Here you can find answers to many of the questions that we're asked most often about our process, the way we work and lots of other things.
If you have further questions or are ready to have a chat about your project, you can email us on info@designkey.net
We will always do our best to work to any deadline you specify and will be upfront with you from day one as to how we plan to achieve this as we may need support from your organisation at certain points of a project.
In the majority of cases, the build time is dependent on the complexity of the project. But, no matter whether we are building a simple brochure site or a hugely complex project, we want to make sure it’s done right. This means making sure the project is fully tested with respect to your CMS, the design of the site and the functionality.
We work on a fixed project cost. We help you plan the web site in the first place, making sure everything is quoted for, and you’re getting the best out of your budget. If we then estimate the build of your web site incorrectly and it takes us a lot longer to build than we quoted, then no costs are passed on to you.
Absolutely. We’re always at the end of the phone or an email if you need support with web site maintenance, new artwork, advice on what’s new on the web and for anything else related to your project.
We see all of our projects as long term and should you choose to work with us, that we are not just your web site providers, but your web specialist partners.
Web sites can vary hugely in the time they take to build, and therefore the how much they cost. We always work with our clients through the planning and quoting stages to make sure they are getting the best return on their investment, however.
If you’re unsure of how much you should be budgeting for your project, feel free to pick up the phone and speak to us about your project, or drop us a line using the contact form. We’re more than happy to help you to get your head around this potentially tricky point in your plans.
Our projects generally take the following process:
Helps establish the goals of the site and areas to be designed and built.
Each area planned in to the web site is designed for you to review. This usually starts with the homepage.
The designs are then brought to life in a fully functioning web site, built on to a CMS, so you can manage your content yourself going forward.
Your text and images are put in to the CMS so the web site is fully complete when going to launch.
Your web site is tested in a range of browsers to make sure it displays as expected across different computers. Your web site is also tested from an admin perspective to make sure the CMS is easy for you to update your site, from a user’s perspective to make sure that the web site performs how it is expected, that forms work, elements that look clickable are clickable and any other functionality works as expected and then from a design perspective to make sure that the final built web site matches the artwork produced at the design stage.
You are invited to test the site to make sure you’re happy with the site
Enjoy the fruits of your hardwork… the web site is live!
You will be trained on how to update your web site and provided with a manual. This can actually happen a little earlier in the project so you can get familiar with the CMS before the web site launches.
We can also help you analyse your traffic, to make sure the project goals are measured accurately.
As far as server side technology is concerned, we use PHP/MySQL for the most part, and when it comes to client side technology, we use HTML, including HTML 5, as well as Javascript and Flash where required.
We love to keep abreast of new technologies and make sure we implement anything we view to be robust and that would add to a project.
We believe in matching the technology to the project requirements and not the other way around. We do generally use a Joomla! based system, with modifications and enhancements to make the management of your web site much easier, but if the project requires it, we may suggest a different system such as WordPress, Magento, or even a bespoke system built by ourselves.
Of course. We make sure you can manage as much of the web site as possible yourself. Areas that we know that will be updated on a regular basis are given extra special attention to make sure everything is 100% updateable with ease, all without compromising on our lovely designs.
Being a great agency that doesn’t tend to lose any clients, we never have a totally empty diary, but the best way to find out how busy we are right now is to get in touch so we can let you know when we could start on your project.
We've made plenty of sites that have performed excellently on search engines, without any further ongoing search engine optimisation work. This is due to the careful planning and building with search engines in mind from the very start.
We can can host your site wherever you like. We do offer one year's free hosting with most projects but you're under no obligation to take advantage of it. If you want to host your site elsewhere, we'll assist in anyway we can in the setup of the site of your servers.
We can receive content in any number of formats and via any number of delivery systems. We favour Dropbox but email, CD, DVD, USB stick etc are all fine. We'll discuss with you during our initial meetings as to how content should be arranged, but we're pretty flexible and will accommodate you in any way we can.
We always train our clients, either remotely, at our offices, or at your own office, for one or more people. We build our systems to be simple and intuitive, so you don't have to sit for hours reading instruction manuals.