A professional website is a must for any organisation that wishes to adequately promote itself in the 21st Century.

There are many facets to building and running a successful website - Effective and its close working relationships with appropriate partners can help you build a site from scratch or overhaul and improve a tired-looking existing site.

The principal areas to consider are :-

• Domain Name registration and management. Each website must have a unique name to distinguish it from every other site. Effective can help identify available names that are suitable and also offers a tracking service that automatically notifies us if a desired name (one that is currently taken) expires and becomes available for registration.

• Website Hosting. Every website must run on a host server. If you don't plan to host your own site, Effective can offer competitive hosting plans through its partnership with Room101.

• Website Design. Clearly presented, eye-catching information is important to attract and retain interest. Effective partners with a range of specialist web designers, one of whom will be a perfect fit for your needs.

• Database & Application Integration. If your website is to be more than just pages of static information, you will need to integrate applications to capture data or otherwise interact with the viewer. Examples on our ownsite include the Customer Help Desk, the elements of the Customer Security Centre, the Rolling News and the "Contact Us" form. Effective can help you do this as part of the website design process.

• Website Accessibility & Usability. These are two distinct aspects that are often overlooked in the web design process. Accessibility describes the task of making your website accessible to disabled visitors who may be visually and/or hearing impaired. This is increasingly important in the face of social pressure and legislation such as the UK Disability Discrimination Act (1995). Usability is the process of making a website clearly understood to potential viewers. Effective partners with Website Auditing Limited, a leading UK company in this field.

• Search-Engine Positioning. Having built a site that meets your needs, it needs to be visible to users searching for your product or service. Most web users simply key in their search terms to popular search engines such as Google, Ask, Alta Vista etc. and receive literally tens or hundreds of thousands of response hits. Yours will be there - but no-one will ever find it if it's on page 6,457!!
  
  Search Engine Positioning is the art of manipulating your site so that appears much higher in a list of hits. Effective works with a leading expert in this field to produce outstanding results - test this for yourself by searching for IT support companies in the UK.

• WebSite Management. Do you know how many people view your site ? Which pages do they see? How long do they remain on each page & therefore what most attracts them ? Effective can help you analyse weblog data to extract hidden information that is relevant to your business.

• Website Backup. Completely overlooked by almost every company - when did you last back-up your website ? What are the implications if your web server crashed - just how long would it take to restore your site ? and what would be the impact on your business ? As part of its Remote Backup Service, Effective can offer an automated website backup facility to remove the risk.