Web design and development

Web design and development is at the heart of what we do.
Whether you want a brand new site to advertise your business or just want to give your existing site a facelift, we’re here to help.

Our staff have been in the web design and development business for 20 years, so we know what we’re doing. We look to establish long-term relationships with our clients and try to help them to understand what the Internet can offer. We can build almost anything you need, and it’s important to us we get it just right.

Responsive wireframes

How we work

Phase 1: Your requirements

To be sure we’re building the right site for you, we set up an initial discussion where we spend time getting a detailed understanding of your business. We discuss the challenges and issues you’re facing and the opportunities that may be open to you. We want to understand your critical business processes and who your key competitors are. We talk about your business objectives and goals.

Only when we have this detailed understanding can we really start to plan something which aims to meet your objectives and provide a site which has the ability to grow and develop with your business.

Phase 2: Prototypes and wireframes

We don’t always jump straight in with a shiny picture of what we think your site will look like. At the start of the project we likely don’t know what you’ll need so we use rapid prototyping tools to develop a wireframe – a black and white representation of what (collectively) we think your site will need. This helps us to understand what features you’re looking for, how different pages connect with each other, what your key messages are and how best to present all of this in a coherent manner.

Our wireframes are quick and easy to put together and are something you can view (and navigate) in a web browser. This helps us all to focus on the key elements – content, features and navigation. Together we refine your content, messages, calls to action, content placement, and user journeys – how a customer gets from the homepage to the place you want them to be – be this a contact form or an e-shop.

We like to have a large proportion of the site completed in wireframe early on as it’s extremely easy to make changes at this stage, before any code is written.

We can even create wireframes that work on tablet and mobile devices so that we can test where to best place each screen element and ensure the UX works well on those devices too.

Once we’ve done this and understand the way the site should be structured we’ll turn our attention to the graphic design element and discuss imagery, fonts & colours.

Phase 3: Graphic design

We’ll assign a graphic designer to work on creating the overall ‘look and feel’ of your site. They’ll use the wireframe as a guide, along with other websites which you say you like the look of or would like to emulate.

Depending on your budget, we’ll often be able to present you with several different designs, allowing you to choose the one (or elements from different ones) you like the best. Refinements and iterations are part of the design process.

And because we rarely use ‘off-the-shelf’ templates which lock you into a specific design, your website will be customised to look exactly the way you want it to.

We will of course give you guidance based on our extensive experience, but you have the ultimate control here – you’ll get the results you want.

We’ll then present you with an initial set of deliverables – an interactive wireframe and some graphic designs – before progressing the project to the build phase.

Don’t forget that if you need a new logo, flyers, posters or business cards, we can make these for you, ensuring continuity of design between your online an offline advertising materials.

Responsive web design and development

Phase 4: Build

Depending on what you need we can either build your entire website with an integrated Content Management System, create it as a custom build without a CMS or just supply you with basic page layouts and templates to integrate with your own systems.

We’ll discuss the options with you when we meet and ensure we build a system which meets your requirements.

If you want to manage your own content, we recommend building your site using WordPress. WordPress is by far the most popular CMS on the web. Its market share is close to 60% with its closest competitor (Joomla) only having a 6.3% market share. 27% of all websites now use WordPress as well, cementing its ongoing popularity. WordPress is easily extended with new pages, blog posts, site sections and functionality. Adding pages and posts is but a moment’s work and with more than 47,000 plugins available (code which offers specific features), chances are you can find someone who’s already written the feature you’re looking for. This means extending your website is a very cost-effective and time-efficient process as you don’t need to invest in bespoke code that takes weeks to write.

As you would expect, our sites are all fully responsive too – they look great on desktop, tablet and mobile, adapting themselves to best fit the size of the screen.

Phase 5: Content loading

This phase usually runs concurrently with the build phase although if you’re populating your own content, then it happens after the main templates have been produced. Here we add all the content to the site, constructing the pages in line with the design plan and building up the site navigation in accordance with usability guidelines based on an agreed site map.

Phase 6: Testing and launch

All our work is placed on one of our development servers, so you can see your project progress from concept to finished article. You’ll be able to share this with friends, colleagues and stakeholders so everyone can see the state of the project at any given moment and you can ask people for their feedback. We’ll ask you to test the site, and any features, carefully as we go so that you can be certain it will do everything you need it to do.

Prior to launch we check all content, links and functionality across different browsers and devices. Once you’ve approved it, we set the new website live. We will set up Google Analytics for the new website as part of the launch process and do some essential SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) work so that Google is aware of your new site.

We provide WordPress training at launch, so that you can be confident in your ability to maintain your own site.

And we’re always here at the end of the phone if you get stuck.

Phase 7: Website reviews and ongoing maintenance

We can offer you quarterly review meetings to go through your website stats, review site performance and look at ways of further improving your website’s performance.

Our clients typically find these reviews to be of real value.

Hosting, maintenance and support

As we’re a full-service agency, we have hosting, maintenance and support contracts available at different price points to suit different budgets and we’ll discuss these options with you before launch.

Long-term beneficial relationships

At Pink Fish we’re all about creating the most effective web presence for your business. We want to help you to maximise the opportunity that the Internet offers for your organisation.

We’re not interested in delivering short-term solutions where we just build you a site and disappear off into the sunset, never to be seen again. We are always looking to develop longer-term business relationships with our clients and we can only do that if we are delivering value and a return on your investment.

Our business has been built on this philosophy. A large percentage of our customers have come from referrals and many of our clients have been with us for many years.

We believe that we can create a website and Internet marketing strategy that really works for your business – give us a try and see for yourself!

Get in touch

If you think we can help with your next project, please drop us a line or call us. We’d love to meet with you to see how we could work together.

Our offices in Stratton St Margaret are easy to reach with free parking right outside the door.

Telephone:
Alternatively, drop us an email @ Pink Fish

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