Have you ever found yourself on a website that you can’t get your head around? Have you ever spent five minutes navigating around a site and still find yourself no wiser as to who the site belongs to, what it is they do, and how you can get in contact with them? Or what about that slightly disturbed feeling you get when you realise that a defence and aerospace engineering company has a website that looks like this: www.appliedeng.com ?

Welcome to Run Web Design’s series discussing the fundamentals of planning for, developing and owning a website. We’ll be looking at the most core issues that you need to consider when either developing your own site or discussing your site with a website developer. We’ll be arming you with the questions to ask, the resources to look up and a few industry secrets that will help to ensure that your website is operating as effectively as possible.

Part One: Purpose and Audience

Introducing the most fundamental of fundamentals, purpose and audience, this article looks at why you’re building a website, and who it’s targeted at.

Part Two: Content

If you’ve got nothing valuable to say, it doesn’t much matter why you’re saying it or who you’re saying it to, so this article discusses the importance of content on your website.

Part Three: Design and Layout

Proper design is not just for corporate multinationals, you too can have a well designed website that adds value to your content.

Part Four: Search Engine Optimisation

SEO is becoming more important and therefore in higher demand which means more expensive, right? Well, yes, but this article will tell you if it’s worth the money for you, and how to sift the cowboys from the pack and get on board with a genuine SEO expert.

Appendix: Selling Online

Selling Online is nothing new in terms of the web, but it may be for your business. Contained in this appendix to the fundamentals series is a few tips on getting your head around setting up a successful e-commerce website.