Jelibi

Why choose you when there are any amount of web designers out there?

There are a large number of people who can design your website, why choose me? I believe I can give you a site that's well designed, accessible to a wide range of people and will give you the presence on the web you require. You won't believe how many sites there are out there that are not accessible to a proportion of internet users, be it because the page doesn't work properly in their particular means of access (i.e. PDA) or browser, or it is not coded in a way that enables disabled access, this loses you potential customers.

I will work in partnership with you to create the site that you are envisaging right now or if you haven't got one in mind work with you until we find the right design for you. All my pages are standards compliant - check the code on my site against code on other sites and you will probably see that there is far less code on mine, this makes it quicker to download and less likely people will get bored of waiting and disappear elsewhere. This doesn't mean you can't have fantastic looking web pages just that the code is written differently.

What are standards compliant web pages?

All my sites are coded to standards set out by the w3c to ensure they are accessible, in today's climate there are people looking at the internet on different platforms other than a pc. Not only that but those with pc's are not just using Internet explorer to view the web, other browsers are getting a bigger share of the market. Have you ever tried to view some very professional sites on browsers other than IE, I can assure you I have come across a great many that look wonderful in IE and at a certain resolution(screen size) but as soon as you change browser or resolution they begin to have problems. Obviously as soon as problems are encountered you then start to lose traffic from your site and therefore potential customers. I take the latest techniques, I separate the style from the structure, for instance this site is coded in xhtml and uses css stylesheets. I test my sites in numerous browsers at different screen resolutions. This means your site will not have to be re-written in a year from now to incorporate the ever changing times - I design Web sites for today....tomorrow....and thereafter.

               

What do you mean by separating the style from the structure?

I mean that all the code that tells your browser how to make the site look is in a separate sheet which is called a css stylesheet, to demonstrate this I have designed two completely different pages for each page of this site. If you click the link that says 'black style' on any page within this site you will see that the design changes before your eyes. If you click 'white style' it converts back to the original design, yet if you check the code (right click and view source) then you can see that the code remains unchanged. It is all done through selecting separate stylesheets, I wouldn't recommend two totally different designs on your site as you normally would want to give the user one brand/corporate style but it's here to show you how easy it is to change the design or layout and therefore highlights what I mean by separating style from structure.

Should I be paying huge amounts for search engine optimisation?

A lot of other web designers charge an enormous amount of money for what is called search engine optimisation. There are companies who charge a fortune to submit your site to 1000's of search engines. How many search engines have you heard of? There are a small amount of search engines with a very high percentage of usage, therefore these are the only one's to worry about. Also, be careful of web designers who proclaim they can 'get you ranked no.1' and then proceed to do exactly that based upon extremely obscure search words that nobody will ever search by.

I cannot lie to you and guarantee you high rankings because it is becoming increasingly difficult to guarantee you such a position in a search engine but what I can promise is that all my sites are coded in a way to maximise your chances of a high ranking. By coding in the way I've described previously using well-structured html and well written relevant text ensuring your site will be full of good looking, fresh, fast-loading, and information-rich pages rather than pages full of graphics and flash intros that take ages to load and not only lose you custom but do not aid the search engines in finding and ranking your site.

I firmly believe that search engine optimisation comes down to mainly how the site is designed so how can a web designer charge extra for the privilege of doing their job properly.

What does your price include?

The price I quote you will be for domain name registration(.co.uk for two years), initial support and e-mail. By initial support I mean I will look at any issues you have with the site up to six weeks after the date that your website is agreed by both parties to be finished. Site maintenance after that could be liable to be charged at our contract rates. Once the six weeks are up you can then decide whether to take over the website yourself or to sign a monthly contract with us that will include any maintenance, extra pages, updates and gives you the opportunity to have site statistics every month, which will include who is visiting your site and how they are getting there.

Why do you not give your address and phone number on this site?

I am a freelance web designer and therefore have no help in answering any phone calls or reading any mail, also I try to keep my overheads low to be able to charge as little as possible. For these reasons I do not put my address or phone number on this site and ask you to contact me via the form on this site. Once I accept a tender you will then be given a contact number.

Do you encourage the use of flash design?

I do not believe that the use of flash enhances any website, users are looking for fast downloading, easy to read, informative websites. If you visit a site and there's a flash intro, do you ever stay and watch or do you click skip intro and look for the content. You won't believe how many web designers still design with a flash intro, it's not big and it's not clever and it doesn't help anybody and we've even found design companies that started playing you awful muzak when you enter their site (what's that all about?). This is not to say that you can't use media in the right circumstances but in a way that's not integral to the usability of your site and more importantly doesn't stop customers finding you or once found staying with you.

©2006 Jelibi web design