What do your developers do differently at the higher levels of graphic appeal?

At the higher levels of graphic appeal, namely "enhanced" and "advanced" our designers utilize and mimic the techniques used by high-end designers. This requires three components, the first being artistic talent. Our graphic designers are very artistic and have experience with the type of style used on high-end web sites. The second component is the software used. The graphic software used is several times more expensive and robust compared to the software used by amateurs.

Software used by amateurs is very limiting and tends to produce less appealing web sites. In addition to the lower level of appeal is the fact that less reputable companies tend to use this software to design their web sites. There is a certain look that is common with less established companies, "fly-by-night" companies, "get-rich-quick" sites, etc., that is simply due to use of cheap web-authoring software. The third component is experience surfing the internet and viewing a variety of different types of companies and graphical components.

Many web developers make the mistake of using free graphics or templates instead of custom making every graphical element of a web site. When free graphical components are used, your site will resemble low-end web sites often used by "fly-by-night" companies. An experienced designer knows to avoid custom designs that resemble the readily available free graphical components. All our high-end graphic designers know to avoid the techniques and styles commonly used in low-end web sites.

Would you ever use a template or suggest the use of a template?

All our sites are custom designed and we would strongly advise against using templates for web design. Apart from the obvious problem with templates being less attractive and used by amateurs, there are other legal and marketing issues that need to be considered. When using a template you can easily run into copyright infringement, as you would not actually hold the copyright but rather only a license for limited use of the design.

Eventually when your business starts to grow, an element of your web site could easily become a trademark for your company. Remember a trademark does not have to be registered for it to be considered a trademark of your company; registration of a trademark gives it more protection. However, if you find that part of your web design has become a trademark (unregistered) you may not be able to use that element in any print media or any other media such a signage.

You may also be forced to stop using the "trademark" costing you thousands of dollars. It's always better to go with custom design for your web site, and although custom design has historically been expensive, we provide custom design at very affordable rates.

Are all programming languages equal?

No. There are some common programming languages that require a specific type of server that is less reliable and more expensive to run. We use modern languages such as php to avoid this problem and pass savings on to our clients by means of reduced hosting costs. Also languages such as PHP tend to run faster than out-dated programming languages.