Website Design
The single most important thing about getting a website designed for you isn't the price (although it helps) - it's the service you get from your designer. You need to feel confident that your site is in safe hands and at Vanilla Gecko, we make sure that we find out exactly what you want from your site at the very beginning and consult you throughout the whole process to ensure we stay on track.
We help you find the best solution to suit your budget. At Vanilla Gecko, we don't try to squeeze you for every penny. We have a genuine desire to make the best site possible for you and if your budget is limited, you don't have to settle for a substandard site - we put as much effort into a £175 single page site as we do into a £1000 site.
No Templates Here!
As with all our design work, our websites are bespoke and therefore catered to your exact needs. Your site should be both visually inspiring and easy to use, ultimately becoming an effective marketing tool for you or your company.
Form follows function:
At Vanilla Gecko, we understand what makes a great website. Obviously everyone likes a beautiful design, but it’s important not to get carried away and forget the true reason for having a website in the first place. All great sites should incorporate the following:
- It should be fast loading. On average, people will only wait for around 8 seconds for a page to load before getting bored. The whole page, or at the very least the most important parts should load well within this timeframe. This is one of the reasons we use flash sparingly in our sites and do not create whole sites in flash. No-one likes staring at a ‘page loading’ sign for ages.
- The site should be well structured with clear navigation so that your visitors can find their way around with ease.
- Clear, concise information written with your target audience in mind. If you want us to check through and alter any copy you’ve written to ensure it reads well, just let us know and we’ll do so at our usual hourly rate.
- Cross browser compatibility is extremely important when designing a site. What looks like a perfect design in Internet Explorer could look frightening in another browser like Safari...or even in earlier versions of Explorer! While it is near impossible to cater for all browsers (there are a lot - you probably won't have even heard of many of them!), Vanilla Gecko aims for compatibility with (at least) the following browsers:
Internet Explorer (5.5, 6 & 7 on Windows), Firefox (1.5 & 2 on Windows, 2 on Mac), Safari (2 on Mac, 3 on Windows) and Opera 9.24 on Windows. - Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Your site should include important keywords and be laid out so that search engines such as Google can index the site and all it’s pages, not just the homepage. This is another reason why we steer clear of flash based sites: Google cannot index them and so you severely limit the chance of the site showing up in search results. At Vanilla Gecko, we keep SEO at the forefront throughout the design process.
However, no matter how much you do to optimise the site, no-one can guarantee a high search engine ranking, especially through SEO alone. An additional part of our design service is to submit your site to dmoz.org – a human-edited web directory relied upon heavily by many search engines. We will also submit your site map to Google to help it index your site better.
The rest is down to you and how you market your site offline as well as online.
It doesn't end there:
So, you've had your site up and running for a while and now you want to add an extra page or change some photos or text. Here at Vanilla Gecko, we understand the importance of keeping a site up to date and don't think you should be penalised for doing so. We will update your site at our hourly rate of £25, as and when you need it and we even throw in a free half hour of maintenance every month!
What about hosting?
Our service is for design only, we do not host your site. However, we will upload it for you as part of our service and if you would like us to oversee any domain transfers, etc we will gladly do so for a small admin fee.
If you're looking for hosting, Lunar Pages offer an excellent Basic Hosting Plan at a very reasonable rate. We have used their services many times before and their customer service is excellent*. If you need advice on selecting a suitable hosting plan or on signing up with Lunar Pages, just get in touch and we'd be happy to help.
So how do I get you to design my site?
First of all, we would encourage you to take a look at our portfolio if you haven't already. There you will find links to a selection of sites we have designed for previous clients plus their feedback on their experience with us. We could talk all day long about our services, but nothing says it better than a first hand insight into the work we have done.
If you like what you see, move on to our pricing guide where we have broken down our web design services into a number of packages to make it easier for you to get a rough idea of how much your site design will cost. Of course, these are not set in stone as everyone's needs are different, so for a more accurate, no obligation quote, contact us with your requirements.
