Things you might be wondering...

Why do I need a website anyway?

The chances are, you've already had people ask you what your website address is, and you've had to change the subject quickly or admit that you don't have one. If this hasn't happened to you yet, it's only a matter of time!

For many potential customers, the web is the first place that they will look for information about you. If you're a musician, your fans will want to keep up with your gig schedule and latest releases, and perhaps download some sample tracks. If you're a bar, restaurant or music venue, you'll need to publicise your location, events listings, menu, and so on. And of course, you'll need to keep all of this stuff up to date.

A website offers many of the benefits of traditional marketing media such as flyers, posters and magazine adverts, except that the audience you reach is far greater, and you don't have the associated printing, distribution and advertising costs, or the environmental impact of all that discarded paper! In addition, your website can provide things that these traditional media cannot, for example downloadable music or video clips, photo galleries and discussion forums. But that's not all! check out all the other features my websites can offer.

But I've already made my own website with an online site builder service. Surely that's good enough?

If you're happy with your existing website then that's cool, but some of these instant build-your-own sites do lack a certain je ne sais quoi, don't they? At best, they can lack originality; at worst, they can be downright hideous!

There's also a less obvious, but more important problem with many of these types of websites - accessibility. Without going into too much detail, many of these online sitebuilder tools create websites that are almost impossible to use:
  • if you're blind and have the page read to you by special screen reading software,
  • if you're partially sighted and need to increase the font size on the page,
  • if you're mobility impaired and can't use the mouse to navigate.

All of the sites I create are professionally designed to match your unique style and identity. What's more, they all take the W3C's Guidelines for Accessibility into account, so that they are easier to navigate for people with disabilities. For more information, please read my accessibility policy.

I've already paid a graphic designer to create my website. Why would I want to change it?

For logo and identity design, you can't beat a professional graphic designer. While we're on the subject, here is a shameless link to my brother, Barnaby Norwood, who happens to be a graphic designer.

So your website's looking fantastic, but do you have to pay your designer every time you need any updates made? Does it take days or even weeks for your updates to appear online? Does that put you off updating your website altogether?

When I design a website for you, I can take your existing logos, images and other motifs and incorporate them into your new design. Often I can recreate the structure of your site entirely, but with the added advantage that you can update it yourself, whenever you want, from anywhere that has an internet connection.

As I discussed in the previous question, the issue of accessibility also rears its ugly head here. Those beautiful Shockwave Flash menus with their animations and funky sound effects are often entirely useless to those with mobility or vision impairments. While I am happy to provide you with Flash intro pages and video clips, my accessibility policy means that I avoid using these technologies for your site's fundamental navigation systems.

I can create and update my own website thank you very much! I understand Dreamweaver/FrontPage and know how to use FTP.

Good call - so do I! However, I still use my own content management system to update my website because it means I can do it from any computer, anywhere in the world, without any special software other than a web browser.

My websites also allow you to create multiple user accounts so that you can keep control of the overall website, but delegate parts of the site to other people to keep updated. You don't have to worry about them "breaking" the website by doing something wrong, and you don't have to tell them your main FTP login and password.

Don't forget that my websites can include many other dynamic features, such as a calendar of events, a guestbook, RSS news feeds, photo galleries and forums. Here are descriptions of all the features that I offer.