We will design any web site to your specification. We will stay faithful - should you so wish - to any existing image, colour scheme and logo the company already uses. We will also keep the 'size' of your page down to a reasonable level, so people won't get bored and leave before the page has loaded.

All sites are designed for cross-compatibility with the major browsers and different screen resolutions, and are optimized for best search engine rankings.
All web pages, in particular the 'front' page of your site (usually known as the 'index' page, or occasionally 'default') should download quickly no matter what modem / equipment the visitor is using.

Whilst there are no hard and fast rules about this (and all web design is a compromise between download time and appearance), we recommend that front page file sizes are kept around the 40K mark. Pages 'further in' to your site can get away with being bigger if you're repeating graphics from the first page, such as your logo, navigation bar etc. This is because the visitors computer has already stored these images in its local cache and will therefore load it immediately. Though it should perhaps go without saying, a page should download quickly because people won't hang around if it doesn't, and certainly won't be back for a return visit.

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As technology changes so quickly, there can be no exact figures for the manifold ways in which people surf the net, though the statistics that Digital Canvas offers on visitors to your site (available daily / weekly / monthly on signup for the service), will soon give you a good idea.

We can be sure from experience, that a significant number of people are using browsers other than Internet Explorer 5, screen sizes other than 1024 x 768 and computers other than PCs.

A well-designed site therefore will cater for all of these possibilities, so it will look good no matter who is viewing it.

 

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Web design is a completely different discipline to graphic design.

They differ in several important ways:

Screen Resolutions
Web sites must look relatively similar whether viewed on a 'small' screen or a 'large' one and should be functional even if people are browsing with functions such as javascript disabled, or even graphics disabled (which a surprising amount of people do to save time whilst surfing).

Download Compromises
Whereas paper design puts no constraint on detail or size, web design must find ways to make a page both look good and load quickly. Beware the graphic designer who believes appearance is everything!

Web-Safe Colours
In order for a site to look similar on both Macs and PCs it is best to keep to the 'web-safe' colour palette, which comprises of 216 separate colours.

Search-Engine Compatability
Relevent for the time-being at least - sites must be designed with a view to peppering relevant keywords in the text across the index page, though in no discernible pattern.

Designing an effective and successful website then, is as much a science as an art and requires experience and know-how, as well as artistic flair. You can have the most striking site on the net, but it won't do you any good if no-one sees it.

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