Website design and development

Wideopenspace has been creating websites since the heyday of the world wide web in the 1990’s, many things have changed since that time and our own experience and skills have grown too. We can provide a full design and development service from HTML / CSS template development to complex data-intensive web applications. We have a particular area of expertise in WordPress development for both custom theme and plugin development.

Responsive / mobile design

We develop our sites and applications to be responsive and mobile appropriate as standard. Engaging with clients throughout design and development to agree styles and behaviours which work well across many browsers and devices produces sites that have the greatest reach without sacrificing functionality. With judicious use of well supported frameworks and HTML/CSS which facilitate the production of sound, responsive websites, we create sites which balance the technical requirements for websites that fit desktop and responsive/mobile without compromising their availability. From large high resolution desktops to tablets and mobiles, clients can be assured of modern, performant sites and applications.

Bespoke web applications

While the requirements for most websites are well served by established and flexible platforms such as WordPress, sometimes more fundamental control is needed to allow the project requirements to be met. In these cases we will develop the project using more project specific programming and/or frameworks to construct a bespoke web application which meets the more demanding requirements in full.

Data-focused applications

Sometimes data is the key focus of a web site or application and data analysis and modelling becomes a core requirement. We are able to bring our specific experience in the analysis of data centric projects and work with our clients to design and implement the data model. If the data is already available we’ll help to develop or augment it as required. Where sourcing the data is part of the application itself we’ll work with clients to design and build the data model itself as well as the best tools to aquire the data for it.

Interactive Web Applications

As web browsers gained support for modern web technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3 along with the rise of mobile devices this has brought to an end to the once-dominant Flash plugin as a way to provide rich interactive experiences on the web. Mobile devices and the rise of “apps” has brought a new awareness and expectation to users who have an expectation of well thought out, creative user-experiences. Establishing the interactive requirements of a site is an integral part of our design work with the client. We have extensive experience augmenting simpler websites as well as developing websites specifically as interactive tools from guides and explainers to profilers and tools intended to elicit information from site vistors.

eCommerce

eCommerce capability into a website can be included in any website project we develop. Our preferred platform is the very well-established WordPress plugin WooCommerce which meshes particularly well with our WordPress-optimised hosting platform. We also create bespoke ecommerce workflows in situations where standard eCommerce processes may not be suitable such as custom checkout process or complex order enquiry tools.

Most sites will aspects of all the things described above in various amounts, we work carefully with our clients to weight and blend these aspects together to give their project the correct treatment.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

We create fast, responsive, mobile-friendly websites which provide the best possible underlying structure to meet the technical criteria that companies such as Google favour in their search engines. Whilst this underlying framework is a critical part of a site’s performance in search engine rankings it is also extremely important to consider the structure of the site both in page hierarchy and also the actual written content.

We work closely with an SEO specialist called twofentons who have a wealth of experience in the area of SEO and online marketing across various business sectors. Together we provide a thorough analysis of markets, competitors and keywords relevant to your website. Based on the outcomes of this we can establish a focused strategy to get the best performance of your site in search engine results.