Form & Function The effective combination of creative and technical skills. Software & Systems Design Our back-end work in eCommerce, databases, scripting and other server-side operations. Graphic & Interface Design Bringing classical graphic design skills to new media. Multimedia & Interactive Design Enhancing the web with audio, video, Flash animation and interactive entertainment. Content Management Keeping your web site up to date: a focused approach. Unifying Web & Print Beyond the web: harmonised design in print and on-screen. Designing for Search Engines How HomePage optimises site designs to gain search-engine hits.

Sometimes a new client comes to HomePage, fetches a copy of their printed brochure from their briefcase and gives us the highly complex and detailed brief: "Put this online."

And we have to confess, it's tempting: we can convert the brochure for the web, and then when they change the brochure the next year, we can charge them all over again! (Back in the '90s, we used to do this a lot.)

But that's the wrong way to build a web site.

The key to building a successful site is to include two things:

• The tools that people want to use to get information, buy products, tell you what they want, complain about what they don't like, and so on.
• Recent, relevant and constantly changing content that reflects the latest status of your products, services, experiences and world-view.

Clearly, if you're going to build a site that people value and return to, then you need to plan the structure so that you can update the content at any time.

So HomePage designs sites that ease the update process in three ways:

Online database admin For sites where the content is held as database records, we build password-protected web pages that allow your staff to directly modify the content. Naturally, we don't give access to all of the database, but relevant options such as adding or modifying news stories, product details, prices, and all of the other elements that may change daily can be edited via simple web forms.

Content management team HomePage has a team of content managers who will implement all requested content changes within an agreed time period (the time of turnaround depends on your service level agreement with HomePage, but is typically same-day for minor changes, and with 48 hours for complex additions to the site). This approach gives you the ability to add new sections to the site, completely modify existing content, and to specify updates without needing any technical knowledge at all - it's usually just a matter of sending email to the update team with a note of the change, an enclosed Word file, and then letting them get on with it. The team uses a content tracking system which allows you to check the status of all modification requests at any time, and this is an ideal approach if your company is likely to generate update-requests from many employees.

DIY updates We design our sites using 'modular page elements', which is a fancy way of saying that the bit with the content is separate (in terms of page-code structure) to the bits dealing with navigation, page footers, site logos and other elements that surround the core content of a page. This means that we can produce content templates for your staff that allows them to add new pages to the site without affecting the underlying design of the site. These templates can be edited using any competent web-page editor (we recommend Macromedia Dreamweaver) and uploaded directly to the site without you needing to deal with HomePage. In reality, this approach works well if you want to deal with content within existing sections of the site, and with limited creative parameters, and so many of our clients who use this approach tend to combine it with a service from HomePage's content management team for dealing with more complex requests.

If you're planning a web site where the ability to include constantly-changing content is a key factor, why not drop us a line for a free assessment of how we can help you?