Website Design Tips

Tips For Building A Great Website

Whatever your B2B  business, having a great website is fundamental. Whether you are a mezzanine pallet gate manufacturer, a high tip bucket manufacturer, a self storage facility, a meeting room provider hotel in Peterborough or any other type of SME business, a great website is essential for your company’s success.

As a marketing and web design specialist who has worked with clients on designing. building and promoting more than 100 business sites. We understand the technical and design stuff required to make extraordinary business sites that attract clients and satisfy a business need.

If you are looking to make your existing WordPress website more successful, or have another website created, the accompanying web composition tips will help you improve your business website.

Website Design Tip #1. Your choice of Domain name is a significant factor

Your domain name, for example your website address www.bdolphin.co.uk , is most frequently the main entry point to your website. As is frequently said you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. Therefore its important that it creates a decent impression. The domain should also help for website search engine optimisation (SEO) along with being simple and memorable.

In the event that you are searching for an ideal domain name the accompanying tips may help :

• Keep the domain name length as short as could be expected. Its amazing how troublesome it can be if you have to provide the domain name details if there are hyphens, under scores, or strange letter combinations ( or identical email address) via phone. The shorter the website domain, the simpler it is to recollect and type accurately.
  • A few examples of where they got the domain right
    • www.diy.com – which is the domain for B&Q
    • www.theaa.co.uk – for the Automobile Association
    • www.amazon.co.uk – for a book retailer !! (more on this underneath)
• Make the domain simple to spell. Do whatever it takes not to utilize incredibly recondite words, made up, or slang words.
• Utilizing Latin or some peculiar and superb unfamiliar term may appear to be a smart thought, yet I would say will cause problems and will ultimately require changing after a short timeframe.
• Utilize the appropriate domain format. If the majority of your business is in the UK then a .co.uk domain name is recommended (instead of .net, .co, .master and so forth) Alternative special cases for this would be the place where it would be more proper ( you are permitted )to utilize a .gov, .edu, or .organisation expansion
• Where possible stay away from numbers and hyphens. One of the recent issues affecting companies is that the best domain name they need ( which fits the above models, has been taken). At this point prompts being offered “hyphen” forms for instance www.peterborough-hotels.co.uk. This creates the issue within your sector that in the event of somebody typing in the non hyphen variation, they may well go to a competitors site.
• Will the domain adapt to future business developments. Having a domain name www.blueplates.co.uk might be totally wonderful while your business just fabricates/supplies blue plates. However, consider the possibility that your business hopes to broaden its product range and start selling, mugs, bowls, saucepans, tea etc. An extraordinary model is Amazon.com which is a far broader site address than BooksOnline.com. This permits Amazon to sell a huge range of product items to consumers contrasted with the first domain that only allowed them to sell books
• Make the domain critical. This is the area where it very well may become troublesome. There are now so many websites present, identifying another domain that matches with your optimal profile can be challenging. Add to this such countless domains have been theoretically bought, the domain you may need could cost thousands rather than pounds. Attempt to have a site name that is pertinent, appealing and essential. Someone had speculatively purchased the domain www.webdesignpeterborough.co.uk with the sole purpose of selling it at a premium
• Research the domain name. Google it to check whether a comparable site address as of now exists on the web. Utilize one of the domain enrolment tools to check whether it is accessible to be bought.
• Hopefully you can purchase your ideal site domain at a sensible price hope to pay around £10 ish for a .co.uk. As referenced before, since numerous domain names are now taken (regardless of whether the are not live) if you want to purchase a dormant domain from the existing owner and these can cost significantly more
• Branding Takes Time and Budget. At the point when we consider electronic gadgets “Apple” or task management tools “Monday” both are snappy names. There is no relationship between the names and the items. These have now become normal industry brands, however they were costly to market and create brand awareness.
• Your URL ought to be SEO-accommodating. When suitable, attempt to think of a SEO-accommodating site address that incorporates catchphrases and geo-area; for instance, “www.webdesignpeterborough.co.uk.” A key search term “Web Design” a target geographic area “Peterborough“

2. Make it clear what your business does and make sure your phone number is visible (everywhere)

I realise this may sound strange and confusing but let me show you some examples below and hopefully all will become clear.

