The dotstar.co.uk philosophy

When we say no nonsense, we mean it.
But that doesn't mean dull.

So what is "no nonsense"?

Put simply, the best web sites are eye catching, easy to navigate and fast to download.

Many websites have one or two of these desirable attributes, several have none, but how many posses all three? Not nearly enough!

dotstar.co.uk always endeavour to build great looking sites to your requirements, but we do more. Your information is useless if visitors can't find it quickly, or at all. Our sites are designed for ease of navigation and accessibility of information to get your message across effectively and efficiently.

A website, not a webstie

We've all seen them - websites (even some large corporate sites) thrown together by someone armed with Microsoft FrontPage but no clue how to make a web page look good. Eclectic colour schemes, hundreds of pointless animated gifs that are mistaken for adverts and ignored twice as quickly, spelling mistakes and impenetrable structures, all of which conspire to put off all but the most determined information seeker in record time. At dotstar we call these "websties" - a sort of e-pigsty, if you want - and we don't build them.

Likewise, if web pages take an age to download, casual visitors will be put off. You may have heard that "the average surfer" waits just 8 seconds to see each page before looking elsewhere - and remember, what the latest hardware and corporate LAN can deal with in the twinkling of an eye can take a lot longer for a standard home PC shouting down a single copper telephone line to receive. Therefore, we keep animations and intensive Java scripts to an absolute minimum to ensure rapid download times.

Our websites are designed for as wide an audience as possible. The two most commonly used web browsers (Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator) may work in similar ways but can display pages very differently unless great care is taken during the design process. Different screen resolutions can also affect accessibility - some websites cannot be fully accessed on PCs set to a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels, while others demand continual scrolling from side to side to display their contents if you are viewing at less than 1024 x 768! This is sloppy design in most cases and another issue we take great care about.

home | philosophy | services | clients | contact us