Web design
Designing a website isn’t just about pretty colours and cool transitions. It’s about considering what you want people to do, and making it as easy as possible for them to do that thing. It’s creating a brilliant user experience, and designing a user interface that is simple and slick. Our team of web designers make sure your brand is shown in its best light on every page, and completely aligns with your values and brand positioning.
Website design, with brand at it’s core.
Some agencies don’t even ask for brand guidelines as part of their process. Everything becomes disjointed with their brand. We’d never let that happen.
We’re obsessed with brand. Making sure everything aligns, is on-brand, and supports your brand positioning. High-end brands need high-end websites. A fun brand needs to embody that across its website. Whatever you stand for, your website should clearly show that – not just in its visuals, but the way it works, the functionality, through the UX and UI too.
Working with a brand-led agency, you’re safe in the knowledge that your brand image is in the forefront of our minds when making decisions on designs or how things animate or move.
We have three pillars here at Dawn: Brand, Digital and Motion. Our specialism in motion means we can animate videos and parts of the website to ensure that it is consistent with the rest of the brand.
Bespoke web design
We don’t like to use templates around here. Essentially, we create websites that are specifically yours, and no one else will have one that looks or works the same, because it’s designed to do exactly what you want it to do.
You’ll be looped in constantly throughout the design and build processes, meaning you’re always feeding back and letting us know whether things are going as you imagined, things are working the way you want them to, and you’re seeing progress as it’s being made.
Bespoke sites cost more than templated builds in the short term because they’re built to last long-term. When you’re not bound by a template, you won’t find yourself paying to completely refresh your site again in a couple of years.
Designed with SEO in mind
We really don’t see the point in creating a beautiful site if nobody can find it.
So SEO isn’t something we just think about after we’ve built a website. We believe that SEO should be considered before a website even gets designed, let alone after the development phase. By this, we mean assessing the ideal page structure, seeing how much or little your competitors are writing about relevant topics, what kind of content you need on your page, and more. That then determines the design of the site and the modules needed, which then gets passed onto the developers.
Completely editable by you
When you use us to create your site, once all is finished and we’ve handed it over to you, there’s no need to call us up and ask us to update things. The modular system we use in 99% of builds means you can chop and change things without messing anything up, add copy, video, images, and more. Who wouldn’t want that flexibility?
Studies show that more frequent content updates lead to improved rankings, so you need to be considering regular updates to your site anyway. Any agency that doesn’t give you the ability to do this should be a real red flag.
Want to talk Website Design?
Services:
Joanna Pawlowicz
Services:
David Vernon
Services:
Andy Atkinson
Don't just take our word for it
Our web design process
Collaboration
Firstly we figure out what the end goal is for your site. We make sure everyone knows your main pain points and goals, whether that’s selling more stuff, getting more signups, more enquiries, or something else. Because why would we do what we think is best when it might not serve your business?
Collaboration is huge here, and because we don’t have account managers, you talk directly to the person working on your site.
Design
We design responsively in Figma, showing how layouts adapt across screen sizes, so there are no surprises when it hits development. The design is regularly shared with you so you can see what’s going on, and you can add comments through Figma.
We build reusable components and style guides, so developers aren’t reinventing the wheel every time they build a new page. It keeps things consistent and cuts down on back-and-forth.
Build
We build the website with HTML, CSS, PHP, JQuery / Javascript, NPM, Grunt, Composer and WordPress, utilising a full array of scripting languages.
A staging site is used for the build before we actually launch, so you can continue using your old site until the day it’s launched. No interruptions to business as usual, just a very exciting launch day.
Test
Once the site is built and ready to go, we’ll get it all signed off and do any last amends, then test it. We test how it will work and look on all kinds of devices, and make sure it’s responsive to all screen sizes. We’ll make sure your security measures are all in place, then it’s time for launch!
Launch
Once your website’s live, that’s not the end of the story, it’s just the beginning of version one. From here, there are two routes we typically talk about: hosting and maintenance, and what we call Outshine – ongoing work that helps your site keep improving over time.
Who we work with
Brand,
Digital
& Motion
We believe every brand is a sleeping giant just waiting to be awoken. To rise up and show the world what it's made of. It's our job to chip away at the stone and realise its potential.
You need a website that does it all. That inspires and informs, builds confidence and trust. That enhances experiences and turns casual browsers into lifetime customers.
How your brand moves says things words can’t. Every movement either raises hairs or raises eyebrows. Delights or deters. It's important to make every movement count.
FAQs
How much does a website cost
For a templated website, you can pay as little as a couple of hundred pounds from someone on Fiverr. However, if you want a decent site, built to last, designed to your exact spec, it massively depends on what’s on there. Are there tools that need building? Custom animations? How many pages? Is it e-commerce with custom APIs?
Our estimate for a 7-8 page responsive event website would be between £9,000 – £25,000.
Our estimate for a responsive e-commerce website would be between £12,000 – £60,000+, again depending on a large number of factors
You can find out more in our blog: How much does a Website Cost
How long does it take to design and develop a website?
Once again, it all depends how big it is, how complicated it is, how many rounds of amends there are, whether the MD suddenly wants to change half of it just before it goes live. That kind of thing. It happens!
Most websites take between 3 months and a year, from the very first day we sign off on it to the day it launches. We like to get them up and running as quickly as we can, but things can always come up and change the timeline. We find it’s usually client-side changes that mean the project goes on longer than expected, because when it’s booked in with us and we’ve given a timeline, we don’t miss deadlines.
What CMS platforms do you recommend?
We prefer to develop WordPress sites over any other CMS, as it is the most widely used CMS on the planet. We think people should be able to edit, change and update their website as much as they want to with ease, and WordPress lets you do that once we’ve built your site.
What makes a good web design agency?
A good web design agency doesn’t just make things look nice, it creates websites that work hard for your business. At Dawn, that means user-focused design, smooth dev handovers, SEO built in from the start, the ability to manage and edit once it’s launched, and ongoing Outshine support to keep things evolving post-launch. It’s about building with purpose.
Do you offer website hosting?
We do. In fact, we’ve been doing it for years. That’s why we set up BHOST, and offer hosting and maintenance as a package deal. The basic plan is £50 p/m, which includes:
- One Month Free Hosting
- 1 WordPress Website
- 40GB Storage
- 300,000 Monthly Visits
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Daily Backups
- Free Basic CDN
- SSL Certificate
- Optimised for WordPress Websites
Do you offer website redesign services?
Of course. It’s sometimes not about creating a website from scratch, but redesigning what you already have there. We can take your new branding, messaging, positioning etc and give your website a new lick of paint if it’s already got all the functionality you need on it.
What is responsive web design?
Responsive web design is about making your site work well on desktop (all screen sizes), tablet, and mobile (again, in multiple screen sizes). It’s not about shrinking things down for smaller screens, but making sure they’re built for mobile as well as desktop. This means tweaking designs for all platforms, so they work in their own right.
What is cms in web design?
A CMS (Content Management System) is a platform that lets you create, edit, and manage website content without needing to write code. Popular CMSs like WordPress, Webflow, and Shopify give non-developers control over things like text, images, and pages through an easy-to-use interface.
What is css in web design
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a language that web designers controls how a website looks. It includes things like colours, fonts, spacing, and layout. It works alongside HTML and tells the browser how to style different elements so your site doesn’t just function, it looks good doing it.