We believe web design is about more than producing attractive sites. We develop websites that play a central role in the success of our clients businesses. We also provide cutting edge ecommerce sites that allow customers to sell products across a range of portals including Amazon, Ebay and Play.

To find out how to reduce your current workload and increase your sales by integrating across these portals contact us now for a free demo of Cascade.

Web Design

Web design is about much more than creating design that is fancy, or amongst the latest wave of intuitive design. Any website that is designed to be used for a sales or marketing purpose needs to be both insightful and easy to utilise by repeat and first time users.

Giant Systems occupies a major link in the Leeds web design network. We design, develop and maintain affordable, effective and high quality websites that are:

Stylishly designed and easy to navigate.
Carefully constructed to ensure compliance with accessibility guidelines
Editable using a WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to take control and make updates to your website.
Optimised to ensure you have the best chance of obtaining a top listing in the major search engines.

Bespoke Software

We provide a wide range of bespoke software including ecommerce Software, Windows Applications and Content Management Systems.

Bespoke Software

Content Management

FlexCMS, our content management system is fully functional, allowing developers to create complex, multilingual websites with a wide range of features.

Content Management

Ecommerce

Cascade, our ecommerce system is a stable secure ecommerce framework which allows developers to create complex ecommerce websites. These websites can cater toward multiple languages and currencies, as well as integration with 3rd party marketplaces.

Ecommerce

Ecommerce Websites

Ecommerce Development is about much more than creating visually appealing websites. We provide tailor made ecommerce websites that deliver genuine results and high sales volumes.
Some features of our sites include:

An easy to navigate product catalogue which encourages users to make purchases.
Integration with Amazon / eBay and other online sales portals.
Integration with internal stock management and customer relationship management systems providing seamless management of orders and customer accounts.

Our detailed understanding of how well designed websites can increase sales for a wide range of businesses helps us to provide a service that is hard to match.

Ecommerce Web Design

Integrating Amazon, Ebay and Play.com with our Ecommerce system, Cascade

In contrast, web development is less defined; and can be used to describe a wide array of services. At Giant Systems we are able to accommodate requirements from advanced intranet applications to ecommerce solutions, to straightforward HTML & CSS projects.

Giant Systems integrate client Ecommerce websites with Amazon, eBay and Play.com through our Cascade system.

This integration allows you to seamlessly sell on Amazon, eBay and Play.com from one central location.

Cascade allows a client's product inventory to be stored in a single centralised system. This then enables the user to display up to the minute information relating to available stock levels and products across their own site, as well as integrated 3rd party sites that they are selling on such as Amazon and eBay.

In addition to reducing the administration involved in storing and listing products, Cascade actively increases sales and profit margins by:

Selling on Amazon, eBay, and Play.com
Competitively re-pricing products listed on Amazon and Play.com
Intelligently re-listing products on eBay

We are also working on integrating Cascade with a number of other online sales portals with the final aim of making it the most comprehensive channel management solution available on the market today.

Currently in the pipeline for integration are enabling selling on Tazbar, Gemm, Musicstack, Kelkoo, Pricerunner, and Ciao.

Whatever the task, we are passionate about our website design and development, and endeavor in making every project a success. This provides a crucial part in the build and development of our clients’ businesses based in Leeds and throughout the UK.

Web Design Blog

30/01/2009- Goals of the Re-Design Process

Deciding to re-design a website has to be a well thought out decision, as it is more than just offering a new look to a site.
It is essential to produce a list of the pros and cons of your site before initiating any kind of redesign so that it is worth the effort, time and cost.

The first priority is to come up with a clear set of aims that should be used to direct the project. You may end up with a better look and feel, but without understanding what truly needs to be improved, it is unlikely to be more effective for your business, or for your users.

Set Goals

Whether you’re creating a new website or re-designing an existing one, it’s critical to identify the purpose of the project, and also the key elements that will decide the success of the project. Part of a web designer’s job is to make things look appealing, but more importantly they have to make it an effective tool for the business.

