WEBSITE DESIGN
Website Design is more important than ever in a constantly changing world of media.
It is the ‘shop front’ of any small business and often the first contact you have with any potential client or customer.
But not all websites are the same.
The first thing we are always asked when talking websites with a new client is ‘How much will it cost?
And unfortunately, the answer is always ‘It depends!’
I know, I know, not what you wanted to hear, BUT unfortunately, it’s true.
Think of website design like building or buying a new house. An estate agent will ask you how many bedrooms you need, whether you require outdoor space, do you want loft space or want it to be semi-detached?
Now whilst the analogy has its limits, it’s not so dissimilar to designing websites.
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“WHY TRY AND BEAT THE SYSTEM,
WHEN YOU CAN FOLLOW
THE RULES AND WIN!”
THE JOB IS ONLY AS GOOD AS THE BRIEF
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Some of the questions we may ask a new customer might include:
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• What is the website for? e.g., Displaying product and services or examples of your work?
• Does it need to be transactional e.g. Will you need to take payments?
• Are you targeting a local area, national, or international audience?
• How many pages do you need? (or think you need!)
• Do you already have content written or existing artwork we can use?
• Does the website design need making Google Friendly e.g., SEO?
• Will you invest regularly in new content?
• Do you need us to build Landing Pages?
• Do you plan to market the website via Google Ads or other Pay Per Click channels?
• Do you have an established logo in place of are we starting from scratch?
• Do you have video? Have you already got traffic on other platforms e.g., Facebook etc?
• How much money do you have to spend?
• Do want to use ‘stock imagery’ or do you have your own established product gallery or commissioned photography?
• Have you considered the colour palette you wish to use or do you have established brand colours?
• And most of all, do you intend the site to be passive (there to uphold your reputation) or aggressive (there to grow your business)?
CONTACT US TO DISCUSS YOUR BRIEF >>THE OPTIONS WHEN DESIGNING A NEW WEBSITE
Website Page builders
If you are starting with a low budget, one way to get yourself up and running quicky, is to build a site Page by Page.
In the last three years, there has been a huge growth in ‘Drag and Drop’ website build platform such as Elementor, DIVI, WP Bakery, Editor X and Oxygen.
These platforms are very simple to use and are ideal for those who want to grow their site stage by stage.
In addition, they are also very good and flexible when implementing your own designs.
The downside is it does require some level of website design expertise, or understanding of design, as each section and page is built piece by piece.
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Template Websites
Gone are the days when you need to hard code every aspect of a website.
Modern day templates have been used for a long time and can be very useful when wanting to choose a particular business category or theme to represent your business.
With thousands of pre-designed sites now available, this is the most cost-effective route to building a new website.
Using WordPress (this is our platform of choice), you can import a template website on to your host platform*, quickly and efficiently.
The downside (and this is very minor) is that some templates can be very bloated e.g. there may be more code embedded in the theme than you actually need and this can lead to page loading speeds being slow.
However, we recommend to all clients that they use a Page Loading Accelerator on their sites, such as WP Rocket or Nitropack, as Google now expects EVERY website to load in less than 1 sec (which is not easy!).
*MC2 Marketing hosts all its own websites on a secure server provided by LCN.
Hard Coded Websites
Now this is the equivalent of an Architect designing your dream home!
Everything is built exactly to your specification. This is very specialist and expensive but is also the most efficient and flexible when looking at the overall user experience.
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In addition, this type of website development is often good when you are managing a large amount of data, or your business is database driven e.g. You have multiple email and user interactions.
The downside is, you do not have access to a CMS Dashboard (Content Management System) and so you would need to add an API (application programming interface). This means you can plug-in other services and apps to your website effortlessly i.e., Adding a Facebook login window to your own website login page.
There is rarely a good reason for small businesses to use hard coded websites these days, but if you do, the possibilities are endless.
