Web Design Edinburgh

Web design is a process and it evolves and changes during the course of the project as our Edinburgh based team get you, the customer, involved.

If you’ve never done this sort of thing before, here are some of the very basic steps a web design project will have:

• Initial meeting to talk through what you’re looking for and how much it will cost
• Register a domain name and get a hosting plan
• Graphic design for logos, branding and website page layouts
• Designing and building the website
• Go live
• Market your new website

Of course there’s a lot of detail missing out in each of those steps.  Find out more below.

Initial Meeting

This is probably one of the most vital meetings in for the whole project.
It sets the initial goals and expectations both from yourself as a customer and us as a service provider.

We like to meet our customers face-to-face for the first meeting in a nice coffee house or bar.  It makes for a more relaxing and friendly chat.

You’ll tell us roughly what you’d like the website to do and we’ll scratch our heads and think of a way that it can be done.

By going through all the ideas you have, and usually hitting on a few more, we’ll have a good idea on how it can be implemented, how much time it will take and the cost.

Once we embark on the project, we’ll outline a plan of action and keep you informed at every stage.

Why not give us a call for free on 0800 44 88 960 to arrange a friendly chat and a free quote.  There may be some cups of tea and biscuits involved!

Domains Names and Hosting Plans

You’ll need a domain name for your website, likely a .co.uk or a .com address.

Depending unpon the uniqueness of your business venture, you may have to get a little creative when finding a domain name.  We can help you find the most suitable domain name availble for your new website.
Domains are usually bought and renewed every year or two years.  They don’t cost much, approx £10 for a yearly .co.uk domain.

Learn more about registering domain names.

With the domain name sorted, you’ll next need a hosting plan.  This is simply renting out space on a sever, that’s connected 24×7 to the internet, for your website files to reside on.

Again, depending on the size and complexity of your website requirements, we can recommend the best-fit hosting solution.  You don’t want to be paying for something you’re not using, but then again, there’s no sense in shelling out extra money to upgrade if your site expands rapidly after going live.
Hosting plans come with heaps of options and hence the overall cost will depend on those options.  Most hosting plans have a yearly renewal period.

Learn more about our hosting plans.

Graphic Design Prototyping

At this stage we’ll produce some designs for logos, branding, website pages and any other aspects of the project which require a graphical element to it.

Usually we’ll email you some intial images of the design for you to look over and provide us with feedback.  This cycle usually repeats until you’re happy with the designs we’ve created and they’re ready to be implemented as stationary, or website pages.

Of course sometimes things change thoughout the project, so we can revisit this stage at any time if needed.

Designing and Building the Website

This is the real techie bit for us which we really enjoy when we start to build your website.

We try to give you as much control over how you can manage the final website and most of our implementations are based around a Content Management System or CMS for short.

A CMS splits your website into three parts; the front-end your visitors interact with, the design that we apply and the back-end that you login to for updating the website content.

Learn more about how Content Management Systems work.

We like to use a “staging area” that you can login to.  This allows you to play around with the latest design that we’ve uploaded and provide us with feedback.
This is usually another cycle where we upload a new design and you have a look around then provide us with feedback that we can incorporate into the next design update until all the goals have been met.

As well as the design, we’ll likely be asking you for some content to go on the website pages so that’s it’s fully optimised for search engines to pick up when the website is ready for going live.

Learn more about search engine optimisation (SEO).

Going Live

Once we’re both happy with the website in the staging area, we replicate it onto the live server and then register it with the search engines for them to index and place in the search results page (SERPS).

Marketing Your New Website

Once your website is live and especially if it’s brand new, you’ll want to shout about it to all your friends and customers.  “I say old chap – come see our spiffing new website..“.

We can help you create an appropriate marketing plan to help promote your website to potential customers and visitors using a variety of different methods to suit;
Social media sites, blogging, forums, video advertising and even ye olde paper flyers.

Learn more about marketing a website.

IF you were looking for our Irish website, you need to point your browser at Web Design Dublin.