Hemel Hempstead Web Designers

Jun 28

What colours to use in Web Design

It’s really important to understand how colours can interact with each other and a user when designing a webpage.  Here are some pointers to consider when choosing your website colours.  Your Hemel Hempstead web designer will be able to advise and help you pick colour themes, or can use the scheme for you.

Colours have different effects on different people, but there is a “colour psychology” that helps you generalise the impact of different colours.

Some web designers may prefer a single colour scheme which is several different intensities or shades of the same colour on a white or black background.

Other web designers us complementary colours that use two or three colours that blend nicely and look great together.  Sometimes one colour is dominant and the other colour used to highlight aspects of the webpage.

Contrasting Colours use two or more colours that really standout against each other.  However, this can also clash, and if the colours are too bright they can be difficult to focus on or may distract from the actual content of the web page.

When designing a website make sure the colours are uniform on all the web pages, so that the pages are consistent throughout the site.  This helps add to the branding and professionalism of the website.

Try not to put text on top of images, unless the images are faded to a watermark type level, otherwise the text is too difficult to read.

Check your webdesigner is using “websafe Colours”.  This is a palatte of 216 colours that appear identically in each type of browser.  In this way you can ensure that your website will look the same on each customer’s screen.

Make sure the text is readable, use pale colours on darker background, or dark colours on a pale background, anything else becomes an effort to read and your visitors won’t stay on your site for long!

A good website designer will know all this, but double check before you agree anything that the colours are pleasing to the eye and text is readable.

Jun 17

E-Commerce Web Design - Hemel Hempstead web designers

These days almost any type of business can trade online and promote their business over the internet and this has created a huge boom in E-commerce websites.  Don’t worry if you haven’t got a website or an online shop yet – you haven’t missed the boat!

Take time to choose a good e-commerce website development company or hire a dedicated web designer and make sure they give you a face to face appointment to discuss exactly what you require and fully understand your business, the way it works and how you want your e-commerce shop to perform.

In turn, make sure you listen to their suggestions as they are  best qualified to help you work out what makes a good website, how it might be best to design the format of the site and the online shop.

Hemel Hempstead Web Designers are a team of professionals able to design and implement fantastic  e-commerce sites with the additional advantage that if you within the Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire area we can travel to you or you to our offices to meet and go through all your requirements.  Even if you have an existing website, we can develop the e-commerce site and incorporate it into your current website using the same web design and layout.

Hemel Hempstead Web Designers ensure that all the transactions are encrypted to the highest standards so that there can be no fraud or theft of details occurring.  We will make sure that it is PCI compliant with SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encyption in place.  Encryption certificates and protection can be obtained through us, through your existing web hosting company or independently.

The main tips for creating a great e-commerce site are as follows:

1)      Choosing the right platform – we will advise you on the right system for your site to use and implement it for you.

2)      Great website design – it is important to be eyecatching, yet very easy to navigate, easy to find products, options and alternatives, and ensure it is quick loading as customers can be very impatient!

3)      Quick and simple checkout system – although it is nice to collect all your customers’ details before they checkout and get them to register on your database and sign up for email updates and the like, it is actually frustrating to users who just want to buy the item and go.  Just get the minimum information you need and provide options to register or receive updates.

4)     Internet Marketing – there’s no point having a great site and great online shop if no one can find it.  Make sure your site appears on Google and the other search engines (we provide a Search Engine Optimisation service if required) and if necessary take up an Adwords (targeted advertisements on Google) campaign if necessary.

5)      Social Marketing – this is slightly different from straightforward internet marketing as it focuses on the social media and networking sites like Facebook, Pinterest.  The users of these sort of social media sites is increasing exponentially and it is a very important marketplace to capture.  Hemel Hempstead Web Designers offer a full social media marketing campaign strategy.

May 08

PHP Hosting - do you need it?

PHP hosting is a programming script that runs on the server (server-side) and is ued to create “dynamic” web pages.  It is probably the most well known server-side scripting language and almost all hosting packages offer PHP hosting.  Worldwidewonderland.co.uk offer it as part of their basic hosting package.

There are many benefits to using PHP hosting.  It is one of the cheapest  hosting options as it is “open-source” technology and free for anyone to use.  It is also relatively easy for a newbie to learn.  For experts it offeres a whole load of features and advanced applications.

Using PHP scripting, website developers are able to complete CGI tasks, and also output PDF files, images and videos at high speed.

If you use PHP you also have the option to use different types of Content Management Systems such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.

PHP supports many e-commerce platforms.  Hemel Hempstead web designers specialise in creating great PHP websites and online, ecommerce business sites.