Hi, I'm Anne. I have worked for many years in the computer software industry. I love technical work, but have a love of and need for a creative outlet. To satisfy that need, I have combined my technical skills with my creative abilities to design web pages – what a great combination!
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My experience and specialty is in simple, straightforward web design. There are a lot of flashy techniques being used to spice up web pages. For some markets they play well. For the majority of sites, however, it is better to present information in a simple and clear manner, and most importantly – in a manner which will not exclude customers or clients who do not have the software or high-speed access to support the flashy features.
My basic philosophy of web design is this: keep it simple, clean, and easy to find and navigate for a variety of different people who are using different web browser software which supports a variety of different features.
If this philosophy matches your desires for your web site design, I would love to work with you to put together a web site that presents you and the material you have to offer in its best format for the Internet.
Here are a few examples of my web design work:
-
Ingram's
is a basic informational e-commerce site featuring product photos and
information.
-
RiverSpirits Arts and Designs
is an e-commerce sites featuring basic PayPal on-line ordering
capabilities.
There are a few things to keep in mind and some things you can do
to assist with the success of the design of your web site –
- You know your business; I know web design. I love preparing text and writing in a way that will spark a reader’s interest, but I need you to provide the depth of the content for that text since, again, YOU know your business – I don’t know it in the depth that you do! Please be prepared before our design consultation with notes on how you would like your site to look and a rough draft of the descriptive text you would like on your pages. For example:
- A particular logo or image that you would like to use on your main page
- The contact name and information (address, telephone number, FAX number, e-mail) you would like to use on your site
- Identify your different product categories
- Provide item numbers for the items you wish to display to ease product identification and ordering
- Provide product dimensions of the items or any other details that would be helpful for potential customers
- Provide product prices
- If you need or want me to take photographs for inclusion on your web site, I need you to think about how you want those photographs to look – is there a specific background you would like for product photos? If so, please take the time to gather the items to be photographed and prepare the background.
- You will need a domain name in order for people to access your site on the Internet. If you do not already have a domain name registered, please try to decide on the domain name you would like to use. It will ideally include your business name or be descriptive of your product offering. If you need help with this or help in determining if a certain domain name is available, I will be happy to help.
- You will need a web hosting account where the files that make up your site will be located and be accessible on the Internet. If you do not already have a web hosting account, select a username and password for use for your web hosting account that will be easy for you to remember so that you can access your site statistics.
- It will take time for traffic to find its way to your site, and it isn’t going to happen without some time, energy, and money (for example, submission of a commercial site to Yahoo is currently $299) put into web site promotion. I will provide you with guidelines to do this work. If you desire, I offer the service of doing the initial work, but I do recommend that you do the ongoing work yourself. It is not particularly difficult, but it can be time-consuming, especially when dealing with more than one site. It is much more cost-efficient for you to do this yourself – you will hopefully be the one with the most time and energy to put towards this activity. Patience is going to be the key on this front – expect it to take about 6 months for significant traffic to find and start accessing your site regularly.