Before starting a re-design, take the time, preferably with the client, to list the specific goals of the project and what needs to be accomplished. Once clarity is established in this area you’ll be able to work towards achieving the goals with confidence that the job is being done well.
A big chunk of the goal setting process includes knowing exactly what the website should achieve for the owner. This may seem obvious the wrong approach here can seriously damage the effectiveness of the site. Ask yourself what the most important aspect of the business is, whether it be purely informational purposes, attracting investment and/or clients? Or perhaps as many of clients do they just want to sell products.

Evaluating the Current Design

Nearly every website has strengths and weaknesses, and you should try to view your web design objectively to identify which strength should be maintained, and through web re-design, which weak points should be developed and improved.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself so that you can evaluate the current design:

1. How does it compare to websites of competitors?

It is common for websites in certain industries to a number of similarities, and when a customer is looking for say, a web company from Leeds they might type “Web Design Leeds” into Google, which will bring up thousands of results. Yours might be at the top, and the rest are competitors. It is likely that the viewer won’t just look at one, and may look at several site listed on the front page so it is desirable to have a site that compares favourably to others. You should take a look at the most significant competitors, and judge the overall design of the sites to see how yours compares.

2. Should a site have its web design stripped down, or can it retain its look and feel?

Because websites are such a key tool for branding, it’s not the best idea to completely strip down your former design. It’s usually better to keep some of the same look and feel rather than a complete change.

3. What style should the new design feature?

There are numerous ways a web designer can create a stylish and effective website. However the website should always match the content, and purpose for which it was built.

Visitors should be a major concern for the site. The target audience is likely to have particular preferences when it comes to design and layout. While you don’t want your site to look like the rest of the sites in your industry, it’s worth considering user expectations into the web design.

4. What works and what dosn’t work in the current design?

When determining the direction for a re-design, it’s important to look at what is working and what is not. Are there areas of the site where usability could be improved? Once you have a good list of strengths and weaknesses, you’ll have a much better idea of where to take the web design.

Site Structure

If you’re continuously adding new pages and new content to your site, the site may have become a little jumbled. Consider whether your current structure allows users to find easily what they are looking for? If not perhaps this needs to be addressed!

SEO

Visitors channeled from search engines are valuable to practically every website. SEO is also one area that could be potentially damaged by a site redesign, resulting in lower rankings and reduced traffic from search engines such as Google.

08/01/2009- Happy New Year!

2008 was the year of the Olympics, the great US election and not forgetting the Credit Crunch- seeing some highs and lows for Britain all round. The current economical climate is bound to make interesting impacts on a number of ecommerce companies, with more people turning to the internet where competition is fierce, for their purchases. In fact, this time could be perfect for setting up or expanding an ecommerce business! At Giant Systems we offer a number of tools to help! If you are from Leeds, or anywhere in the UK we can offer web design services, and ecommerce development to help kick start your 2009!

30/2/2008- Ecommerce will buck the current retail trends

Ecommerce will withstand the credit crunch and continue to grow, claimed David J Smith of the IMRG at a conference earlier in the year. When consumers have to tighten their belts, they turn to the internet. Giant Systems Ltd is keen to assist all online businesses looking by offering our ecommerce solutions.

Did you know?

- IMRG Index shows that, between April 2000 and December 2007 British ecommerce grew 5213%.
- £46.6bn was the total spent online in the UK during 2007
- 15p of every consumer pound is spent online.
- The IMRG predicts that online spending will increase every year in the UK until 2012.
- Mean and women aged over 55 are now the fastest growing group of online shoppers. It is thought that this group will overtake the 35-44 year olds soon to become the largest group of online consumers.

If you would like a new website design, or a new look and feel to your web design, give us a call on 0113 380 1741, or contact us to discuss how we can help your business through the credit crunch.

23/12/2008- Happy Christmas from Giant Systems!

Christmas is here and Giant Systems are still working hard to support our clients and their ecommerce businesses! We want them to have a smooth transition between the busy Christmas period and the New Year, and who knows what 2009 will have in store for the likes of our newest partners; Mycostumes, Arthur English Lighting, Rock Deformation Research, and Digital Media Store, and also some of our long standing partners such as The Garden Centre and Horse Deals!

