Website Design
Services

A website is an essential business tool

A website is an essential business tool and using the right development methods and technologies is vital if you want to make it work for you. Using a specialist such as Clear Computer Solutions allows you to buy in web design expertise and technology without incurring overhead of building and maintaining it in-house.

You are better off if you are clear about your web strategy before approaching a developer such as ourselves or anybody else for that matter. At least do three things:

  • Look out for websites that you like and note what you like about them.
  • Gather the ideas so that when you approach us (or any web design company) then you will have a better knowledge of what you want on your site.
  • Check your audience. Know what groups of people you will want to use your website and make sure you cater for them.

Rework is the biggest avoidable expense. Scrapping or re-working a poorly conceived website late in its development is likely to be costly and time-consuming. So decide at least:

  • What you aim to achieve in the web development project
  • How it fits in with your business processes
  • Establish if and how your target audience use the internet
  • Your budget for the project
  • The level of sophistication of the website. The table below shows the spread from a simply business card to a full on-line community
Contact Card contact details and basic line of business
Home Page business overview or background, brief product information or brief portfolio
Sales Information brochures, catalogues, price lists
Technical Sales white papers and technical information with links to partner sites, feedback/enquiry form
Catalogue order forms to be filled out on the web, batch processed later with a varying degrees of manual follow-up
Internet application business partners and customers can put data directly (in a controlled fashion) directly into your business systems eg. place orders that feed back directly to purchasing / production / stock / despatch and require minimal intervention. May include chat forums, content management, on-line databases
e-Commerce establishment of ongoing relationships accross the internet
Internet communities frequent and active users, acting as a community - see ChessWorld.net

Draft a Requirements Document

It is in your interests to draft a written requirements document - even if it is just a checklist of elements you want in the website. You can then ask us (or any other developer) to provide a quote against your requirements document so you can compare like with like.

Your requirement document should:

  • Introduce your company
  • State what you want the site to do for your business
  • Outline the aims and scope of the project
  • Identify the intended audience of your website
  • Set timing and budget limits
  • Give an overview of the content
  • Specify particular functionality or features that you require
  • Highlight areas where you would like guidance
  • Separate the essentials from the 'nice to have'
  • Detail Ongoing maintenance requirements if there are any

For larger and more complex projects there is a greater need to be specific about your requirements and to establish working structures.

  • Appoint one of your senior staff as a project manager. Choose someone who knows your business
  • Identify who will have input into the project eg sales & marketing staff
  • Identify specific technical requirements such as compatibility with other IT systems
  • Specify performance, testing and hosting requirements
  • If the site is to solicit information about users or track their behaviour then consider legal issues such as data protection and privacy laws
  • The ownership or licensing of intellectual property should be clearly stated in the conditions

Expect Cost, functionality and timing to vary according to the scale and complexity of the project so you will need to prioritise these according to your needs.

Our proposal

Based on your requirement document we can provide you with a proposal for the project. It will provide costs and timings and address the issues raised in your requirements document.

Costs are billed either on the basis of time and materials or as a fixed price depending on the scale and nature of the project.

Smaller projects are billed as a fixed fee while larger projects are separated into smaller phases each requiring payment on completion. For this reason, larger projects merit the creation of a Project Specification and the separation of phases would be outlined in it.

Normally we do not charge a fee for producing a quote and proposal however for larger scale projects we may mutually agree a fee to develop a full Project Specification.

At this and at all stages in the project we will endeavour to point out as early as possible any timescale requirements that we cannot meet and advise you accordingly. In the unlikeley event that there are any functional requirements we could not meet we will point them out to you.

For the smaller scale projects we would produce a prototype website while for larger projects our proposal would show what the site might look like, using screen shots and a site map.

We aim to be as competitive as possible by using the most effective technologies and methods available. We have been in business since 1989 and having seen some rough times we tend to want to keep our customers! Given the nature of web design and software development we have evolved efficient and thorough methods for understanding your requirements, selecting the right technology and producing creative and innovative websites.

Our flagship site www.chessworld.net demonstrates the capability we have to offer both in terms of user capacity (averaging 6 hits per second) and functionality.

Project Specification

For larger scale projects our original proposal may need expanding into a full Project Specification. It allows you and us to manage costs, schedules and expectations. It will state timetable and costs and may break the project into smaller phases that can be implemented, tested, signed off and paid for individually. It will include the agreed site map, which sets out the layout and navigational hierarchy of the site.

We would normally charge a fee for developing a Project Specification. The Project Specification becomes your property once it is paid for giving you the choice to take it to any developer for implementation.

For projects that merit a Project Specification we would only begin the implementation phase of development once you agree and sign off the Project Specification including its timetable and costs.

Our Respective Roles

From the outset we each need to establish a clear definition and understanding our respective responsibilities.

We need to define clearly responsibilities and timings so that each can make the right resource provisions for the project. It is important that you meet your obligations to supply content, proof or sign off work.

There is a sequence of stages that a typical project should follow where each party has a role to play.

The steps in devoping a project or a phase within a project would include

  • We Develop a Preliminary ‘look and feel’
  • We Implement and develop pages
  • You Proof and check
  • We Apply Modifications and fixes
  • We Upload
  • You proof and test
  • We submit to search engines
  • You launch and promote
  • You Monitor
  • You or We maintain

Your testing and evaluation might include:

  • Content proofing
  • Functional and application testing
  • Security
  • Load testing (i.e. how many users your website is capable of handling at one time)
  • Usability (i.e. asking a few of your target users to perform certain tasks)
  • Web analytics (i.e. measuring and reporting on traffic to your website)

Summary

A website is a valuable business tool that merits clear planning, a clear requirements document and a rigorous approach to defining the project, procedures and responsibilities