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5 questions to ask your web design company

07/08/202006/17/2020 by scmarketing

Now is a great time to be updating your website to improve your online presence and make sure you’re ticking all the boxes for what your leads and clients are looking to find.

So, we’ve compiled 5 questions on what you need to ask your web design company when you look to take that step and update your website.

1. CMS

Ask your web designers about a Content Management System (CMS) website such as WordPress. This means that once the website is built, and with a little training, you can manage the upload of content yourself. Basically, you want to have control to be able to add content once your website has been created.

So, ask your website designer and developer what access you will have and if it can be a CMS website. If you go to a web developer, you are likely to have the website handed to you after completion to handle yourself and manage the day to day upload of content into the future.

If you work with a digital marketing agency you can ask them to quote for services once the website is live such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and content marketing such as writing blogs and handling Social Media channels.

2. Be responsive and optimised

Make sure your website is responsive. What do we mean by that? It means websites can change structure depending on what device you are viewing it on. For example this means when you look at a website on your mobile phone you can view it as you would on a PC.

Google certainly ranks a website if it is mobile friendly so it will help you in search. With 60% of searches made on a mobile device, being mobile friendly is not a nice to have, it’s essential.

You also should be aware of Meta Descriptions, Alt Tags and H1/H2 headings. A web designer can provide you with simple training on this once your website has been developed. But, as it’s being developed, they should have already implemented these on the content and images already uploaded for you.

3. Integration

Sales and marketing go hand in hand. A website is at the core of your inbound marketing campaign as any marketing you do you want to lead your prospects back to your website.

So, make sure that your professional web design has the same consistency look and feel as any other sales and marketing you conduct. Therefore, there needs to be cohesion between email marketing, social media, Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, marketing automation and CRM. You need to align channels so that your clients and prospects have a smooth sales journey.

4. Be secure and compliant

Most CMS provide modules to allow you to back up and to make safe against hackers. Unfortunately, with web robots (automated programs) checking thousands of websites a second for weaknesses to exploit the owner it’s important to do as much as you can to make your website safe. Talk through the options with your web developer such as the SSL certificate and captcha forms for your website.

Ensure you have a privacy policy in your footer. This can be transferred from your current site but if your site is old, you may not have this up to date. So, ask your web developer if they have a template you can use. They should have an example template to hand to help you.

5. Talk design

Don’t be afraid to talk about how you want the website to look. While you are employing an expert, the look and feel of the website still needs to fit with your brand vision. Choose to work with a web designer or agency that you feel understands your company goals and what you want to achieve from the site. It needs to be tailored to you.

Your web developer needs to be a collaborative partner. Here’s some pointers to remember when you talk through the design. It’s not just about the site looking good but about practical needs to ensure a well optimised website.

Be image led: Ensure that images will be incorporated into your design. If you need new imagery, you may need to agree up front whether you need to pay extra or if images are included in your quote.
Don’t be afraid of white space on your website. It aids site navigation and is easy on the eye.
Add bold calls to action buttons throughout the website.
Agree up front the site navigation. Ensure that it’s easy for visitors to move around the site.

Ask your web developer to create a wire frame of the design. This way, after you have had your initial discussions, the designer will create a mock up allowing you to see the overall look of the homepage and a typical page on the website.

Website design Croydon

Improving your website can help user experience and, in turn, generate more quality leads. By creating a website and content tailored to your audience will help you with your overall inbound marketing strategy. If you’re embarking on a new website or looking to refresh your current one, hopefully these tips have given you some steer to help you create a fantastic experience for your clients and prospects.

Smart Cow Marketing is a web developer in Croydon, London. Our expertise in website design and development means we can provide you with a brand-new bespoke website or provide advice on ways to update your current site.

Get in touch to talk about your web design requirements.

Tips to improve website design

06/01/202105/19/2020 by scmarketing

Your website is the centre of your digital world. All digital marketing activity should be focussed on pushing traffic back to your website. Your web design therefore should be attractive to your target audience. The aim is to keep your visitors on your website for longer, providing them with the information you know they want to read about.

Improving your web design can help the user experience of your website and therefore in turn generate more quality leads as visitors sign up for newsletters, download ebooks and request a consultation. All this activity helps you to engage down the line with prospects that are interested to hear from you thus making this a successful inbound marketing strategy.

With this in mind, here’s some top tips to help you with your web design to encourage engagement from quality leads.

White space

Don’t just pack your website with reams information. Be selective, make every word count. Think of how you feel when bombarded with lots of content. It takes the appeal away of staying on the website and browsing further as you try desperately to take on board what it’s saying.

Think of how much calmer you feel when you see space around paragraphs and images. It keeps you focussed. The headings start to stand out along with the calls to action which are enticing you to do something.

