We design, build and maintain high-quality websites for small local businesses

We focus on good value for money, building effective search engine-friendly websites that work for you.

We have been designing and building websites for over 25 years. We are big fans of WordPress as it is easy for both web designers and site owners to work with.

Straight-forward advertising website or something more complex?

We can create all sorts of websites from brochure sites to advertise what you do, through to membership sites and directories, training course sites, online shops…

We are also often asked to deal with website problems, upgrade underperforming sites and provide guidance or training to people who want to do their own website but have got stuck.

Are thinking about a new website?

Here are some important aspects of web design for you to consider. Giving some thought to these will help you prepare material for a new or revised website and save time developing your site:

A lot of web design projects start with some pictures of what a website could look like. Everyone likes to see some graphic designs to help them decide on their website design. It also makes sense from the web designer’s perspective to sort out the look before concentrating on creating all the web pages.

The trouble is that this can mean too much emphasis is put on the look of the website at the expense of the content.

Designing a website around the content is much more likely to result in an effective website rather than fitting content into a design.

If you know what kind of people you’re talking to, how they speak and what they want, this will help you:

• Speak their language and understand how to speak to them.
• Choose relevant keywords for your SEO.
• Know where to find them for your marketing efforts.
• Understand how to make your offering relevant to them and specific to their needs or problem.

Web design should be approached from the perspective of the audience rather than from the perspective of the website owner. It should relate to the audience and must be easy to use, it should be logical and present information clearly.

The aim = user friendly website targeted at the right audience

Identifying your target audience allows you to market your business in the most cost-effective and efficient way. It gives you direction and focus for your marketing messages.

Targeting your website allows you to focus your messages on the people who are most likely to buy from you.

Multiple target audiences

If there are several different target audiences it is probably best to sub-divide the website into suitable sections for each. Otherwise, it is most likely that it will be confusing and not be focused on the right audience.

Content (in particular, text copy) plays an important role in communicating with your audience and achieving good Search Engine Rankings. This is where you should put in the most effort.

Write about the things your audience want to read about

Identify the needs and problems of your target audience and consider how your product or service could solve these issues for them. Knowing the “pain points” of the people you are targeting is the key to creating the right copy. It means you can craft the content with the specific purpose of solving the actual problems or questions that real people have. This helps you focus your message on what matters to them.

What is your USP?

Think about what makes you stand out, what makes you unique, what you bring to the problem that gives you a competitive advantage. In other words – what is your USP?

Your USP (Unique Selling Point) is most likely the sum of your knowledge and experience plus your particular perspective on solving the problems of your target audience.

Who should write your copy?

You know your business better than anyone else – you know what is important to you and your audience.

So in a lot of cases, you are the best person to write your copy. We would advise you to do this yourself (or at least some early drafts) if you feel you can. But, writing good marketing copy is not something everyone is good at so you may need help.  We have experience in creating effective content for people and search engines. We can advise you and work with you to help you stand out from the crowd – or if you really need someone to write the copy for you completely we may be able to do that or recommend someone that can.

Call to Action

Another thing to think about is – what do you want the visitor to your site to do having read your web page content?

It might be

• read another page,
• ask you a question,
• give you their email address for a newsletter,
• phone you,
• fill in a contact form,
• buy a product…

The point is they are not left hanging – they are led down a path that hopefully results in making contact and thereby moving to the next stage of the conversation between you and them.

Good content is so important I have written a series of separate articles covering what to say and how to say it starting with … Copywriting for your web site.

Your website is your shop window to the world. The image that you want to present is important and your brand should reflect this and should be consistent across all media for immediate recognition.

Modern websites are clean, uncluttered, focusing on the main message with large text, plenty of white space with relevant high-quality images. This is because:

• modern websites are designed to work on small screens devices like smart phones and tablets as well as large screens (learn more about responsive and mobile friendly design).
• research shows that web pages are more effective if they are focussed on their main purpose with the minimum of clutter and distraction.

It is a good idea to look at a number of competitors (and other) websites and make a list of what you like and don’t like about them.

This is helpful to you and us when deciding on the design of your new website.

Use of Graphics

Some graphics are essential, like pictures of products and they should be high quality (but optimised for web use) to give the best impression and aid selling.

Other images have their place.

• They are useful in creating a more appealing design, break-up text, making web pages more pleasant and easier to understand for many people.
• They may be especially helpful to people with cognitive or learning disabilities.
• For people with reduced vision they may make it easier for them to orientate themselves within your content.

However, for many websites, they are of secondary concern compared to the text.

It is better to use bespoke images or your own photos (as long as they are high quality) or photos taken for you by a professional photographer rather than commonly used stock images if you can. If that is not practical for you here are some places you could get images for your website.

Traditionally SEO was about making a better job of getting the search engine to pick your site than your competitors. These days you have to be very competitive to keep up because everyone wants their site to be at the top of the searches.

There used to be lots of tricks of the trade and consequently many people thought SEO had little to do with their actual website but was something that went on in the background. This has not been the case for sometime now. Google has made lots of progress in better understanding the quality and popularity of website content so those days of quick wins have gone.

Websites need to have SEO built in from the start to have any chance of doing well in the search rankings and SEO will only be effective if there is good content to work with.

SEO is basically about 2 things:

• The quality of your website – A good website with lots of interesting, unique (ie different to your competitors) and useful content from your target audiences perspective, that is regularly being updated. ALSO the website is following the latest web design standards for coding that is optimised for search engines and mobile devices.
• Off-site online marketing – Lots of offsite ongoing marketing – primarily social media based.

Building a website without considering Search Engine Optimisation from the start is going to severely handicap results. We suggest you start by making a list of keyword phrases relevant to your site and build content around them. You can read more on our Search Engine Optimisation here.

When a website has 5 pages this is not particularly relevant – when a site has 50 pages then this needs some serious thought.

The key is that your site users – your target audience – can easily find what they are looking for. They are not you, they do not know what you know and they will not be as familiar with your business and what you are trying to say as you are. So the site organisation needs to be logical from their perspective.

A clear and logical website structure helps visitors get the most out of your web site.

Common practice has created certain expectations about website navigation and following the common practices helps visitors. Common navigation throughout the website helps visitors through familiarisation.

• Horizontal navigation dropdown bars (with a small number of top level navigation links) are now the norm for most new sites. They are focussed on the important parts of the site from the audience’s perspective and leave more room on the business part of the page for content to be presented in an uncluttered fashion.
• Too many links on one page tends can be overwhelming (and dilute SEO), so a logical structure is required for sites with more than a hand-full of pages to break the site into areas.
• Bread crumbs showing people where they are can be helpful for deeply layered websites.
• Sitemaps help visitors and search engines find all pages and text menus at the bottom of pages are an additional aid for long pages.
• A search facility provides visitors with another option to find what they are looking for.

Internal linking (ie links within the content) between pages is an important feature of website navigation and SEO. It allows visitors to find related information quickly.

Websites should be updated regularly to make them more effective – out of date sites tend to perform more poorly as time goes on.

Updates keep it fresh and current for your visitors and tell the search engines that your website is worth checking on more regularly.

If you want the ability to update your website yourself without a lot of technical know-how then having a WordPress based website is the obvious choice. It is one of the easiest CMS to use and by far the most popular content publishing platform in use on the internet.

If you want to update your website regularly (ie at least once a month) and you have the desire to learn some basics of website maintenance then a WordPress site may work well for you.

If not, I would suggest you leave your website maintenance to a professional web designer.