What you can expect
All my sites are written by hand and are designed to suit clients requirements, images can be provided if necessary complete with appropriate usage licenses to avoid any potential copyright issues and advice will be freely available if you are unsure what you want to include. The only service I do not generally offer is copy writing, although I am happy to provide general advice in that area I feel that to ensure your message gets across exactly as you intend it, the wording on your site really needs to come from you.
I will create one or more sample sites for you to view online, as a base line from which you can add your ideas or requests, once the final design has been agreed on, I can arrange the purchase and registration of your domain name, hosting of your website and email addresses as required.
Testing for Quality
There are three areas you need to address when judging the quality of any website, in general if the answer to any of these questions is no, then there are issues that will need to be resolved before you can be confident about your site
1 - Does it Validate?
On the technical side, my minimum standard for any website is that every page must comply with the appropriate W3C recommendations, this is guaranteed. Each page is checked separately using Markup & CSS Validators, Link Checker and Unicorn testing software, all provided by the W3C. Between them, these four validation services cover the basics standards for any well written website.
The code used to create a webpage is refered to as a Markup language, it is combined with one or more Style Sheets containing additional information on the styling of the page (colour, images, positioning etc.). This particular page has been written using XHTML or Extensible Hyper-Text Markup Language and CSS or Cascading Style Sheets. Your browser translates the instructions written in XHTML and CSS, then displays the page as instructed. Like any language, if it is used accurately and correctly, most browsers will be left in no doubt about how you intend the information to be displayed. However, a page written using invalid code will force the browser to guess at its instructions, the message might get across as intended but that really depends on how your browser handles invalid code. There are dozens of different web browsers and they all interpret Markup slightly differently, so a website that looks fine in Internet Explorer might look dreadful using Firefox or Safari.
Well written, valid code will be compatible with most popular browsers, including screen readers. More importantly it is a minimum requirement of almost every accessibility standard worldwide. This alone will go a long way towards ensuring your site will be accessible and appear as you intended to anyone who visits now or in the future.
2 -Is it Accessible?
I use a number of automated accessibility compliance utilities as standard, these include Cynthia Says, ATRC Web Accessibility Checker and WAVE 4.0, all of which have been recommended by the RNIB. Unlike other standards, accessibility testing really needs to be done by a human being and automated software can only get you so far. Because of this, every page is also checked and tested manually then re-tested using screen reading software.
Accessibility is vital to ensuring your website does not exclude part of your potential audience, an additional bonus is that search engines and other devices which may access your site also find it easier to use. However, if you decide to try out some of the testing tools yourself, you may find that many of the larger commercial websites will completely fail these tests. As you will no doubt appreciate, the likes of Amazon and Ebay offer such a unique and popular service, they can afford to exclude some of their potential visitors and, whilst laws have been put in place, to date there have been no cases in the UK. However, particularly in the case of accessibility, there are legal as well as ethical arguments for ensuring your website is accessible sooner rather than later, I would personally recommend reading up on the UK Law.
3 - Is it Interopable?
Once all the validation and accessibility tests are complete, each page is checked and tested using Internet Explorer versions 4, 5, 6 and 7, along with the latest versions of Firefox, Avant, Opera, SeaMonkey, Flock, Google Chrome, Netscape Navigator and FireVox (a screen reading browser). This is to ensure that the site works and appears as it should regardless of which browser your visitor uses. Each page is also checked using imaging on a much wider range of browser and operating system combinations to include visitors using Linux, Mac and Windows operating systems.
Valid Markup and Styling will ensure that most browsers display each page as intended, but a single keystroke can completely change a page and is easily missed. This is where valid, manual coding becomes very important. A critical point to remember when commissioning a website is that every make of web browser interprets the Markup used to build a website in a slightly different way. So even if your site looks fine on your own PC, it may be an absolute mess to someone using a different browser or operating system.
I also offer a complete re-coding service for existing websites. This way, even if you don't want to change your site, you can still bring it in line with official guidelines. What better way to prove to your customers that you value every visitor to your website on an equal basis?
Please feel free to browse around and get in touch if you have any questions. I run a strict no fee, no obligation policy for consultations, even the phone call is free.