Design One

Looks too boring. The image isn't right either



I thought maybe a gradient in the side panels may brighten up the website, however it looks too amateurish and over the top



This is much better with a different foot filled with a couple of images. Obviously this could be changed to incorporate different images to convey whatever message deemed appropriate. The bright colours of the toes tie in the colours of the logo and the side panels don't detract the eyes from the main content



The addition of two simple blue lines below the logo and above the bottom links just helps tie in the two side panels



Feasibility
Direct costs:

• iStock images: £10.00 (for the home page alone)
• hosting fees approx £100.00 per year (which I'm covering initially then will receive back in monthly maintenance payments)
  

Search engine considerations

• It would need quite a lot of time coding to ensure the links landed on the toes. Either that or I would have to incorporate the text on the image and then create an image map. However this would be written in Javascript which search engines ignore, therefore a whole set of links would miss the Google radar!
• a PDF file from the existing website shows on page 5, however not a link to the main site! There are 5 other companies appearing in the first 5 pages of Google when I searched under the term "Day nurseries halifax". Therefore I don't think it will be difficult to achieve a higher position
  

Usability considerations

• potential image loading problems as would have to use a png file* so image backgrounds don't show. This would put customers off therefore a huge consideration. It also looks extremely unprofessional
• large image would have to load which could take time and annoy visitors
• as mentioned before there is only 5 toes! which means there's no way of easily expanding the website to include more pages.
  
• a way around this is to extend the text links on the left so there's one route to new pages.
• a workaround for adding links around the foot is to change the design slightly and make the toes look more like stepping stones. Then I can add extra 'stones'above the top toe and below the bottom toe but in different colours (ie black). This way incorporating both ideas of a foot and stepping stones which could work really well!
  

Time considerations

• 1 - 2 hours to get links to line up on the toes (equates to £35 / £70 if charged at hourly rate)
• 1 - 2 hours to create the main image. This involves using Photoshop or Fireworks to create a png file using clipping paths so the background remains transparent (£35 / £70)

Other considerations

• I'm unsure as to how the other pages would look. Maybe they'd have to be an image pertinent to the page content?

*www.ditii.com

• Issue 1: JPEG’s complete lack of transparency options.
• Issue 2: GIF’s inflexible transparency options (no alpha channels or anti-aliasing)
• Issue 3: Spotty support for PNG files (which *do* have transparency)
• Issue 4 Lack of compression in PNG files. (A simple 300×300 image could be like 250K, where a jpeg of the same thing is only 30K.)