Note: Although these sites feature free stock photos, you should read the terms, limitations, and licensing of each work that you use.

1. Stock.XCHNG

SXC was launched in February 2001 as an alternative for expensive stock photography. The idea was to create a site where creative people could exchange their photos for inspiration or work.

2. Free Digital Photos

FreeDigitalPhotos.net is a very good place on the web to download free images for use in corporate and personal projects. Their images can be used by web designers, graphic designers and editors to illustrate and brighten up websites and printed media such as newspapers and magazines.

3. RGB Stock

RGBStock.com is created by a group of enthusiastic photographers and graphic artists. Their vision is to build the best free stock image site on the web. They are dedicated to making high quality images available to those who cannot afford to pay for them.

4. Photl.com

Photo laboratory photl.com is the owner and distributor of the largest collection of exclusive stock photo images. All the images can be downloaded and used for personal, educational and other non-commercial purposes free of charge.

5. Stockvault

Stockvault.net is a stock photo sharing website where photographers, designers and students can share their photographs, graphics and image files with each other for free.

6. Morguefile

The morguefile contains photographs freely contributed by many artists to be used in creative projects by visitors to the site.

7. Free Range Stock

Freerange Stock was formed with the goal to provide quality stock photos for commercial and non-commercial use for free.

8. Free Photos Bank

The Free Photos Bank site provides a typical range of free photos – people, animals, landscapes and so on.

9. 123RF

Daily dose of FREE, refreshing, intriguing images for your creative projects.

10. Sunipix

Sunipix is a picture library for students, teachers, architects, website designers, advertising and marketing executives, civil engineers, business executives, travel agents, government agencies, and media/Information Technology professionals. Sunipix provides royalty free photographs (100 DPI) free of charge for personal and business needs.

11. Download Free Photo

Get free high resolution digital pictures for all your needs! You can download free images for your website, blog, forum, presentations and more. You can resize, crop and customize free images as you wish.

12. Dreamstime’s Free Section

Dreamstime has one of the largest libraries of stock photos on the net. If you are a web designer, here you can download high resolution RF stock images for free.

13. Fotolia’s Free Section

Fotolia is one of the oldest stock photo sites on the net. Their free section is quite good, but changes every day and the free photos that were there yesterday, may not be there the next.

14. iStockphoto’s Free Images

iStockphoto is one of the most popular stock photo sites on the net. They only offer one free image a week, but it is always high quality.

We’re proud to have been involved with such a great charity and it’s been a pleasure to develop a site for them that helps them raise their profile, communicate about their activities and achievements and engage their volunteers and potential funding organisations.

We created a user friendly website that was inline with the charities ethos and message, with clear navigation and clear calls to action.

Visit Survive North Yorkshire www.survive-northyorks.org.uk

We all know how difficult it is to put everything in order and choose the jewels from stones – almost everybody has problems with organising texts and materials, indeed. Though it’s not impossible.

Follow our tips, and everything is going to become easier – both for you (to organise and plan website content perfectly) and for us (to make your dreams about an ideal website come true).

Are you already an owner of a website?

Put yourself in a customer’s shoes or ask somebody to help you. Open your website and think about:

• What does your client need to find straightaway after opening your page?
• Do subtitles help while looking for something, or are they misleading?
• Are menu labels intuitive?

In short – go throughout your page, copy all written things to a text editor or print them, and analyse what should be added, moved to a different section or completely removed. Write down all your thoughts, some of them you’ll later reject, but many can be helpful even if on the spot they seem to be inappropriate.

Arrange all printed materials

Start from brochures, catalogues, booklets, handbooks – if you have any, of course. Put them in one place, in some kind of order: chronologically, according to their topic or in another proper way. If possible, save their digital versions in one folder.

Are there any paper forms which you can add to the website so that people can print them and fill in without the need of coming to your office?

Building the trust

As a customer or a client, everyone needs to be ensured that the company does deserve his trust.

• Have you got a story of establishing your company? Or even a file with important dates?
• Are there any testimonials from your former partners or clients?
• Have you ever got any more or less significant awards? Put them all in a right order (according to chronology or their importance).
• Have there ever been any articles about you or your company printed in newspapers or another published documents?
• Complete a short CVs or biographies of you and your staff. Make it look professional – including photos is not a bad idea, too.
• Think about Frequently Asked Questions – are there any, which you can put together and make a little guide for your customers?
• Is your company involved in any kind of charity work? Helping non-profit organisations? Donations for schools or foundations? Don’t forget about anything.

The most useful

Consider what people can be particularly looking for.

• Directions how to get to your location/locations? Remember about a small map.
• Opening hours? Make sure they are always updated.
• Contact? Add every means which you use, phone and e-mail are essential, but consider including your skype login or any other communicators that are in use at your office. Take into account that phone call is not free – in contrast to use of a communicator.
• Job offers? If you employ a lot of people it would be a good idea to inform on your website who are you looking for at the moment. What is obvious, updates are also necessary here.

Graphics

Try to find graphic files of the best quality. Pay attention to the resolution of an image, remember that too many graphics on your website will not make it better, but do not forget about those, which are indispensable.

If you suffer from lack of images – some suppliers offer photos of products on their websites to help you sell their products, check whether their graphics are of better quality than yours.

At the same time:

• Put everything into categories – folders, piles or whatever – just to make things easy to be found
• Add keywords to all categories
• Draw a site-map if you have one in your mind. Organise content into sections with headings, subtitles, short descriptions. Let a sentence: “everything must be easily found!” become your motto.

After such an organisation of the content sometimes website plan takes on a whole new dimension – but be sure – it has never been a change for worse!

