Do you need design work done? We can design website layouts, banners, flash animation, doorway pages, and web optimized images to ehance your existing website or assist with an online advertising campaign.

Website Layout Design

The first step in designing a company website is to provide  the designer with your company logo and any other design work you may have commissioned for your advertising needs. This includes business cards, letterheads, brochures or any other material which shows your corporate colours and colour schemes. If you have an electronic copy of these materials it will be easier for the designer to work with. These materials will be used to create the visual style of the website within the desired layout.

Many websites have similar layouts. A layout determines where the various websites areas are positioned. Common areas include the logo area, the horizontal and vertical menu bars, the body of the page (for the articles and content) and the footer of the page.

The amount of content to be published on the website is one of the biggest factors in deciding how to build the layout of a site. Simple sites require only one level of navigation, quite often represented as a horizontal menubar at the top of all pages. Complex sites with heirachical information will often require a main menu plus several sub-menus to assist with user navigation. The layout of the home page and the sub pages will need to take into account how much content is provided.

There are many excellent professionally designed website layouts that can be bought and customised for your own website at a fraction of the cost of a website designed from scratch. The key is to find a template that closely matches your design ideas and page content and therefore requires minimal customisation.

To view more website layout templates click here

It will be an advantage if you can meet with the designer in person before hand to have a discussion about your expectations. At the very least exchange a few emails with the designer to tell them some of your competitors websites and what you like and disklike about them. Also try to send examples of websites which are similar in look and feel to the way you want your website to look. A great way to find website design examples is to visit an online template store such as TemplateMonster.

It will also help if you tell the designer some words which describe the atmosphere you are trying to create. For example, if you are a technology company you may use words like modern, clean, minimalist. A flower shop owner might on the otherhand use words like relaxed, natural, serene, warm. By browsing some of the website template stores you will begin to get an understanding of the different layout options.

Web Optimised Images

If you have photos of your stock or premises and wish to use them please provide a digital copy where possible. We also provide scanning and retouching services if you have printed material you wish to include on your website.

If you do not have photos, or have poor quality photos you have two options. Firstly, you could hire a professional photographer. Unfortunately this option isn't practical for everyone. Secondly, you could use professional image photography called "stock images".

Stock images are images of people or places that can represent your business in a relevant and positive way. To view some stock image resources visit iStockPhoto and browse their extensive collection. Alternatively you could describe the type of images you want to see and we can source them for you.

Online Advertising Materials

It is common for websites to promote themselves on other websites using a banner advertising campaign. A banner is a web optimised image of a fixed width and height that is displayed with a link to the advertiser's website.

Different websites use different banner formats so it is important to find out what type of banner you are permitted to use for each different campaign.

Some common banner sizes are :

• Full Horizontal Banner : 468 x 60
• Square Banner : 125 x 125
  
• Skyscraper Banner : 120 x 240
  

A banner may be an animated web image or it may be a flash animation. Each banner program will have it's own particular requirements that we are happy to accomodate.