Web Design in County Durham | Northgate Systems

Why Choose Us?

Pride in our work - we work hard, and we're proud of the work we produce. We also recognise that potential customers look at our previous work, and if it's not up to scratch they'll find someone else.
Good value - We work with a wide variety of clients from small one-man-band businesses to large multi-national oranisations, our pricing remains competitive - both regionally and nationally. We're open regarding our pricing too, all our job pricing is calculated based on the amount of time each job requires.
Customer satisfaction - there's nothing worse than paying for a service or product and it not meeting your expectations. We never want our customers to feel let down when working with us. At the end of the day, if our clients aren't happy, they're not going to recommend us, nor will they use us again! We always enjoy good working relationships. What our customers think is very important to us!
Technical Ability - It's important to keep your finger on the pulse in most industries, ours is no different! We pride ourselves on keeping up-to-date with the latest technology trends and being early adopters whenever we think it's a good idea. This allows us to offer our customers the best solution to their problems.
Understanding Business - We work on sites with 5 visitors a day, as well as sites with 15,000 visitors a day. We know our client's requirements are different, their audiences have different expectations! We work with our clients to gain a full understanding of their needs, then get to work.

Local pride - We love working with businesses in Durham and the North-East. We're proud of where we come from and understand that this is an asset to our business. The north east has a well-earned reputation for working hard, being friendly and down to earth - we like that we have a high benchmark to live up to.
Friendly - We become friends with our customers, some we speak to almost every day - some we've never spoken to in person (but we email them regularly). We understand that some of our clients aren't tech savvy, they don't need to be - that's our job. Our sites are always user-friendly too.
Effective - We know what it takes to be successful online, we understand that having a great website is just the first step. That's why we're also dab hands at digital marketing, SEO and PPC advertising - so we understand what it takes to make your business visible and how to attract the customers your site needs.
Professionalism - We know that first impressions matter, we also know that just because you wear a suit and tie doesn't mean you're good at your job! For us it's about balance (and we'd much rather be good at our job). Thankfully, our customers understand it's more important that their website looks good.

— Louise Hodgson, Aspects Counselling Services

"Northgate Systems were a great company to do business with. They were very professional and quick to respond whenever I had a query or requested a change. They were also really helpful and friendly and offered good advice when I needed it!. I’m really happy with my website and have had lots of positive feedback on how professional it is."

— Gary Smith, Evolution Football Coaching

"Since getting in touch with Northgate to help us with our website at our business launch in Spring 2014 they have helped us every step of the way. Northgate Systems have helped us with many aspects of our marketing both online and offline. They also helped us to prepare a business plan and marketing strategy and have been a big part of our success and growth."

— Mike Ashford, AutoEvolve

"Northgate Systems worked closely with us to create a website tailored to our needs. Despite our many changes, nothing was too much trouble and we ended up with a superb website that does everything we need, including an excellent car search function. The site has boosted our business and improved our profile and professional image. We had worries about being left stranded with little technical expertise once the site went live but the admin system has proved very easy to use and the support offered by the guys at Northgate has been brilliant. I would definitely recommend them to other auto traders."

— Julie Oliver, Harrington Brown Estate Agents

"Northgate Systems worked closely with our team to create a website tailored to our needs. Since going live the Northgate team have always been willing to sort out any issues or new requirements"

— Chris Pond, Stepping Stones Nursery

"Northgate Systems worked closely with our team to create a website tailored to our needs. Despite our many changes and new requests, nothing was too much trouble and we ended up with a superb website that does everything we need. The site will dramatically improve our image and facilitate communications with parents. It should also start to reduce our staff admin time. Since going live the Northgate team have continued to sort out any issues or new requirements quickly and efficiently"

— David Jennings, Tyne Tees & Tweed

"Over the year we have bombarded the NS team with countless requests for meetings, amends, requests and updates. Nothing has been too much trouble and the resultant new logo, website and management program has been a huge success."