Just for you, we have created a list of the most useful and working hints and tips which are going to stimulate repeat traffic on your website.

Determine the target audience

We know, that you’ve already heard about it thousands of times – but believe, it does matter. Try to think a while about people who come to your page.

• What age are they?
• Mostly men or women?
• Are they well educated?
• What else can you assume about them?

Now, according to these questions think about possible ways of advertising. Various things appeals to different people, but remember not to underestimate the ‘level’ of your visitors.

Make the page friendly for everyone. Take care about the colours, layout and all the details which comes to your mind. People can be easily driven away by something as trivial as an illegible font or too bright background.

If you’ve completed your average visitor’s profile, look for blogs and websites with similar content which could appeal to him and try to exchange banners with the owners of those sites. You can always try to put your banners everywhere, but if your website is specialist don’t expect thousands of people coming to it from pages on entirely different subject.

A good piece of advice is invaluable

Undoubtedly, one of the wonders of the Internet are discussion forums. And among all of them, the best are those, where replies are being written by an undisputed expert. The point is that crowds of people are looking for solutions of their problems in the Internet. Therefore if you can provide:

• a forum
• an advice column
• a tip of a day
• newsletter with some hints

or any of those, you will reap the benefits. Remember to keep it adequate for your target audience, not too long, and written in a good style. As long as the forum is concerned – make sure that it is well moderated, too.

When the possibility of sending a piece of advice which you particularly liked to your friend is available, you’ll benefit twice – your visitors are going to increase traffic on your website on their own.

If you dispel someone’s doubts, you can be sure that he will return to your page for more – hopefully not only once.

Awards, prizes, rewards. – can they want something more?

Imagine that everyone, who comes to your website, wants to take something for himself. It doesn’t matter whether it will be some information, advice, opinion – people need to fell that they got something, and if it is free – all the better!

Now, let’s assume that you can provide your visitors with a kind of competition. Almost all of them will want to try, it’s a natural and subconscious reaction. Now it’s up to you:

• who will be allowed to take part: everyone / those who bought something at your website / those who submitted for a newsletter / those who send info about the contest to e.g. five friends
• will it be connected with some questions about your products / will you ask people to make up a slogan or a logo for your company or a product / will you choose the best picture with your product / will you ask them to write an opinion of a product and reward the best one
• will the prize be: a discount / a free product / a certain amount of money / publishing a photo or opinion on your website / something else
• will you offer any sort of runner-up prizes

Imagine how many possibilities there are to make a contest which will keep people return to your website every day! And not necessarily has it to be expensive and unaffordable. What’s more – if you take their fancy, information about your contest will spread widely among people, attracting more and more.

Let the opinions make the rounds

Opinion pages are one of the most popular in the Internet. Surveys show that most of the people take into consideration opinions which are written on websites, although they do not know the personalities of authors.

Allow your visitors to add opinions of your products – to encourage them you can always give them small discounts or points, which can be later exchanged into something tempting. If your products can be rated by everyone, you become more trustworthy for new clients.

When you notice the need of exchanging ideas and opinion between people, set up a forum – larger space where they can talk about your company and unwittingly contribute to your profits. Help them with some questions – an opportunity to write directly to an owner or expert and get a reply is enticing. People will for sure come back to a place where they started a talk.

Be aware that everything has to be under control – just not to get people slander etc. Remember that even a small percentage of negative opinions will not deter people and everything will look realistic enough to believe. Do you also think it is worth the try?

Remind people about yourself!

It’s quite a common situation that you lost address of a website you’ve once visited and/or you forgot the name of the company. The more people submit to your newsletter, the better for you. If you do not provide a frequent e-mails, remember to send information about great discounts, special offers or new, valuable content on your website from time to time. Just in case someone wanted to visit you, but found it too difficult to browse for your page. Another one, reminded that your website still exists, will maybe come and find something for himself.

Anyway, there is no risk – you won’t lost anything!

We recommend: trust be constantly built, your brand be reinforced and therefore the repeat traffic be stimulated.

If you are thinking about new website at the first you should ask yourself why you need it, what is the main focus? Do you need static, dynamic or e-commerce website?

Static website allows you to appear online and show your company’s activity.
Dynamic website is dedicated for those people who need update their website regulary, for example for company which has a lot of new offers for their customers.
E-commerce website is for everybody who wants sell products online.

After you answered this question you have to find and contact webmaster (preferably us) and discuss your requirements.

At this stage you should also consider the domain name (the unique url for your website. For example www.sadurska.com) and ask us to register this domain for you.

Next step is gathering content for your website – texts, images if required, testimonials from your clients etc.

When your website is ready it needs to be located on the server (we can provide hosting for your website).

And… that is all! You can enjoy your website and share it with your customers.

They required a website that would communicate their quality service. Sadurska.com produced a well balanced website using a clear and stylish design.

Visit Timedune at www.timedune.com

Green Therapy is an online store selling a comprehensive range of organic beauty products. Company approached attitude seeking an efficient website to showcase their products and sell them online.

The clean design incorporates payment via PayPal and credit/debit cards, possibility to edit shippment methods, generating discount vouchers for customers.

Visit website at www.greentherapy.org.uk

We designed and supplied a full content managed solution features a blog, newsletter  and more…

Visit New Era’s friendly, clean and message driven website at www.neweraacademy.co.uk

Sadurska.com put together a sleek, clear website which is easy to navigate and communicates the honest, friendly values of their effective and supportive service.

Visit website at www.akamiclaims.co.uk

They required clean and friendly website to represent their services for live-in care for vulnerable adults.

Visit website at www.live-incomfort.co.uk