What makes us different

We all have our own view of the World Wide Web and often that view is a blinkered one. If you use the latest version of Internet Explorer with every available plug-in, running on a state of the art machine with a high-speed connection and a 21" screen, then you have one view. You might think that sites look the same to everyone. Unfortunately this isn't the case.

For some, much of the web is inaccessible, or at best, broken. Some of the biggest names in business have wasted millions on an Internet presence that is now totally out of date and proving expensive to put right. Instead of adhering to laid down standards, those websites used hacks and bizarre workarounds to achieve readability in the two major browsers of the time.

As you might expect from a bodged job, those sites are now falling apart.

Their designers arrogantly assumed that all users would, like lemmings, upgrade software and hardware at the release of every new browser version from Microsoft or Netscape.

Through ignorance, lack of interest or hardware constraints many people are still using software from the last century and will continue to do so for years to come. Others actually choose to use it because that's what they feel comfortable with. When visiting a website that doesn't display properly on their equipment, they assume (maybe correctly) that the site is at fault, not their beloved version 4 or older browser.

The legacy escalates

Those that hoped bad browsers might become extinct now have new problems to contend with. Hand-held machines, Web TV and Braille devices; this is new technology and it can't display those dinosaur websites.

Unbelievably those bodgers are still at it and charging silly money too. Be warned.

How this affects your business

Lots of visitors will be barred from your website. Your message won't get across. Potential customers may be told that their browser is not up to date and they need to download some gizmo or upgrade before returning. Return? We doubt it.

Still not convinced? One word:

Google

Your website doesn't automatically appear in Google's index. First the Google robot visits your site and tries to parse the pages to extract text. This robot uses a text-only browser that totally ignores gizmos, gimmicks and badly constructed sites. Your thousand-pound splash page may look flashy and show the world the size of your IT budget, but Google is not impressed.

A flashy site may look very nice but without visitors it's about as effective as pinning a flyer to a tree in the middle of a forest.

Keywords

Google only ever became popular because largely, it returns relevant results. The keyword meta tag is virtually worthless as far as Google is concerned, that's why Google is good. Sites with no keywords at all can appear at the top of page one in a Google search.

Of course we still use keywords to help your ranking with other search engines, we just don't rely on them.

The answer

A properly constructed website whose content is accessible to all, regardless of equipment used or a person's disabilities. That's what we specialise in, and the only way to achieve that is to code by hand. If you're using Windows, you have the software that we use to make our sites. You'll find it hidden under 'accessories', it's called Notepad.

Yes, we've used FrontPage, DreamWeaver, GoLive and others. We could probably create a site every couple of days using one of those, and make more money.

We don't, we are proud that we do the job properly.

Innovation within standards

Our sites comply with the web standards. By using Cascading Style Sheets, the content of the site is separated from its styling. Old or text-only browsers that don't understand modern formatting commands are presented with a simply styled but well-structured document that allows the user to access ALL content.