Company Websites

"A company without a website is a company without a future."

Whether you're a one man show, or a company with thousands of employees, if you don't have a website, you're losing business to companies that do. It's important to have the right kind of website, however. It's better to have no website at all than to have one that makes your business look bad. A well considered, and well designed website can make your company appear professional and trustworthy, whereas a poorly designed website with little thought given to it's layout can make your company appear dodgy, or unreliable.

Total Data Solutions have a history of success in building attractive, functional, full featured websites, that deliver a level of professionalism to their owners that can't be achieved with any other advertising medium. We are focused on quality, and believe that targeting the design to suit the intended audience is critically important. We also ensure we are using the latest technologies to guarantee your website will be a cutting edge sales and marketing tool, giving you the upper hand over your competition.

Types of Websites

It is important to decide early on what type of website best meets your needs. Below are a couple of the questions that we would typically ask when determining the style of website for you:

Are you selling anything through the website?

If you need the ability to sell your goods or services directly from your website then you will be best served by what is know as an E-Commerce Website. It is a style of website that enables your customers to purchase your goods or services directly through the website, using their credit card or PayPal account.

If you don't require the ability to process sales through the website then you might only need what is known as a Brochure Website. This style of website is put together with the intention of getting your business online, and making it easy for your visitors to learn more about you and your business. You might want to tell them what you can offer them through your services, even show them what you’ve done in the past, and of course, give them a means to quickly get in touch with you.

Will the website content change regularly?

The answer to this question will determine whether you could benefit from a website feature know as a Content Management System (CMS). What this feature provides is the ability for someone with only limited knowledge of computers and websites to easily change the contents of their website. Without a CMS most people would have to ask a web developer to make changes to the site for them. There are varying degrees of control that can be achieved using a CMS.

In the most powerful case, a CMS provides the ability to change every single aspect of a website's content and appearance. Although that may sound like a very attractive feature, it's important to remember that it would then be very easy for someone to change the website to it's detriment. A web designer styles a website a certain way because they have been trained to understand how colours, fonts and layouts best work together to achieve certain goals. When someone without that training makes changes to the fundamental appearance of a website, the results can be less than desirable. The other thing to consider in the case of a full blown CMS website is that the developer has to design and build the site within the limitations of a framework provided by the CMS. In other words, the appearance of the website is limited to the rules put in place by the CMS.

In the other case, you can select a more scaled down version of a CMS, which limits your ability to changing only certain parts of a website, for example, the photos in a photo gallery, the products and prices in a product catalog, or the contact details on a contact page. This type of CMS can be much more attractive because it limits the ability to make changes to the general look and feel of the website, which as explained above can have unintended consequences. Instead the CMS is built with absolute usability in mind, and is completely customised to the person it is designed for. It also avoids the limitations imposed by working within a full CMS, allowing the developer to provide to the nth degree, exactly what is required by the client.

Contact Total Data Solutions to discuss your website project.