What's popular.

The ideal website for your organisation will depend on your target audience. Not all features are appropriate for every site.

However, modern attractive sites commonly have certain features that are useful both to the organisation and the site visitor.

Calendars
Whether it's a corporate portal or art society, calendars are an excellent way to keep existing and potential customers or members informed of future events. Calendars can also have restricted access, so that you can require visitors to register with you before they view certain sections - giving you complete control over who sees what.

Contact lists
You can communicate with your customers or members with personalised, mail-merge style emails. These emails can be sent in automated batches, saving time and money.

Navigation systems
Every website needs to have some form of easy navigation so that users don't get lost. The particular navigation system will depend on the amount of content on your website. For complex or large sites, sliding menus are a popular choice. Sites with less content often have simple, sleek menu bars.

News & media release systems
Websites are only as good as the information they contain. If a site has out-of-date information, visitors won't take the organisation seriously. Putting up recent news or media releases is a simple way to achieve a feel of being up-to-date. Integrating a system directly into the site, so that news items are created on the server and appear as soon as they are written is an even better way to keep relevant.

Online reports
For more complex business sites, you can collect all sorts of anonymous aggregated data from visitors and have it reported to in real time. This allows you to, at a glance, see what parts of your site are most popular, identify sales leads, and pro-actively communicate with customers, rather than waiting for them to contact you for support.

Photo galleries
Sites for non-profit organisations or clubs often have photo galleries. These galleries help give the site visitor an extra way to relate to the club's activities. Remember that a picture is worth a thousand words - this is just as true online as in a book.

Remember, by no means are these the only features that can be put on a website. If there is a particular feature that you want, we can design it for your site. Our development process means that the cost of commissioning a feature not already on this list is much lower than most competitors' custom-design rates.