Bespoke, hand-coded web devign
.web{devign} is a creative digital studio run by Ali Blackwell. Our web design service is comprehensive. We are also your one-stop web consultant and friendly, web-savvy ear. The studio is situated just off the Old Street roundabout (aka Silicon Roundabout) in the centre of the known universe—London.
Contact UsOur web design services.
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1. Web Devign
Our flagship service. Working closely with you and your team we will design and develop your website. It will be bespoke and hand crafted, and powered by an easy-to-use CMS. We embrace web standards, open source software, and the latest industry best practices.
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2. Web Development
So you have an in-house graphic designer? We will work with them on the design (ensuring they’ve thought about usability, SEO and web standards) and then code it into a valid, standards-compliant fully working website.
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3. eCommerce Web Devign
The web is a global market waiting for your product. If you want to sell online, we can make it happen. Using either the powerful Magento (for shops with large catalogs and hundreds of customers), or a WordPress eCommerce solution (for smaller sites with a handful of products), we will design and build an online store that will boost your business and revenue.
Magento is the most powerful open-source E-Commerce platform out there, and we have extensive experience theming and customising Magento for our clients. You get the best of both worlds: a hand-crafted, bespoke website married to the raw power and advanced functionality of the Magento system. If you truly want to make the most of the global market the web offers, our Magento eCommerce solution is for you. For more about Magento, click here.
Your site will enjoy:
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CMS integration
No one wants to edit code. That’s why we build all of our sites using a point-and-click, quick-to-edit CMS.
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Site-side SEO
Your website will be fully search engine optimised. Don’t forget you’ll need to do some off-site SEO to achieve maximum impact. We can advise you on how to do this.
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Web 2.0 technologies
All of the Web 2.0 technologies you’re used to come as standard, including contact forms, blogs, user polls, Twitter and Facebook integration… you name it, we do it.
We also do:
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A/B Testing
Until your site is released into the wild, it’s anyone’s guess how well it will perform. With A/B testing, we design different variations, serve them to a cross-section of users and compare their effectiveness. It could be a button, or an entire page layout. The variant with the highest click-through or conversion rate (CTR/CR) is identified and implemented. Simple.
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Copywriting
Content is king. Your website’s copy is more important than the design. If words are not your thing, we can write your copy for you and with you. Ali dabbles as a playwright and has a degree in English, so you’ll be in very safe hands.
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Branding
Often a website represents the birth of a business. If you haven’t got a logo yet, don’t worry. We will work with you on the concept, and then create a vector logo that looks as good on a twenty-story billboard as it does on a 3.5″ business card.
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Print Design
Your website is a core part of your brand identity. If you want your letter heads, comp slips and business cards to share its aesthetic, it makes sense to let us take care of these as well. Economies of scale are a beautiful thing.
The process
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1. Initial Meeting
We meet. We discuss what you want from the site, who your target market is, and what your objectives are. We identify what the web can do for your business, and how best to achieve this. We identify how we will measure success. We talk about SEO and the site’s copy.
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2. Copy and keywords
Copy is the most important part of a website, and writing good copy imbued with a site’s keywords is an art in itself.
Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.
ZeldmanDuring the meeting we sit down and use Google’s Keyword Tool to help us choose our keywords. We discuss who will write the copy, and set the copy deadline.
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3. Design discussions
We identify your competition, and look at their websites. We look at other websites you like and don’t like. We discuss branding, colours, textures, and logo design. Together we visualise the site, with your users, your objectives and goals guiding everything we do.
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4. Initial Development
We head back to the Studio and organise web hosting and the domain name, if you’ve not done so already. We wireframe the website, and work in Photoshop or in the browser to mock up a concept. We invite you to view the concept and submit feedback. We collaborate some more. You give the go-ahead
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5. Development Phase
With the copy in place, we design and develop the website. By now, everything has been meticulously planned and it’s a simple case of slotting the pieces together, and sprinkling on the magic dust that makes the interwebs tick.
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6. Review Phase
We have another meeting, and review the finished website. Any tweaks or alterations are made. This is also the point where we give you or a nominated team member a thorough training session in website management. We will also publish a website manual as a handy reference for when you get stuck (which you won’t – it’ll all be second nature by now).
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6. The launch
The website ready, we submit it to the search engines, install analytics, and crack a bottle over her bow. Boom.
Who is Ali Blackwell?
Ali Blackwell enjoys advanced proficiency in the modern “web stack” of technologies (HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript), and is lucky to have a keen eye for design. Web Design has been his geekiest passion since 2005, when he coded various society websites whilst reading English at the University of Nottingham. Since then he has devoured terabytes of books, blogs, tutorials, online courses and resources, and has kept constantly up to date with the latest advances in the industry. Five years on and Ali’s finger is planted firmly on the pulse of cutting-edge web design.
In his spare time Ali is a television and theatre producer, and an actor and writer. His television production company recently won a Deutsche Bank award to shoot three webisodes of an upcoming comedy-drama series.
In previous lives he has run a successful clubnight, organised a series of underground raves, written and directed a play called TwinSS, managed the only student-run theatre in the country, and founded and run a theatre company that took plays to Edinburgh from 2004—2009. You can visit his personal site at http://www.aliblackwell.com.