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

30/2/2008- 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!

11/12/08- The E-Commerce Low-Trust Effect

Ecommerce doesn’t work without trust. This is an element that all ecommerce sites have in common, regardless of the type of industry, or length of time they’ve been in business. And generally speaking, those with a high level of trust invested in them do better!

The world of ecommerce is particular prone to a low trust ratio, and all web designers but consider this when building a new website. This is essentially because one finds them self giving money to someone that can’t be seen, and for an intangible product! Winning the trust of the customer is therefore a crucial part of selling online, and without it all business processes are less efficient.

So leading on from this concept, here are 9 ways to avoid the “low-trust” effect on your own ecommerce website.

1. Write an About Page that is Real: This means a page that has a detailed and personal account of who you are, rather than something vague about what your company does. Highlight your vision and passions. If you really want to strike a personal note share pictures of you and your staff with your customers!

2. Allow Customers to Reach Management: People will invest more confidence in your company if they feel like they can reach a senior member such as a manager or owner of the company. It shows that you are committed to listening, and resolving problems or inquiries. An even better idea is to thank the customers who respond with feedback.

3. Security Logos: Inserting a logo such as a SLL into your web design is a simple but effective tool for encouraging trust from your customers. For first time visitors, this may be the only thing that they recognize; hence tilting favour towards using your site as opposed to other companies who do not include them.

4. Web Design with a Professional Look: Customers don’t have to be experts in web design to know if a website design is bad. Your design needn’t be overly fancy, but ensure that it has a clean, polished look that reflects your professional goods and services. This will inspire confidence in your brand.

5. Unbiased Customer Reviews: Leaving on your bad reviews may lose a product sale, but will pay off in raising the credibility it will give your company. Customers will see that the review system is unfiltered, and will be convinced of your intent to provide an honest and reliable service.

6. Effective Navigation: Good navigation is an intrinsic part of web development. If customers can’t navigate around your website properly, then they will cast doubt in your ability to serve them. Problems in navigation, as well as broken links and images will shake your customers’ confidence in you.

7. Say Who Else Buys: This is a method of persuasion that just works. Traditional testimonials, or “Who Just Ordered” feature are proven strategies when built into a web design.

8. Relaxed Return Policy: If done well this can be used as a marketing tool. Ok so it’s expensive to offer a 365 return including shipping, refunds and exchanges, but the confidence this liberal policy has given “Zappos” customers has been invaluable.

9. Easy Access Privacy Policy: A link to this on every page and linking to it every time you ask for personal information will motivate your customers to buy from you.

01/12/2008- Are you ready for the VAT cut?

Today is the first day of the VAT cut from 17.5% to 15%. The initiative is aimed towards kick starting the economy by encouraging more customer-spending, which is hoped to help businesses. However, any benefits from increased spending is likely to be hampered by the sheer cost it will cost companies to implement such changes! No one knows this more than ecommerce companies, and their associated web designers.

Ecommerce companies will experience a severe headache with the pending changes, because many websites will have the 17.5% hard coded into their systems, making changes extremely difficult to implement in time. This will make the online retailers’ prices much less competitive, causing buyers to turn to other websites with cheaper prices.

An additional problem involves having to update banner adverts which display prices adjusted for 17.5% VAT. This is another costly and time consuming task, with some companies making investments in such ads, and commonly updating them infrequently. Having to get a web design company to fix banners in a variety of sizes, and re-upload them is no mean feat!

Furthermore, anyone using Google Adwords campaigns will experience more problems, because such campaigns often have prices in them, and Google Product Search feeds will also be incorrect. Unless the company has retained the original web designers and source images making changes to these will be almost impossible meaning prices will be uncompetitive from next Monday. To add insult to injury, Alistair Darling has sneaked in a 2p raise in fuel duty in order to offset the VAT cut. This means that online retailers attempting to attract more customers with offers on free delivery are vulnerable for an even worse hit.

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, MLS Business Centre, 117 The Headrow, Leeds LS1 5JW
Vat Registration No: 882 802702