Since the mid 1990's the internet has flourished. Many UK website design service companies have come and gone due to fierce competition in the design marketplace.

Companies looking for web design companies to build their websites for them in the UK are finding themselves in the middle of a minefield of technical babble from all sorts of companies, new and established.

The secret of a website design companies' success is communicating with the customer using plain english. Most customers don't even know what they want are are guided most of the time by the web design company.

Be very careful when selecting a website design company to put together the flagship website that represents your business. There are numerous rules and tips that you should follow in order to make sure you get what you actually need.

If you are not sure what you need, we have also provided you with the basic elements of a website that should answer the most common questions.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a domain name?
A domain name is like a license. If you registered www.yourcompany.co.uk. You would own that domain name for a minimum term of 2 years. If you do not renew the domain name at the end of your license agreement, the domain name will soon be available for other companies to use. If you do not have any website hosting, then the domain name will usually be parked with the company you registered it with. This simply means they are holding it for you as you have paid for the license.

Some companies allow you to point the domain name to another place on the internet and give you basic email services from as little as £10 per year. However if you have a website it is best to have the domain name and the hosting alltogether as one package. This makes it easier for you to administor and search engines prefer things this way and place websites higher in their indexes than if you chose to use methods such as web-forwarding (domain pointing).

What is website hosting?
Website hosting is a massively competitive business throughout the world and especially in the UK. An Internet Service Provider will usually supply various hosting packages usually on a 12 month contract basis.

Hosting basically means you rent a small amount of webspace (or pigeon hole if you like) from the internet. You are given the relative access details to this webspace which enables you to upload your website to it. Usually your domain name also is pointing to this webspace so if anybody throughout the world on the internet types in www.yourcompany.co.uk then they will be directed to your piece of webspace and will be displayed with your companies website.

Viper Image Media offer many types of hosting packages to suit any business so please contact us with your requirements.

What is a static website?
A static website is a website that does not interact with the person viewing the website. It is simply pages of information linked together that can be viewed by the user who clicks simple links on the website which enables them to navigate from page to page. Static sites are usually small brochure sites offering no Ecommerce facilities.

What is a dynamic website?
A dynamic website is a site which usually interacts with the user in some way, or interacts with a database which is built behind the website. A typical example would be a site that has only 4 pages which are templates that pull information from a database to show all different products. Another definitition of dynamic is when a website makes decisions based upon what areas / buttons you click eg you are filling out a form and select UK as the country, then a new dropdown form field subsequently asks you what county of the UK..

What is E-commerce?
E-Commerce or Electronic Commerce is simply a website that is an online shop. Usually the administrator has a control panel where he can enter new products and sections to the site on the fly. The end user visiting the site can then navigate around the website and make a purchase.

What is Search Engine optimisation?
Search Engine Optimisation is the term used for making sure a website is made ready to be found by search engines. SEO comes in many forms and work needs to be done to the website and away from the website to make optimisation a success. For example, you must ensure that your website has a good number of other websites linking to your site to give it an extra push up the rankings.

What is a search engine?
A search engine is a very large directory which stores millions of websites. Each search engine uses a different algorithym to depict where abouts a website should appear the in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) for any given phrase entered to the search engine.