Thanks to all of our clients for supporting us through 2008, and we look forward to getting our teeth into some new exciting web design projects in Leeds, and from all around the UK. Happy Holidays!

Our Web Design Principles

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Building Blocks for Ecommerce Business

At Giant Systems we know how difficult it is to get an online retail business of the ground. That’s why we offer a series of solutions that together provide a fully integrated platform to boost sales and revenue by using one easy management system.

Our product Flexecommerce offers the following benefits:

Manage inventory across multiple selling channels including eBay, Amazon, Play, your own ecommerce site and numerous shopping portals.
Save you time and money due to numerous task automations and intelligent listing
Upload inventory in bulk
Competitively price your product at a low price with the automatic re-pricing function
Receive business reports to keep track of your processes
Warehousing- so that you can organise stock between various places of storage

A Common Sense Approach to Website Usability

Websites should be designed to allow the user to find the information they are seeking with ease. As Steve Krugg points out in his book “Don’t make me think – a common sense approach to web usability” we don’t read webpages, we scan them. With this in mind we strongly believe that websites should have a simple design and allow the customer to find what they are looking for quickly.

Our websites are designed with:

Clear navigation structures on each page
Compliance with accepted conventions in terms of navigation structure in well designed websites
Minimise the time required for the user to find the required information
Make if clear where the user is now and where they can go (what is clickable)

Bespoke Content Management and Ecommerce

We have developed our own content management system using ASP.NET 2.0 and Telerik Rad Controls. This content management system allows us to create bespoke websites and Ecommerce applications.
All our software applications (including our content management system) are developed using best practices.
Our content managed websites and Ecommerce websites are developed using ASP.NET 2.0/C#.

We employ a three tier architecture when developing such sites which allows us to build on complex functionality with ease.

Accessible Websites

The Disability Discrimination Act 1999 requires that businesses make “reasonable adjustments” to the services they offer to ensure these services are accessible to all disabled users. As this act applies to the provision of websites, web designers must ensure the sites they produce are accessible to users with non-standard web browsers such as screen readers.

Many web designers fail to comply with the law in terms of providing accessible websites. At Giant Systems we ensure that all the websites which we provide comply with the W3C’s Priority 1 Accessibility Guidelines. We often go further than this and implement some of the recommendations outlined in the W3C’s Priority 2 and 3 guidelines.

We also test our websites in many non-standard browsers and attempt to comply with the recommendations outlined by the Royal National Institute for the Blind.

A Leeds based Web Design company that helps its clients to build successful businesses.

We are a Leeds based web design company who take a great deal of care to ensure that our clients gain maximum benefit from their website.

We believe that websites play an essential role in the success of most businesses, with this in mind we aim to develop long term relationships with our clients and grow with them. We design our websites with this aim in mind ensuring that websites are carefully planned and make a real impact in terms of boosting sales in the short and long term.

Make Giant Systems your first call for web design in Leeds - 0113 380 1741.

Search Engine Optimisation

Straightforward advice on how to improve your website's ranking in Google and other major search engines. A well designed and constructed website is more likely to gain a higher ranking in Google. We take a great deal of care to ensure that all our websites:

Are constructed using valid XHTML Transitional and valid CSS
Render well in all modern browsers including IE5+, Mozilla, Firefox (all versions), Safari 2.0 and all other major internet browsers.
Contain relevant meta tags.

We also provide consultation as to the search keywords which should be used, for example in this page our chosen keywords are Web Design Leeds, Ecommerce Leeds, and Content Management Leeds. Hence these phrases appear both in this page's meta tags and within this page.

Developing web applications that bring tangible benefits to businesses

We do more than simply build and develop websites, before commencing work on a project we take time to understand a clients business and what makes that business successful.

Gaining a solid understanding of a clients business allows us to develop a clear picture of how the web can be used to improve business processes, increase profit margins and sales.

Regardless of the type of project, be it an Ecommerce website, a content managed website or an intranet this process is essential if web application is to bring genuine benefit to a business.

Giant Systems LTD - Web Design Leeds, Forsyth Business Centre, 117 The Headrow, Leeds LS1 5JW
Vat Registration No: 882 802702