Here’s 7 reasons why you might want to upgrade your company website

/in /by

 

 

For some businesses here in Wales, sometimes the only way they advertise their business is online.

So, if you visit the company website, and it looks, well, let’s say outdated, then, well what’s a shopper going to do?

Well, there likely to leave, and on the first page the shopper visits.

Now, if you were to ask a web design agency what this means, they would say, this means the website has a high bounce rate.

Well, to someone who doesn’t work in marketing, they will tell you, that any business having a high bounce rate, could mean, you’re losing out on sales.

So what do you need to do?

Well, you may need to hire a Cardiff web designer, like the designers that work for us here at Top Space, and have a brand new website build for your business.

So whether it’s a new wordpress website, or you want a different content management system used, well why not call us?

We have the web designers, the developers, the seo consultants, to build a brillant website for your business.

So if your looking for a Cardiff web developer, why not call us?

Here’s 7 reasons why you may want to upgrade your website:

 

1. Keep up with the competition

 

If your competitors in Cardiff have a better website than your company, then this could mean that it’s time for an upgrade.

Whether you’re a plumber, hairdresser or a dentist a  website is often one of the first places potential customers will go to learn more about your company, and lets be honest, if it looks outdated or unprofessional, they may not stick around for long again, increasing your bounce rate, and you may be losing out on customers.

 

 

Reach a wider audience

 

A well-designed website, and with the help of a good seo agency, your business can help you reach a wider audience and start to earn more sales.

By investing in organic SEO and making sure your company website is well designed, you’ll be able to   attract more shoppers.

And if your business gets most of your customers, via your website, well, the simple question is, can you afford not to have a well designed site?

Especially when our Cardiff web designers can build a website for you, at an affordable price.

 

 

Generate leads and sales

 

A good website should be designed with lead generation and sales in mind, if not, well  you may be wasting your time, and have purchased a basic site that will not help your company.

Its true the old saying, you get what you pay for, so don’t, buy a cheap website, that doesn’t tell your customers what your business offers.

Also if you don’t hire the right company to build it, well, when you show it to say an seo agency, they may say, well I cant optimise the website its too basic.

So if your current site isn’t doing a good job of converting shoppers into customers, it’s time for an upgrade.

Also if the website is so basic, it doesn’t advertise everything your company has to offer, then its time for an upgrade.

And if the seo agency says, they cant optimise the website, then its definitely in need of an upgrade.

 

 

4. Create a better user experience

 

An outdated website, for example one where the main menu cant be easily used, well can be frustrating for users, which is why it’s important to keep yours up-to-date and have web designers who will build a quality site for your company.

 A well-designed site will be easy to navigate.

 

 

5. Build trust and credibility

 

An old, tatty website, well looks unprofessional and can make a business look behind the times.

On the other hand, a modern, well-designed site, built by our web designers, in Cardiff will instil confidence in shoppers and help your company to advertise your products or services a lot better than an out dated website would.

 

 

6. Stand out from the crowd

 

In today’s competitive marketplace, where there’s sometimes literally millions of competitors, it’s more important than ever for your business to stand out from the crowd and have a website that’s well designed.

We can build a quality website for your company, in say wordpress.

 

 

7. Save time and money

 

An outdated website can sometimes require a lot of work from website developer, because it may regularly have glitches.

So this is another good reason to get a new company website, that’s built by our web designers.

 

 

If you’re business here in Wales, is ready to have a new website designed, then why not contact us today.

We’ll work with you to create a modern, responsive site that meets all of your business needs.

How long does it take your web design agency to make a website?

/in /by

How long it takes our designers to design a new website, depends on a lot of different factors, including the complexity of the site, for example, is it an e-commerce site selling many different products?

The amount of content marketing, for example, will our copywriters be writing the text for your business?

And of course, the number of pages which need to be designed.

A simple website can often be designed in just 2 weeks sometimes.

While with that said, a more complex website, say where the business is selling many products, that may take us say many months to build.

