Haghill Internet Services Limited sees far too many websites that are all 'bells & whistles' and not much else. These gimmicky websites may look good but they carry no message. Careful consideration needs to be given to what you want to say, who you want to say it to and then how you want to say it - always remember, content is king.

Though it's ultimately a matter of personal preference, we think three basic steps to a successful website are:

• Simplicity and appropriate design
  Why would a fencing contractor want fancy Flash animations when all they want to do is tell people what they do and get people to phone them up. On the other hand, an on-line record shop may want to use animations and clever visuals.
  
• Intuitive navigation
  If a user can't find their way around your website without explanation, then your website has failed. A sitemap is always a useful inclusion in this respect and helps with search engine indexing but the bottom line is that the navigation should be self-explanatory.
  
• Relevant content
  If your website has sections entitled 'About Us' and 'Services' then the content should relevant to each page. The 'About Us' page shouldn't have details of the services offered and so on.
  
  Always keep content to the minimum required; too many companies have a tendency to fill their pages with as many words as possible. The average user will not read past the first few paragraphs. There is a lot of truth in the saying 'Less is more'.

In 1999 the Web Accessibility Initiative, a project by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), published the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 1.0. In recent years, these have been widely accepted as the definitive guidelines on how to create accessible websites. Haghill Internet Services Limited endeavour to maintain these standards and produce websites that meet at least Priority 1 of these guidelines, though for a number of reasons some of our older websites may not necessarily be compliant.