Bespoke website design is pretty much what it says on the tin.

Minuco will only develop bespoke websites to specific requirements of clients that cannot be resolved by using a standard package or solution. In essence all websites can be seen as bespoke, having different looks, and possibly tweaked functionality, however a bespoke project is something that requires unusual functionality, integration or processes where using a standard solution at its core would take as much time to modify as developing a new solution all together.

Generally bespoke websites are the larger projects, and usually come from tried and tested business processes that are being replicated in an online environment.

B2B (Business to Business) can mean a number of things from an online business brochure to a fully automated messaging hub.

In general clients require a website where a catalogue of services and or products is accessible by their own customers or potential customers. The content of the site (catalogue, prices etc.) may be securely protected so a customer only sees information (orders, issues, invoices) relevant to them. More sophisticated B2B sites may include automated information feeds from suppliers or may generate automated feeds to customers. These automated processes can be undertaken over a number of communication protocols like XML (standardised information format), CSV (spreadsheets), ebXML (a business form of XML which includes built in functionality like security), Web Services (another standardised information format).

With Minuco's specialist experience in the telecommunications and energy sectors we have had at least one large B2B project in production every day for the last ten years.

Ecommerce can mean various things to many people, it is generally used as an all encompassing description of all commerce that takes place over the internet. However in this case we are using it to describe business to consumer (B2C) transactions from a website. Like a B2B (business to business) website the core of the system is probably going to be an online catalogue combined with a process to select items from the catalogue, generate an order and execute an online payment transaction. The concept of a standard 'shopping cart' can be extended to manage direct marketing back to the website users, (using special offers, vouchers etc), and various other logical extension on a standard business process, for example white labelling (using the same core functionality of a site with a different brand) or automated billing (for recurring services or account based purchasing).

Minuco have a range of standard e-Commerce systems that are suitable for many projects. The team has great experience in recommending and delivering these solutions.

A community website brings specialist groups together, in its most successful formats like MySpace the specialist group sometimes spills out into the general community but the sites still keep their core specialist feel. In general community sites have simple functionality, such as a range of registration forms to set up the user’s profile, and some form of media upload / download functionality, generally pictures sometimes video and music.

The biggest challenge for a community site is building up the users to a critical mass. For example dating sites are a sub set of community sites and these will not work with few people, other really specialist interest sites may work with few members in the 100’s (e.g. sites catering for people who are enthusiastic about a particular car model) but this is generally rare.

A community site can be set up to just help a community, however, to be commercially successful each member must 'pay' to use the service, generally via direct advertising revenue (potentially profile driven), or via user subscription. This means most community sites require a sophisticated advertising management module or subscription / billing module to manage the volume of users and direct marking involved.

Why re-invent the wheel? When you buy a new car you don't get one custom built. You find a model you like and add those little extras that make it yours.

We feel the same about websites. We evaluate your requirements and look to the best solution for your company. This may be a solution we've developed previously, completely new and innovative functionality, 3rd party solutions, or most likely a blend of all of these.

As everyone wants to be different the most important part of implementing off the shelf functionality is to ensure that your look and feel is unique. MINUCO ensure that all standard functionality we use can be enveloped with a design to capture the characteristics required to ensure that your project stands out.

W3C (www (world wide web) consortium) develops standards and recommendation on how the web should be used. Part of the W3C remit is to recommend how information should be presented to end users in a format that includes as many users as possible. That basically means accessibility standards, things like allowing your content to be reviewed in different font sizes, picture tagging, voice browser compatibility and more.

W3C is not the only organization that defines standards for its users, governments, agencies and various charities define their own standards, and not all organizations that define the recommended standards follow them themselves (generally due to budgetary constraints).

Standards are defined to catch all issues so they won't be suitable for everyone's requirements especially when it comes down to design requirements. Strict W3C compliance often restricts creative design and sometimes both items are mutually exclusive – however the Minuco deign team does its best do accommodate both creativity and adherence to rules, when strict rules are required.

Please check our website portfolio section to view some examples of our website designs.