 

The important thing is to start with a clear idea of what you want your business needs from your website.

So, for example:

–        Does your business need a brochure website?

–        Does your business need an e-commerce website?

–        Does the website need to be responsive?

 

So, how long does it take to build a website?

Creating a website can a time-consuming process, yet our designers can quickly get to grips with what design you want, and we will aim to build it as quickly as we can.

By working with an established web design agency, like ours and by having a clear idea of your marketing goals, we can create a beautiful and effective website in a surprisingly short amount of time.

So, if you’re wondering how long does it take to design a website, the answer is: it does depend on how many pages need to be designed, if you have brand guidelines, and also if you have a clear idea of what you want.

If not, our designers can offer many different design ideas, that you can select.

 

Website design process and development is often a complex process, that involves many different steps.

The first step is usually to create a prototype or mockup of the site, which can be used to get feedback from our clients and make sure the overall design is what the customer wants.

Once the prototype has been approved, the next step is to start designing the site and writing any code that’s needed.

This includes developing the front-end design that’s the part shoppers see when they visit your website.

then our web design company can create the back-end functionality that’s needed, and a database structure.

After the site is coded, it needs to be tested on various devices, such as an I-phone, and different browsers to make sure everything works as it should. Finally, once everything is working properly, the site can be launched and made available to the public, and we can do this by offering hosting.

You may want to arrange for your own hosting of your company website, and we can therefore simply send you the finished design of the website, for your business to then host.

 

 

The website design and development process can be divided into several different steps:

 

 

we can create a prototype or mock-up of the website, to give an idea of how it will look once finished.

 

This is used to get feedback from clients.

 

 

Coding the front-end design or making alterations as the customer requested, plus making any changes to the back-end functionality, or database structure.

 

 

Testing the site on various devices, such as i-phones, and browsers to make sure everything works correctly and fixing any glitches with the web design, to make sure everything works as it should.

 

 

Launching the site and making it available to shoppers.

 

 

Monitoring the site and making changes as needed.

 

If you need help with any part of the website design and development process, then why not contact our team at Top Space Designs.

We’re a full-service digital marketing agency in the heart of Cardiff, which specialises in creating quality websites.

 

What steps do you web designers take in order to build a website?

There are a few key steps involved in building a website for our clients in Cardiff.

Though it has to be said, the process can vary slightly depending on your business’s specific needs and goals, for example, if we are building a large e-commerce website, using WooCommerce, then we would often need all of the product descriptions from you.

However, these steps will start to give you a general idea of how our web design process works:

 

Choose your domain name and hosting company.

We can register your domain name for you.

If you don’t know what domain name means, its simply your website’s address on the internet, such as for example, www.top-space-designs.co.uk is ours.

While your hosting is the company that hosts your company website

At our web design agency, we can offer to register your company domain name for you, and to provide hosting, we often charge yearly for this service.

If you are looking to find your own hosting provider, you’ll need to choose a reputable hosting service and register your desired domain name before you can begin building your site.

 

Our web designers will then start designing the website

Once you have a domain name and hosting all sorted, it’s then time to start putting together the actual content marketing and design of your site together.

This is the time-consuming part, and it can take us even longer if you have asked our copywriters to write the content marketing for you?

However, for some WordPress websites, which we design in Cardiff, that can take us sometimes as little as 2 weeks from start to completion.

However, how long it takes us does depend on how much work is needed.

For example, a large e-commerce website, that might take us much longer to build.

 

 

Content marketing

Our web designers will then start on adding the content marketing to your website. This is where you’ll start adding all the text, images, and other media that will make up your website.

You can also pay our web design company a set monthly fee, so that our copywriters can add fresh content marketing, in the form of blog posts for you on a regular basis to keep visitors coming back.

