be driven by both us and you because we (probably) have more experience than you in terms of what type of presentation will suit what type of audience. This is then, a Presentation mainly about Presentation itself. Our team intends to add additional parts on an ongoing basis as time allows.

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Over the following pages, we’ll explore some key questions to help guide your website design:

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• Part 1: What type or style of website do you actually need?

• Part 2: What exactly do you want the website to achieve for you?

• Part 3: How should homepage/landing page images best be combined with text for maximum impact?

• Part 4: Why you must own (in your own name or in your company's name) your domain & email service, and have full admin access to your hosting.

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We're already planning other explainer pages and another part should be along before the Autumn. Below is a list of topics we are planning to cover in future, but please email us any ideas you have and let us know what you would like us to talk about:

 

• How conventional, artistic, thematic or unusual should the design be?

• Should your website be storyboard based or options-layout based?​​​

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As you go through the slides, you’ll notice we’ve included a mix of effects, animations, videos, and transitions. These aren’t meant to be perfectly coordinated or “beautiful” — they’re simply here to showcase what's possible with modern web design. We've already done that to some extent on the homepage but here we will show more.

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As you may have noticed, we have removed the normal website header for the presentation. The icon with the home symbol (top left) will take you back to the homepage should you wish to leave the Presentation at any point, and links to each part are at the bottom of every screen if you scroll all the way down. This is a technique used to "encourage" your visitors to read more of your content by removing the temptation of the usual header main menu - you may wish to consider the same for your own site. There is also the added advantage that this provides more screen space on the desktop/laptop version of the site to get your message over - particularly if your header is large with a lot of links, badges and logos in it.

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One final note: what looks great on a large screen may not always translate well to mobile. So, when planning your site with us, always think about what type of device your customers are most likely to be using - for example, people who look at websites during the day from an office (e.g. buyers of business stationery, desks, filing cabinets, etc.) are more likely to be using a desktop or a laptop. People who look at websites in the evening from home (e.g. for Tarot readings, recipes, scented candles, etc.)  are more likely to be using a mobile phone. Of course there will always be crossovers and ALL our websites will look great on either desktop or mobile, but sometimes (e.g. for a high impact graphic sequence) we might have to optimise toward one display size or the other, so this factor is worth considering.

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And always remember as you work through the slides, WebSmiths offers you a free, no-obligation video meeting (or call) to discuss any of the points that come up.

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We believe the Presentation is best viewed in numerical order and should take you less than 20 minutes to go through - after going through it, we believe you will understand a lot more about web design and what type of site you need.