— Janet Boakes, TyneHealth Limited

"It has been a pleasure to work with Northgate Systems introducing a website for our organisation. They are a fantastic team, who have guided us through the process. They act promptly when requests are made and nothing is too much bother. This close relationship has resulted in a really great site as I feel that we developed this together before putting it out in to the public domain."

Content Management Systems

There are many off-the-shelf Content Management Systems (CMS) available such as Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal each offer a ready-made solution via the connection of available modules. Each of these systems were designed with the goals of being easy for their customers to use and being easy to customise by bolting parts together.

However, we've found the quality of these modules can be inconsistent, as with any open-source platform modules are created by a variety of contributors with varying levels of skill. Once developed and released modules often lack support and maintenance, and integration with other modules (created by someone else) is not always consistent.

Due to these issues - we decided to develop our own CMS system - which we call 'Aura', we offer 'Aura' to all of our clients as an alternative option. We think 'Aura' is great and so do our customers who use it. All of the modules 'Aura' uses are developed in-house by us, we fully support them all, we know exactly how each one works and how to use them!

To date, we've developed around 40 modules which can be added to a base 'Aura' installation - we choose which ones to use depending on each of our client's requirements. Some modules we've created don't do very much - they don't need to! Some do a lot more. If we don't already have a module to deliver the functionality our client needs - we create one.

By creating our own system we've retained full control, we know how everything works, all the decisions on functionality and appearance are made by us, this allows us to be consistent and confident in the quality of the end product, and if we (or our clients) do find any problems we can fix them!

We upgrade modules whenever they need it, we create new modules with the knowledge that they can be added to existing installations without causing problems.

We've designed 'Aura' to be as easy as possible for our clients to use, you don't need to know HTML to use it! We've also made 'Aura' flexible - so if you do want to make complex changes such as modifying your websites layout or colour scheme you can.

We know that our customers are all different, they need different things, some want an easy to use system, some want a system that is fully customisable - with 'Aura' our customers can do both.

E-Commerce

As with content management systems, off-the-shelf E-Commerce systems are available, Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce are all viable options.

But in a lot of cases where the product being sold is complex or the online sales process isn't simple, an off-the-shelf system can't deliver what's required. In these cases a bespoke E-Commerce system is the best option. You should consider a bespoke option when:

Your product allows a high degree of customisation by the end user.
You have a complex sales process that does not fit the traditional shopping cart system.
You need very tight integration with your back-end systems during and after the sales process.
You want full control over your website, but also want to sell online.

In order to offer e-commerce to our customers, we've expanded our CMS platform 'Aura' to include a number of e-commerce modules, adding e-commerce modules allows our clients to retain all the features they would normally get - with the addition of e-commerce functionality such as:

bespoke product pages
shopping cart functionality
customisable delivery options
secure payment gateway functionality
customisable order confirmation and after sales emails

Online Payments

Taking payment is one of the most important aspects of any online store - security is critical to customer confidence when buying online.

There are several payment providers who are well known and trusted by customers shopping online - PayPal, PayPoint, SagePay, Stripe and Barclays SmartPay are all well established and trusted payment providers, so we've created modules for all of them (and a few more) to allow our customers as many options as possible when selecting their preferred provider.

Designing a New Website?

Website design, like all design, is very personal and subjective. What we think is a great design could be very different to what our clients are expecting (great minds don't always think alike).

So how do we go about designing our websites to keep everyone happy?

we involve our clients from the beginning
we ask about colour schemes, existing logos and branding
we ask questions to gain an understanding of which websites they like (and don't like)
we find out how they want the site to function, what does it need to do?
we look at competitors to see if there is a generally accepted approach to take
we give our opinion and make suggestions based on our experience - on what we think is the best approach

Then we use this information to create 2/3 initial designs, we ask for our clients to review them and give us feedback on which design they prefer, which parts they like and which parts they don't like. Then we refine the preferred design, incorporating their feedback into a final design which we use to create the website.