 

Once your website has been built, we would recommend promoting it on social media, such as using Facebook

Once we have got your new company website up and running, you’ll need to start spreading the word about it, we would therefore highly recommend hiring our digital marketing agency, to help you improve your organic SEO, to assist with advertising your company on social media, such as on Facebook, and you might hire us, to run PPC ads for your business as well?

 

 

We build affordable websites for Welsh businesses

 

Building a website doesn’t have to be expensive, we can build  a professional website for your company, and get it up and running quickly.

 

We design brillant websites, as we have experienced website designers working for us

HTML, CSS and Javascript- most clients wont know what this means, yet these are the three most common programming languages, that our developers use to build our websites.

Some websites we build wont need huge amount of coding, yet some others may take a long time to build.

HTML is simply used for structure, CSS for style and layout of the website, and Javascript for dynamic content and interactivity.

In order to create a website, our web developers must use all three of these languages  together.

 

HTML is the foundation of all webpages, and whichever website we are building for a client, it use this code.

It is used to define the structure of a web page, including all of  the text, images and other elements that make up the web site.

Then there’s CSS, and this is used to add style to a webpage.

Css can be used to control the colours on a page, which web developers often call the hex codes, which font you select, the font size and position of elements on a page.

Then there’s Javascript and our web developers use this to add interactivity to a webpage. It can be used to create things like drop-down menus, from the main menu, form validation and simple games.

In order for our web designers to design new website, regardless of whether it’s a site for a solicitor or a dentist, they will need to use all three of these languages together in order to design a new website.

So, to summarise, HTML defines the structure of the page, CSS adds style and layout, and Javascript adds interactivity.

 

Does your company website need to be responsive?

We would recommend, that your company website works on mobile devices, such as a smartphone.

One way of doing this, is to hire a web designer that will build a responsive website and this is a relatively new approach to web design that ensures your site renders optimally on devices, such as an i-phone, or a tablet, regardless of the screen size.

So this means, whatever the shopper is using, to look for a product, lets say a new electronic toothbrush, well, they can use the company website, on say there i-phone.

Yet, for the company website to work correctly, you need to have a mobile version built.  

Responsive design is achieved by our web designers, building a website through a combination of flexible layouts, media queries (which allow you to target specific CSS rules, to specific device widths, to make the website work on say tablets) and fluid images.

 

So why does my business need a responsive website?

Well, quite simply put, our web design agency thinks that there are many benefits to using a responsive design for a company website. For one, it ensures that the website can work on all devices, that’s of course, if  there are no coding glitches.

Additionally, responsive design can help improve your search engine rankings, that means, many SEO agencies, believe it’s one of the many factors which is considered, when trying to work out where your website should rank in the serps.  

 

Summary: What Does Responsive Web Design Mean?

 

 

Therefore “responsive web design” simply means a website that automatically adjusts its layout and content to fit the width of say an i-phone, or the user’s screen.

This means that whether someone is viewing your site on a desktop computer, a tablet, or a smartphone, they will be able to still use your company website.

Of course, if you didn’t have a mobile version of your company website built, then someone looking to buy an item say on their smartphone, wouldn’t be able to, and this means, you could, be losing customers.

If you’re company is looking to create a responsive website, there are a few key things to keep in mind.

First, you’ll need to make sure that your website is designed using something called “flexible grids” and layouts.

This will then allow your content to automatically adjust itself to fit any screen size. In addition, you should use media queries to determine how your site’s content should be displayed on different devices. Finally, you’ll need to make sure that your website’s images and other forms of media are also responsive.

 

 

By following these tips, you can ensure that your responsive website will work well on any device.

 

What are flexible grids?

As any good web designer will tell you, one of the most important aspects of responsive web design is creating what’s called a “flexible grid”.

This grid should be able to adapt to any screen size such as to an i-phone.

So, whether the shopper is using say a smartphone, a tablet, or desktop computer, by your web designers using flexible grids as part of your websites design, the content should automatically adjust itself to fit the different devices, such as an i-phone so that people use to access your companies website.

 

 

In addition to using a flexible grid that your web designers might use, you should also make use of what are called media queries.

