Overview

Intelligent Design is a website design and hosting business located in Adelaide, South Australia. We have been develping and hosting websites since 1998. Our staff includes individuals with a wide variety of talents, including programming, graphic design, database development, marketing and commerce. Formal training in these areas is complemented by a wealth of experience of the online world and an excellent understanding of the challenges involved in running a small business.

Our business is run in a somewhat unconventional manner that stems from our belief that work should be a fun and fulfilling experience for us and our customers. As such Intelligent Design has a structure that bears more resemblance to a group of freelance individuals collaborating than a traditional, rigid business. While administration is centralised, the actual work of creating great websites is distributed to ensure that every job is done by people with the right knowledge and talent.

Our Process

We know from experience that the process of developing a website is crucial to the end result. Many businesses and organizations end up with sites that do not fulfill their needs or represent them well on-line as a consequence of working with a web developer with a poor process. As such, we have a strong focus on working closely with our clients to ensure that we develop on-line solutions that are effective and well suited to their particular needs.

Before we even begin to think about the design process we undertake a detailed analysis of the needs of each client and formulate a proposal and on-line strategy for their business. From this analysis a high-level design of a web site or other electronic solution is produced and refined. It is only once these steps have been completed that we begin to put together the final solution, and even at this stage we stay in close consultation with our customers to make sure that the end result is a great site that does exactly what they want it to do.

Our Philosophy

In 1998 we realised that there was a market for websites that were realistically priced, well designed and free from unneccessary features. We saw that most web designers either produced very poor designs, over-charged their clients, or included unneccessary features that detracted from the actual usefulness of web sites. Today the situation is much the same: too many web developers lack a clear design ethos, and those that do have some design talent tend to put too much time and effort into site elements that don't actually improve the user's experience.

In light of this, we have some key aims that we believe make our results more effective and better able to work for our customers. These include:

• A minimalist design approach - putting only what is needed into a web site, and never including high-tech, exciting sounding features at the expense of usability. For example, we avoid Flash animation as we do not believe it adds significant functionality to most web sites but it does prevent a large number of users from accessing a site. Of course, we still aim to design sites that look great, and in many cases less really is more.
• A focus on usability - we believe it is absolutely crucial that a site be developed with the needs of real users in mind. A great many web sites suffer from poor navigation and a failure to consider the actual experience that average Internet users will have when they visit a site.
• A realistic approach to pricing - we don't offer set deals on design like some web designers, but we do consult with potential clients and try to come up with a web site strategy that matches their budget and aims as well as possible. Businesses are all different, and we aim to come up with an option to suit every one.
• A personal, business oriented approach to our clients - we know that you want to run your business and get the best results you can. In order to help you achieve this we take an active, cooperative approach to our clients with a focus on good communication and excellence in customer service. We also try to help you understand the technical aspects of the Internet, web sites and database-driven systems without too much jargon.

Specialists in Small and Medium-Sizes Business Sites