At Design My Site we will work with you to design your website, construct your website, host your website, support your website and take care of the day to day running of your website. Including ongoing support and Search Engine Optimisation to ensure maximum visibility.

We will work with you to design and implement the web site that you need.We will discuss your requirements and options and agree a plan of action and implement it.

We are always happy to discuss your requirements either in person or on the phone (Skype)

Contact Us today and lets get started.

Please take a look at the information below which may help you formulate your own ideas about the type of website you want and how you would like to use it.

In 2008, 16 million households in Great Britain (65 per cent) had Internet access. This is an increase of just over 1 million households (7 per cent) over the last year and 5 million households (46 per cent) since 2002.¹

More and more people are turning to the internet to find products, services and information.

Will they find yours?

Web site and hosting options

Types of Web Site

Think about what you want your website to acheieve.

Reserve a Meaningfull Domain Name

You are thinking of starting a business and know you will want a web site at some point in the future. This is an ideal time to decide on the company trading name and the domain name. (The domain name is the 'www.designmysite.ork.uk' bit) Or, maybe you will want to register a name that describes the business or product you want to trade.

Keep a Placeholder for Your Business

You want a placeholder for your business on the internet because you are still thinking about the full requirement. Even at this stage it is well worth getting your site up and running even if it is a simple one page site with information about your company and existing contact details.

Information Leaflet or Brochure

Perhaps a copy of a leaflet that you already distribute. The next obvious step would be to put your brochure onto the web site.

Request for Further Information

Once clients and prospective clients have viewed your site and products they may want further information. It is important to capture this information into your own information management system. Remembering to capture relevant information and tell your clients and prospective clients what you will do with the information. You may want to use this information to market to your contacts. It is also important at this stage to give people the opportunity to un-subscribe from your contact list. To do this efficiently a back end database is desireable.

Information Leaflet or Brochure

The last step would be to have a shopping cart facility where customers could buy your products and pay for them on-line. (Not quite the last step as you may like to integrate your stock control system in the back end of the website so only available products are sold.)

Information Sites

Some people use web sites to share information about themselves or a hobby. Often a Web log, more commonly known as a Blog, is used. The reason people choose a blog is because it is geared up to be updated frequently and can be done with very little technical knowledge. There are two main ways of setting up a blog. It is possible to install BLOG software, such as Wordpress on your server. Wordpress is open source which means it is free. Well almost. Added to which you can buy software from companies like Semiologic which allow a great deal of customisation. In fact, if you look at the Wordpress and Semiologic sites referenced above, you will be looking at a Wordpress blog.

Hosting

When pages are downloaded to your PC's browser they are downloaded from a host. The host can take a number of forms.

Service Provider

When you sign up for broadband, quite often you are given a web site. Unfortunately, the domain name is ususlly something like www.broadband.co.uk/mywebsite/ which is not particularly intuitive. These packages are quite often limited in what you can actually do. It is unlikely that you would be able to have a dynamic site or a database behind the web site.

Shared Hosting

Most web sites are hosted by a hosting company and many sites share a single server (computer). Hosting companies have metrics which they use to determine the maximum number of web sites they will put onto one machine.

Dedicated Hosting

Finaly, larger companies or those wanting exclusive use of a server, have their own server.

Getting Started

The most econimical way of acquiring the domain name and hosting package is to do it in the same step. This site is hosted with 1 & 1 Internet Ltd. They have a number of hosting packages which include free domain(s). However, not all of them, so check carefully. Usually, domains are charged for 1 or 2 years in advance and there is a difference in price between the different domains. So, a domainame.com is usually more expensive than a domainname.co.uk.

So, now you've read this far, what are you waiting for Contact Us today and lets get started.

¹ The Office for National Statistics