 

What are media queries?

Media queries are code snippets, these allow you to determine how your site’s content should be displayed on say a tablet.

For example, you can use media queries to ensure that your site’s images are only displayed on screens that are large enough to view them properly.

Here at Top Space Designs, we are Cardiff web designers, that build responsive websites, e-commerce websites, and brochure websites.

For a free quote why not call us?  

 

 

Design tips for when designing a company’s contact us page

/in /by

When thinking about how you want your brand-new company website to look, well, often a lot of thought tend to goes into the homepage, the main pages and the product page design, which is of course important.

However, after those long meetings, endless cups of coffee, and telephone calls to get the design just right, there’s some pages which we think here at this web design agency are given less consideration by some design companies.

Those pages tend to be the “contact us” page, however, we simply think this is often a large mistake, and we shall explain why we think that’s so.

Often when a shopper lands on your companies website, they will spend a lot of time on the homepage, then they will narrow down to the exact service, or the product that they want.

Then after that, its normally the “contact us” page that gets viewed, as the shopper might want to know say where exactly your store is in Cardiff?

They might want to know your companies phone number, or e-mail address, so they can ask a question.

Now, its at this stage where some businesses can lose that shopper, for example, let’s say you run a solicitors practice, you have a simply great location, your right in the centre of Cardiff, and because your offices are impressive, there’s a large picture of the tower block, then below it a simple “contact us” via a contact us form– all well and good, right?

Well, here’s the thing, what if the customer just wanted your e-mail address, so they could say copy and paste it over to their Microsoft Outlook account?

And, what if the design of the website doesn’t include e-mail addresses, there’s just contact us forms?

What if the contact us forms are just really long, there’s some questions that the customer just doesn’t have the time to answer, such as “how did you hear about our company” or “what’s your phone number” and the customer might not to provide their contact details, so we think its better to make it as easy as possible for shoppers to contact you.

Click to call

When a customer contacts a business, it might be on the move, so anything you can do to make it easier for them to call your business will be beneficial.

So, for example, put yourself in your customers shoes, let’s say the you run a solicitor’s practice in Cardiff.

If the person is looking to contact your business, and you have your company phone number clearly stated on the contact page, so that it can be clicked on, and smart phone can then bring that number, then you are making it easier to contact your business.

This might sound common sense, you have to compare this with some websites, which only state that company phone number in the header of the website.

Company phone number may therefore be listed next to say the company’s email address designed in such a way so that it is embedded into the header so that it cannot be clicked upon.

Our designers think it’s far better that it is added to the contact page, so they can be clicked on, and then the customer can choose to ring the business.

The company address standsout

make the company address standout, state the company’s address in plaintext, so that it can be copy and pasted so that somebody can find directions.

You might also wish to add a picture of the street, so for example if you are in a instantly recognisable location, such as near Cardiff Castle, or perhaps your own restaurant overlooking the bay in Cardiff Bay, perhaps you even the premises near Newport Road, you might want to put a picture of the street where your business is located, so somebody can instantly recognise where you are based.

If you have multiple locations, making easy to select each store.

A lot of businesses will have multiple locations, therefore you might want to use the drop-down box locator.

Therefore the customer can select the location, and instantly the page changes so that stores address and contact details.

This is as opposed to listing the addresses and contact details one after the other which might seem quite lengthy if you have quite a few locations.

Add an email address

some businesses only have a contact us form, that is embedded into the page and might have a spam filter.

This is all well and good, but you do have to bear in mind that some customers will still like to copy and paste, that copy and paste the email address into their email account.

You may therefore wish to add the full email address to the contact us page

Chat

When somebody’s got to the contact us page, they are at the stage where they want to email or perhaps call the business or even find its address.

Somebody might have a question such as, do you have any availability for a table on Friday night?

Might view the contact us page, like your business, but pull off contacting you to a later date.