Headlines that include keywords

As a website designer and content manager, you’ll often hear us talk about keywords to optimise your website. Your headings on your website are perhaps the most important places for your keywords.

By now you will have created your online buyer persona. In doing so you will know what your target audience is looking for. Therefore, this is the information you need to weave into your headlines. It’s not just about making the design of your headings stand out on the page, it’s also about the content.

If you need help with creating an online buyer persona, read our blog for more information.

Bold calls to action

A good Call to Action (CTA) helps a user navigate a website. Bold and clear actions will entice your visitors to stay on your site longer and ‘take action’.

Read our blog for further top tips for calls to actions.

Add bullet points

Your content should be tailored for your target audience. Provide them with answers to the challenges they’re facing. Make their experience of your website as personal as possible. Ensure your products and services answer their needs.

So why are we including content within web design? What’s key, once again, is making content easy to read. While you need to ensure you have all the vital information showing on the web page, the layout needs to be easy to read. Add bullet points and breakdown lengthy paragraphs. Separate with images to make it attractive. But don’t forget the all-important calls to actions. This is something that a web design agency can help you with at design stage.

Be consistent

Continue your website theme throughout the design of your website. All pages need to be consistent. Similar imagery, same font (size and style), colours and an easy to navigate menu. Visitors will warm to the consistency and it can help keep people on the site for longer as they easily search for what they need.

Web design Croydon

This had been a very quick overview of some of the key things to consider when embarking on a website design or redesign.

If you need help with updates for your website or require a new content managed (CMS) web design such as WordPress websites, then get in touch with us. We’re a WordPress design company in Croydon providing web design for accountants and businesses in the Croydon area and London as well as digital marketing services including Search Engine Optimisation for ongoing website optimisation to improve online presence and visibility in local search.

Once a web design proposal is agreed, we will work on the theme and provide you with a wireframe. This means you can see the look and feel of your new site in advance so that you can make tweaks before it is built.

Website design and development resources

Where can I find the best web designer in Croydon?

06/01/202102/27/2020 by scmarketing

Your website is your sales pitch to potential clients. The look and feel of your website are therefore vital to attract the target audience for your business. So, once you’ve ascertained that your website may need a little update, how should you go about finding a web design company in Croydon to help your business stand out in the online world?

Here’s our advice of what web design services you should cover off with your developer so that you can build a great website.

CMS

Build a bespoke website with a good Content Managed System (CMS). This means that once the website is built and with a little training, you can manage the upload of content yourself.

Easy navigation

Make sure the navigation and menu of your website are easy to read and navigate. Any page of importance should be no more than two clicks – preferably one click – from the homepage.

Using pillar pages will help you structure your site map. The titles of these pillar pages will also be the names of the URL. Really think about these as this is what you want to be found for. So, think carefully about your core offering so you can get this menu right at design stage.

Call to action buttons, strategically placed on pages will really help with engagement and your visitor’s movement around the website. As will white space. Don’t be too cluttered.

Content marketing

When you embark on creating your website it’s a great time to review your current collateral and what should be on the website and what shouldn’t. It can also highlight gaps that you need to fill. If you look at your competitors – how are they talking about their services? What’s missing from your website?

Optimise your website

Any agency you work with will tell you about Meta Descriptions, Alt Tags and H1/H2 headings. A web designer can provide you with simple training on this once your website has been developed. Or you can engage a digital marketing agency to manage this for you moving forward to improve your search results. This means they can keep an eye on your keywords for you. But this is for another blog. You can read more about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Be visual

Images must not only be relevant, in focus and look good, they must also be optimised for your wordpress website. A developer should be doing this for you when they upload the images. This means they are the right size for the website and will help with the site speed by not being too large. These will also help with viability when sharing on social media such as Facebook and twitter

Research indicates that marketers using video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users (Source: Wordstream). Video is therefore great for engagement. Placing video toward the top of a page, so that it is seen straight away, has been known to keep visitors on pages longer.

Back up your website

Most CMS provide modules to allow you to back up and to make safe against hackers. Unfortunately, with web robots (automated programs) checking thousands of websites a second for weaknesses to exploit the owner it’s important to do as much as you can to make it safe. Talk through the options with your web developer such as the SSL certificate and captcha forms for your website.

Get your website seen

This is just a short overview. If you’d like to chat about your current website if you’re looking to design and build a new one or generally about design services in Croydon, get in touch today and our website designer and developer can look at the best options for your business and how we would work closely to get the best results for your online presence.

Web Design Croydon

Smart Cow is a top online marketing and web design agency in Croydon that fully understands your requirements and provides user friendly websites and professional web design for accountants and local businesses at affordable prices.