In today's digital age having a web presence for your business is a must, and therefore websites are one of the most affordable marketing methods available. It is your 24-hour virtual shopfront.

Instead of posting an expensive printed brochure to a customer to view your products and services you can simply say "visit my website".

REDS COMMUNICATION offers customized web design solutions specifically tailored around the needs of SME's.

Web Design & Website Development Development and design of websites on a small and large scale.

The Web Design Process:

Web Design Brief Having a logo established is important as the design should ideally complement your brand and communicate what you do, while leaving the visitor with the right memorable impression. Having designed the logo, we move on to the design of the site, where we define a web design brief. Again, the brief describes your reservations on colour schemes, look & feel, specific graphics to be used

The Design

The design template is done according to the brief and a series of options are provided. Once a design has been chosen adjustments are made where required. Implementation The artwork moves from the design desk to our developers for implementation. This is where the design becomes a functional website before being uploaded to the web.

» Content Management Systems

Update your webste yourself with a Content Management System A Brief Overview If your website is your store-front (or front-end), then your content management system is your back office (back-end). In the past, if you wanted to update the content on your company website, you either had to learn how to do web programming or hire a web developer again to update your content. However today , businesses have the opportunity to update the content of their website from any internet-connected computer in the world at any time. They do this with their own Content Management System.

How does it work? A content management system is essentially a secondary website.

You and your staff access the system via the web and perform various tasks to add, remove, update and manage the content visitors see on your website. Another powerful aspect of content management is the ability to monitor activity on your website (such as discovering how many people are viewing your site) and feedback from visitors (such as online enquiries). A Content Management System works by interacting with a database on your web server. When you update the content through your back-end, your website as your visitors see it pulls the information from your database and the information is displayed.

What Can It Do? Content management systems are commonly used for:

Updating the content of standard pages
Adding, updating and removing Products and Services Creating and managing image and photo galleries
Managing your Blog / news section Managing an Events Calendar / workshops diary
Determining how many people are visiting your site and how they find you. Uploading files for your visitors to download
Managing a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) area Reviewing customer feedback and enquiries
Managing a catalogue of items (eg. a product catalogue or business directory)
Managing user access for private areas of your website These are just a few of the tasks a content management system can be used for. Depending on your needs and objectives, a custom solution is provided to you.

Is it Easy to Use?

A CMS is easy to use. If you've ever used a word processor or submitted information online using a contact form, for example, you will have no problem using a content management system. Our objective is to build you a system that is as point-and-click as possible, while being able to customize and manage all the content of your website as you like privately. You do not need to be highly familiar with the internet or computers. Most users find our systems very straight-forward. Nevertheless we provide you with a personal instruction manual to guide you and your staff through the use of your system to make to most of your website. We can also provide you with a training session and support via email and telephone.

Website Design Checklist

• Make sure your website has a URL (i.e. www.yourcompany.co.za )

• Get a hosting provider for the URL

• Do you have copy that you can use for your website? If you don't – start writing!

• Think of what your website structure should look like. What pages do you need on your website? The _easiest way to achieve this is to create an outline of the structure you would like for your site.

• Do you have all the graphic materials for your site e.g. photos, video clips

• Organise all your company information for the website (home, about us, products, services etc.)

• Do you need a database or eCommerce database developed for your website ? This will influence the setup of your website and how it is designed.

• What are your marketing goals for the site? (e.g. search engine marking, online marketing, off line_marketing? If you have all or most of the above answers you are ready to develop your new website or even revamp your existing website into a more user friendly client based information package that will reach your target market more profoundly. Make sure your potential customers are getting to your website and that they are able to use it! Don't let your competitors take your potential clients because your website isn't giving internet users the information they need. In this case optimising you website is as important as the actual website design. Remember, in a successful website, it's the graphics that grab you, but it's the text that does the selling.