Sarah's Professional Background

Summary

A creative and focused web designer, with substantial business experience, Sarah is committed to providing websites that are attractive and functional, whilst still providing the highest levels of cross browser compatibility, accessibility and usability. Sarah has had plenty of experience designing for dynamic websites, from bespoke web based applications to off the shelf content management systems such as Drupal.

Coupled with a strong understanding of search engine optimisation and copywriting for the web, Sarah has developed a strong understanding of the interplay between all elements that make a website effective, meaning that she can successfully manage the design and development process from inception to go live.

Specialties

Design & Layout - Sarah can translate your brief from words into a layout and design for your website. Using Adobe Photoshop, Sarah takes the elements you have specified in your brief and combines this with her experience of what will and won't work in a website to create a new and fresh website to advertise your presence online. As an experienced website designer, Sarah knows that a website is more than just a lot of coloured shapes and words on a website, but that each element on a page is placed for optimum effectiveness, and will ensure that your brief becomes a highly attractive, functional and effective website.

HTML & CSS - A website is written in a code called HTML and styled with code called CSS. Some people write really complicated website code but Sarah believes that this not only makes a website difficult to update but also makes it more difficult for search engines to read websites and so she makes it part of her job to write the simplest, standards-compliant code possible, even when she's doing some pretty complicated work. Sarah's philosophy is that 'just because it's complicated for me, doesn't mean it should be complicated for the client'. Sarah's approach to writing good, clean code means that not only is it easier for search engines to read what you're writing on your websites, but it's going to look the same in all modern web browsers such as Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, Opera and Safari.

Accessibility - These days, the Disability Discrimination Act also applies to websites and you should make your websites comply with the requirements set down by the law. This can sometimes be quite complicated and fiddly for a web designer to do and many web designers neglect to tell their clients about this requirement and are provided with websites that fail the accessibility standards. Sarah thinks that a website should work the same for everybody and ensures that websites are always created to be accessible as a basic standard.

Copywriting & Writing for Search Engines - You'd think that writing the content that goes on your website is the simplest part of building the website, wouldn't you? It might surprise you to know that not only is it one of the most difficult jobs on a website build, but is also the most important, by a long shot. The design is created carefully to house the content on your website, and to draw the eye to the message you want to put across to hundreds and thousands of potential website users, and this is invariably done by the words on the website. Your website content has two functions: to appeal to visitors to your website and also to appeal to search engines. Sarah is experienced in not only writing effective copy for the web, but also in proof-reading and tweaking other people's copy until it is effective for the web.

Business Experience

Over a period of two and a half years, Sarah co-owned and ran a web design and software company. She was responsible for the day to day management of the company, project management, book keeping and accounts, sales, marketing and PR and was also solely responsible for the design elements of the business.

While involved with the company, Sarah became increasingly aware that smaller businesses and startups had limited options when it came to hiring web designers and were often either being charged over the odds by large design firms or being taken for a ride by unscrupulous web designers and developers who palmed clients off with unprofessional looking websites that didn't work for them. Sarah wanted to make the web design and development process simple and easy to understand by using Plain English and simplify the process so that anyone could understand what happens from start to finish no matter what their level of technological competence.

Before working for herself, Sarah worked for a small software company, which specialised in elearning software and content for both adults and KS2 onward. Although employed in an editorial capacity, Sarah developed an interest in the interplay between design and content and developed her design skills and expanded her project management skills.

Over the last 5 years, Sarah has also been developing her photography skills, and has had her work shown in the People Show 2005, which is now known as the Craven Art Prize, has been commissioned by several up and coming musicians for promotional work and submits pieces of work to various stock photography websites. She is available for commissions, please contact her for more information.