If your business happy employees, then you might wish to have a chat box, is the letting personally that page, you might wish to quickly type a message to instead.

Adding this additional way that is a customer can contact you, might allow more customers to quickly contact your business that might otherwise have just left the website without making a booking or purchase.

And a link to a frequently asked questions page

Often customers will ask businesses the same sort of questions, such as what is your returns policy, what hours you will put and also question such as how long the product is guaranteed for.

Obviously, responding to these enquiries takes time, therefore takes up your customer service staffs resources as well.

This is why you might wish to work with your web designers, so that on certain pages, on your company website, such as the contact page might want to have a link to a frequently asked questions page.

This where your customers can find answers to questions, and they may therefore not need to contact you, saving both the company and the customer time.

Add detailed directions

You might wish to add a link on the contact us page, so that you can add step-by-step instructions to your businesses location.

For example, you might be in a central location within Cardiff, and a lot of your customers come to you from the train station for meetings.

You may therefore wish to add directions to help your customers find you, for example directions from the train station, directions from the airport directions from local taxi rank.

Make the contact form easy-to-use

Make your contact form very easy-to-use, we have seen some businesses may contact forms which are very long detailed, this might help the business to better understand what the customer wants to know, but also you have to put yourself again in the customers shoes think that this might deter them from contacting you if they have got the time to fill in the form.

Direct emails to the right person

Even if you run a small business in Cardiff, that say just have three employees, so website might be designed so that all of the emails just go into one central inbox.

However you might find that it saves you time, different enquiries to be directed straight to different staff members.

For example, a question about high-value products might be directed that one member of staff, simply enquiries might be directed at another member of staff, returns to another member of staff.

Therefore, you are not waiting for somebody to sort central inbox, to direct the mail to the relevant person. This may therefore help you to save time, rather than having to redirect messages internally within your business.

Provide an estimate for how long it will take to get back to the customer

When somebody is shopping for a product, it might send a question to your business, for example somebody was purchasing a high-value electric mountain bike, may want to know the guarantee period on a particular bike.

Now if you send out an automated email, saying that you aim to respond to all enquiries within 24 hours, customer in some instances might be willing to wait for your response.

If they have no idea of how long it takes a business to get back to them, they might continue that week shopping around the same bike and might purchase elsewhere.

Therefore, providing a timescale for how long it normally takes you to get back to the customer with a response therefore you might be deemed as offering better service.

How our design company can help:

We run a web design business, we serve the whole of Cardiff, we have web developers, web designers and SEO consultants working for us.

Why not contact us today?

 

 

When designing a website, what are some of the important design features that need to be considered?

/in /by

We think that a website is rather like car, in that some can be rather cheap and cheerful, rather basic in their overall construction, yet some others can be high-performance machines and hugely complicated.

Business owners across the land often make the mistake of thinking they just need a website up and running from now, that a basic company website will therefore suffice. However when you sit down and you mull over this, a lot of business owners quickly realise that their website will actually be their most important marketing asset.

Therefore, settling for what is in all intents and purposes a second best design is never a good idea.

Instead each business needs a well-designed website, there needs to be clear purpose so that the websites that’s built so is high quality. After all, do you want your website to be akin to a budget car or a high-performance sports car?

Every business is different, therefore each website should be the same, therefore you should have a unique marketing strategy. There needs to be a lot of dialogue with you and your website designers, so that a unique, well designed website is built.

With that said, there are some important design considerations which we think are important to most businesses, and these will be highlighted below.

However, it’s important that you consult with a respected web design company, so that you can form your own high-quality marketing strategy.

The name of the game is building a high quality website, if you don’t that often your business will be lost in the millions of other competitors that may have a better website.

Don’t therefore opt for the cheapest quote, aim to have a quality website built, often this is not cheap.

Set out clearly the main purposes for your companies website

Set out your website’s purpose, now, this may seem pretty self-explanatory, and to some business owners a total waste of time, yet do let us elaborate…

Take a rather simple business model, lets say that you run a window cleaning business, you may approach many web design agencies and ask the quotes for a new redesign or design of your website.

