Web design is a complex process that requires a wide range of creative, business and technical skills. Good design must compellingly communicate key marketing messages and well as providing simple intuitive navigation. The design also lays down a sequence of “calls to action” designed to engage and facilitate the business process.
Increasingly, web design relies on meeting a large number of technical and engineering requirements. Accessibility is now a legal requirement requiring adherence to standards such as 508. Equally, meeting international standards such as those for XHTML are implicit within every project. Search Engine Optimisation is not simply an add-on to web design but must be an integral part of any solution in order to gain new website visitors and customers.
Creative design flair balanced by a professional and mature understanding of marketing expressed through state-of-the-art technology. This is what Amco IT Systems web design is all about. As in any field or profession, experience counts. Since 1996, the Amco IT Systems design team has won a steady stream of accolades, awards and a long list of sparkling testimonials from our customers.
Branding is usually the starting point for any design project. Creating a clear and definitive top copy of corporate branding ensures that all marketing materials, including websites, all share exactly the same styling, appearance and image. These branding guidelines clearly define how colours can be used, accents be applied, styles harmonised, font-use made consistent and even how key marketing messages or straplines are to be used for best impact.
The field of web design has changed rapidly over the last few years and the Amco IT Systems design team has been at the heart of many of these innovations. Eye movement studies and usability testing repeatedly confirms the top-left / bottom right ordering rules for the relative importance of information and the communication of marketing messages. The development and testing of different approaches to website navigation have done much to help make Amco IT Systems websites simple and intuitive to use.
Amco IT Systems has also pioneered the use of “need to know” design where content and information is only provided as required when directing a website user through to a particular goal, sale or call to action.
It is our policy to produce a branding guidelines document for all of our clients to ensure that their logos are uniform across all platforms.
When a corporate identity is presented consistently, you create a positive and lasting impression of the company. The value of a brand symbol (logo and corporate identity) is immeasurable. Its value increases each time it is presented properly and decreases with every incorrect or improper application. Our guidelines ensure that all graphics, fonts and colours (for both print and screen) are reproduced perfectly every time.
Branding guidelines are also legal documents outlining the ownership and copyright holders of the logo and corporate identity.
Here are some examples of the branding guidelines from Amco IT Systems International and the i-smart group.
Simplicity is everything and that is why we have committed significant resources to ensuring that Amco IT Systems Content Management Systems (CMS) are as easy to use as possible. All of this has been achieved whilst still leaving our customers with full control of their web sites in terms of text, images and even adding new pages or modifying, for example, a menu.
Another important aspect of Amco IT Systems CMS is that can grow with your company and its business needs. The CMS system can start with something as simple and basic as a single small editable region of a page all thr way through to a multi-site ebusiness supply chain.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Amco IT Systems CMS systems are that they make use of a clever system called Dynstatic. Whilst most content managed websites suffer on search engines because of the dynamic aspects of page production, Dynstatic optimises content managed web pages to make them maximally appealing to search engines such as Google. Dynstatic also ensures that content managed pages meet global standards in accessibility as well as automatically producing content that speeds up search engine indexing - i.e. it speeds up the process of making content available to Google. This feature is particularly important for websites that carry important news items.
Everything in design should serve a purpose - for business web sites that means to clearly communicate ideas, to simplify marketing messages, to compellingly engage with an audience and then direct the user towards a call to action (e.g. a sale or a communication). Amco IT Systems design is driven by the need to best communicate key marketing messages that lead directly to sales. Amco IT Systems has pioneered usability measures that lead directly to Return On Investment.
By adhering to all the key standards in web design we ensure that our websites will work correctly in all circumstances, whatever the machine model, browser type, screen resolution or printer setup. Accessibility standards such as 508 compliance ensure our websites comply with new legislation and the needs of those with a visual impairment. By following strict standards on the quality of code, not only do our websites load quickly in browsers, they also have content that ranks much better on major search engines such as Google.
One of the most significant recent changes in the web has been the introduction of websites that engage and interact strongly with a community of users. Such sites allow users to customise how a site appears and how it can be tailored to meet the requirements of individuals. These sites revolve around collaboration and sharing of content. Such designs fall into what is called "web 2.0" and rely heavily on technologies such as AJAX. Amco IT Systems is a major advocate of such developments and see it as a trend towards the empowerment of our customers to take control of their sites and to ever better engage with their own customers.
Search engines control the Internet. High visibility on search engines is crucial for getting the right kind of visitors (i.e. potential customers). Amco IT Systems websites follow an architecture that is optimal for the best possible search engine performance. The website architecture not only allows best possible access from search engine spiders (programs that take content from your site to then index in sites such as Googe, Yahoo or MSN) but also encourages the spiders to return quickly to get new and updated content. By combining an Amco IT Systems website with Amco IT Systems Search Engine Marketing provides the ultimate in online business advantage.
Any growing business is in a continuous state of change. For a website to be able to grow with your business it must be capable of full evolution without having to go back to the drawing board. All Amco IT Systems websites are fully evolvable. Amco IT Systems provides a range of over 600 modular extensions that allow users to add ecommerce, forums, press rooms, ticketing systems, blogs, photo albums, Enterprise search or video libraries. These systems will all integrate and all include the essential ability to gain high visibility n search engines.
Many Amco IT Systems clients have a global reach for their products and services. This means that websites must appear in a wide variety of different languages. For some sites that appear in languages such as Arabic, Urdu or Hebrew this means that the web page must render pages from right-to-left as well as left-to-right. Amco IT Systems can support a full multi-lingual admin section on its websites that allow the production of multiple foreign language websites all from a single set of content.
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Amco IT Systems International Ltd