Example 1: “We join counselling ability and our appropriateness advanced stage to assist organizations with accomplishing quantifiable money saving advantages”

Example 2: “Making the data transfer capacity for undertakings to work”

Example 3: “Utilising capacities for improved execution”

Now it could be me but I have no idea what the top 3 examples are offering or selling. Tell visitors what you do well away so they don’t feel befuddled when they visit your site.

An approach to accomplish this is to ensure the starting content snippet close to the highest point of the page, accurately and clearly depicts what your identity is and what you do. The methodology here is to ensure that this effectively communicated to a visitor. Where imagery is used pictures need to be relevant to your business. If you are selling “Bollards” having pictures of Miniature Schnauzers ( no matter how cute and cuddly) isnt going to work

The About Us page ought to have more definite information that clearly tells the visitor who you are , what you do, how long you have been doing it and provides a history and framework for the visitor to understand the type of business you are Ensure both your primary header and footer menus have “About Us” page link.

Ensure that your phone number is instantly apparent and interactive. We would consistently recommend that the phone number is shown on each page

• at the upper right corner
• inside the footer
• on the Contact page

Website Design Tip

That way a visitor hasn’t had to visit multiple pages in order to find your contact information – remember they might be accessing your website, just to get your phone number.

3. Build your site on the best CMS platform i.e. WordPress

A content management system (CMS) is a software program or application that is used to create and manage digital content. There are many CMS systems available and we will cover the main players

A good CMS will help you to easily add content to your site, maintain your site, without to much technical knowledge to use it. Different CMS systems are used for different reasons, such as user-friendliness, extensibility, and budget. You should choose a CMS that is designed for your unique needs; .

The following are some popular content management systems with descriptions of their strengths and weaknesses.

WordPress: WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS. It has a vast, active support community and many useful plugins to extend the functionality of your site. In this article are some useful facts and figures that show why WordPress is the number one CMS. We normally recommend to clients that WordPress is used to create their websites, due to its flexibility, extensibility and SEO capabilities.

It is important to flag up however, that WordPress’s biggest weakness is security—because it is so popular, hackers target it the most. Your WordPress site needs to be regularly maintained and secured so it is not hacked. By ensuring that your sites PHP, theme and plugins are updated you can overcome this issue.

Hackers focus on holes / bugs in outdated plugins, so if you have your site regularly maintained this issue is reduced. It is difficult to secure every single third-party plugin, so keeping your WordPress site secure must be an ongoing commitment. For example we follow various best practices, checking weekly to see if your plugins have been updated, making sure it is a plugin provided in the official WordPress repository, deleting unused plugins immediately, etc.).

39.7% of all websites on the internet powered by WordPress

Drupal: Drupal is another popular CMS. It offers many of the same benefits as WordPress, including flexibility, ease of use, and a large support community. Notably it doesn’t have as many plugin or theme options, which makes it less extensible. However as it as far fewer users it is a more secure CMS than WordPress (safer from malicious activity)

For many years, the White House website (Whitehouse.gov) was run with Drupal, but has since switched to WordPress, which it still uses today.

1.4% of all websites on the internet powered by Drupal

Squarespace: Squarespace is an American building and hosting service that you subscribe to monthly or annual basis ( Software as a Service). The “drag and drop” experience makes website and blog creation easy. In a single package you get website design, development, software maintenance, metrics, domain name with annual purchase, SSL security, 24/7 support, and unlimited bandwidth and hosting.

There is a much smaller learning curve with Squarespace than with WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla!, but it doesn’t have nearly as many extensibility options. With pre designed templates it is especially suitable for creatives. If you are on a tight budget, need a simple and beautiful site, but cannot afford a website designer, this is a great service for you.

Wix: Wix is very similar to Squarespace, and in our experience is even more user-friendly, with the learning curve to using Wix is even shorter than Squarespace. It offers a monthly, but not annual, subscription. Wix features a drag-and-drop builder—you can freely drag and drop elements anywhere on the page.

Wix has loads of predesigned templates ( more than Squarespace to choose from), but with Wix once you choose a template, you must stick with it or be forced to completely rebuild your site. With Squarespace, you can change your template anytime without having to rebuild the entire site.