Website design

Successful websites are easy to use

Ask yourself, "How easy is this site to use?" Are the pages loading quickly? Is it easy to get to the right information? Is it a pleasant experience, with easy navigation and clear, relevant content?

I design - and redesign - sites to be quick, clear and friendly.

Clarity / brevity

If it's creative genius but is not relevant then it's bad.

The Prime Directive: User Satisfaction
This is where so many talented designers mange to miss the point. If the content is flashy but has no substance, or it's the wrong content, or the user distrusts their experience of your website (for whatever reason) - then it fails to deliver, and the user will hit the Back Button on the browser.

I design clear, robust, focused websites - aimed straight at the most-relevant users of the site: which is why I concentrate on usability.

Standards

It's a great idea to design your site using future-proof standards, so that it will grow with the internet. That means designing it with code that will be used for many years to come, and that will fit in with emerging systems.

I use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and XHTML, which will avoid you having to rebuild your site later. It also means your pages will be loading faster - and easier to update.