When you have made the decision to create a new website or re-design your old one, there are many things to consider:

• Who is the website aimed at and what are they looking for?
• A visitor arrives on your site, maybe from Google, what do you do and how can you help them?
• Are your calls to action easily visible? Telephone numbers contact details.
• Are there different ways to collect information? Your visitors like to have options.
• Plan a sitemap for your website to plan where the pages are going to take visitors
• Work with a designer to sketch out the looks, functions and locations of content.
• Check your designs with your audience.
• At Capital we will help you to consider these options and plan accordingly.

All this is done so that you can plan for what you want to achieve from your website design and that we, at Capital, can then turn that plan into a reality as we fully understand what you require.

We have a plan, now it's the turn of the Capital website design team to turn that plan into reality. No matter how simple or complex the plan is, the new website needs to remain simple to use and great to look at. One of the biggest pitfalls is for your visitors to be confused by where they should be looking or find it hard to get the information that they are hunting the web for. This is easily avoided by having picked a great designer to work with and a good technical team to make your vision a reality. Look at the previous sites we have created in our portfolio, are they to the standard that you want?

Remember that first impressions count and that is the look and the feel leaving all of your visitors with a great experience of your site and your brand, if they don't they will be less likely to come back time after time.

Friends, family and colleagues will all have strong opinions about the website, the way it looks and feels, the structure and the lead messages/products. It is important that these form the basis for discussion and focus groups but it is equally important that the lead person managing the project has the final choice. Designing the website through a committee will certainly take longer and more often than not, lose its focus as the project timelines creep forward.

This for us, is the phase of your website project where we develop the site from the image that was initially designed, following your criteria, either helping you to tailor or create content depending upon which of the website design packages are being used.

Unless the budget is large for the project, do not use your website design as a guinea pig for experimenting with balancing the function, look and technology as it takes a balance of all three elements to achieve a great website. Any one of these sections can overpower the others and interfere with the websites performance and/or the visitor experience.

Remember to ask about coding standards and accessibility of the website design, these should always be taken into account with your website. Capital does this as standard but always ask before you commit to a designer.

Do not over complicate the site, remember to stick to the original plan or at least as closely as possible because the more you add, change and remove later means the project will be slow to launch and runs the risk of being over complicated once it does launch onto the internet.

Finally, check it works before you launch it!