Website Design Services

Designing a website is not a trivial task other than the instance of a single simple homepage. Most of our customers have a little more to say to the world, and we can help in getting your message across. It is our goal to help you create a first-class web site and to feel comfortable about doing so. Some of the services onweb offers include:

Graphic Design
Image Capture and Scanning
Web Page Layout
CGI scripting
Interactive Forms
Animation Features
Conversion of your ideas

A feature that is almost unique in the Internet Web Page industry is that onweb encourages you to save money by preparing the bulk of your web-page material in a word processor format (eg Word 6 or higher) and then forwarding that to us along with any graphic images or photographs to be scanned and instructions about where on the page(s) they should appear. We will then convert this material to a your-flavour web page at a very nominal rate which is approximately 40-50% below our standard web-page design rates. We feel that this gives you a great deal of control over your page, allows you to use tools with which you are already familiar, and saves you from having to become too involved in yet another learning phase initially. As you learn more about the techniques and issues, you can develop the enhancements as you wish.

Each web site develops its own 'personality' as it evolves from a simple idea into the finished product. We at onweb have the specialist resources either from in-house personnel or through our network of skilled subcontractors to make your site a place that you are happy with.

Graphic Design.

Graphic Design is a very creative task which requires people with that creative flair to make the most of your ideas. You may well have someone in your organisation already who is very good in this area. If so, use them!

If however, you are like most of us, and need that extra help, then you need to step outside your organisation's boundaries and obtain specialist assistance. Your own company's present advertising firm will certainly have expertise that you may prefer to use, or we can refer you to a selection of graphic design people.

Image Capture and Scanning.

Many web pages utilise graphic images, which may be in electronic form already, or may simply exist as a photograph. In the case of electronic images it is a simple matter to attach these to email messages or insert into existing documents for ultimate web site publication. onweb has the resource to scan in your photographs to create a graphic image that can be used in your web pages. If you are intending to use snapshots of some of your existing screens we suggest that you obtain one of the screen capturing programs to make your life a little easier. A quite reasonable shareware product that you might try while deciding which graphic tool to use is Paint Shop Pro available at http://www.jasc.com/pcs.html. It provides a screen capture facility as well as general image processing capabilities.

To get photographs scanned, you can inquire in your local neighbourhood or forward the photographs to onweb at our postal address (P.O. Box 279, Flagstaff Hill, SA 5159). For successful photographic publication, we suggest that images be no larger than your normal postcard size (3" x 5", or 7.5cm x 12.5 cm) and that the scanning resolution be no more than around 150dpi. Even then you would normally find that images are cropped to only contain the main part of the image, and it is common for lower resolutions to be used.

Most web surfers will acknowledge that extensive graphics in the form of photographs are quite painful to have to wait for if they are looking for information, (World Wide Wait syndrome!) although this can be acceptable if browsing through a gallery or album. Our standard fee for scanning a postcard size photograph at 150dpi is $10.

Web Page Layout.

There are good web pages and there are some very bad ones. onweb has had quite a deal of experience in developing web pages, and we can develop yours for you. Clearly there are many factors to be considered in setting up a web site, but we are here to help you do just that. We will take into account various factors including themes, topic coverage, page balance, user interfaces and overall organisation of material. The end result will hopefully be another great place on the web. Our current standard rate applies for this service.

Conversion of your ideas.

onweb is one of the few companies that actually encourages you to do your own thing. If you want to prepare all of your base material in your own word processor such as Word 6 , or WordPerfect and then submit it to onweb to be loaded into your web page(s), then we are very happy to accommodate you. Our present charge to generate or update your web page materials in this way is 50% of our standard design rate. The process is really very simple.

You prepare your materials and graphics using your present tools
Email us these documents and graphics along with a list of layout instructions
We convert your ideas to web pages, and return an email of web-documents (html)
You then upload the web page details to your site.

Animation Features.

There are many types of animations that you can find when searching through web sites, varying from basic text animations to complex graphic animations. We believe in the adage of keeping it simple for many reasons - time to load your page, greatest impact on viewer, size and complexity of the animation, cost to prepare and test - to name a few. While these are our opinions, you are the customer, and therefore it is up to you to dictate your need. We can provide the expertise to prepare the type of graphic impact that you require. Our normal design rates apply for this service.

CGI scripting.

CGI scripting is a specialised skill and you need appropriate training before using this in your site. There is a directory called cgi-local in your initial account where your own cgi scripts will be located when they have been developed. However you should note that such scripts need careful checking before being made active. onweb provides a cgi scripting development service which is charged at our normal design rates.

Interactive Forms.

Interactive forms are able to be created in either of two formats. The more traditional format is with cgi code. Some expertise is required to be able to develop complex forms and take appropriate actions based on responses of the users. onweb has available some elementary forms for use in your site to help you capture some basic information about people who want further information from you. See our FAQs in regard to this topic for further explanation.

The second approach is with FrontPage form design. To use FrontPage as the development tool you will need to have FrontPage extensions included in your site account as part of the account setup. Please refer to the additional notes concerning FrontPage for more information about this tool.

More complex forms require skilled development. onweb is happy to assist in your development of those forms or construct them on your behalf. Our normal design rates apply for this service.

Please refer questions to sales@onweb.com.au