You may simply say to them, I run a window cleaning business, and I need a new website built. After all, that’s what’s web designers do, right they build websites?

However, instead we think it’s much better to sit down and think of the clear purpose for your website, for example do you want to target more commercial cleaning? If it’s just domestic cleaning then in what areas?

Are there are areas of your work that you want to further generate more sales, for example you might offer gutter cleaning, or specialise in the cleaning of large conservatories?

With this knowledge your web designers may set up a separate page for “gutter cleaning”, for cleaning large conservatories, and also cleaning commercial buildings. Therefore your website now has more purpose than just being a general window cleaning company.

If you’re web designers didn’t have this knowledge, then you might end up with a pretty generic one-page website, which simply states that you are a window cleaner, and this might not cut the mustard when you compare your website with some of your direct competitors who may well be advertising for these additional cleaning services.

 

Make it simple

Make it simple, cluttered websites are likely to confuse some shoppers.

Put yourself in your customers shoes, that’s to say they often want to buy something at the right price and quickly, so let’s say that you specialise in selling running trainers, for example.

You don’t just stock one or two pairs of different running trainers, you stock thousands, however if the homepage is overly cluttered, and the shopper cant sort which trainers they want, that’s right the likely to leave your website straightaway.

Ask any good digital marketing agency, what does “bounce rate” mean, they will often say it’s something that should be reduced, and this can be reduced with good website design.

Choose a CMS that you find easy to use

Let’s say your website has been designed, and it’s a Monday morning and your designers have sent over the login details, and you want to add a new blog post to your company’s website.

Do you want a CMS that you find very easy-to-use, within a few clicks of a button your blog post goes live?

Of course, you do!

Yet some CMS options don’t make it that simple, even trying to highlight and make a title bold with some CMS can be difficult.

So do make sure that you have the conversation with your web developers, which CMS that they think would best suit your businesses requirements.

Partner with an agency that can offer you more than just web design

If you want to improve your businesses organic SEO, and you want to improve your businesses presence also on social media, you might wish to partner with an agency which can offer all of the services.

Don’t take the mindset, that will do for now…

A lot of businesses when they are setting up, might not have the time to consult with their web designer, however we believe if the design of a website is mediocre then, this is a total waste of time.

For a lot of businesses, from sole traders through to large businesses, their website is the main way they advertise the company, so we believe that you need strong and well-designed website right from the outset.

Help your customers as much as possible

When having your website designed, you should be focused on helping your customers as much as you can.

By this we mean write detailed product descriptions, write a frequently asked questions page (FAQ), help your customers at every single stage by making it easy to understand the product or services that you offer.

Think about the basics, such as how readable is the text?

Consider the basics, such as is the text that you have chosen easy to read? For example, is the font that you have chosen easy to read?

Page speed

Your website should be fast, if it’s not your bounce rate will likely soar.

Try to reduce your companies bounce rate

Work closely with your digital marketing agency, that’s to try and keep your shoppers on your website for as long as possible, think about how can you reduce your businesses “bounce rate”, and improve the design in order to help generate more sales?

 

How we can help:

We work with businesses to build quality websites, we also have SEO consultants, copywriters who can write your businesses content marketing. For a no obligation quote why not contact us today?

What’s the point in having a blog on a company website?

/in /by

It’s a question we often get asked, that is, why do companies go through such effort to write, and have well-designed blogs on there website. Another question we get asked is, why are we giving away so much information away for free?

So, for example, let’s say a solicitors practice, well, they normally charge by the hour, so why answer a commonly asked question that customers ask, in great detail, with a lot of custom graphics helping to answer the question, for free?

Well, the answers simple, so if you don’t want to read right to end of this blog post, its all about improving the companies search engine optimisation, or SEO as its commonly referred to.

So, here’s the thing, having a hyper car parked on the drive, but you don’t have the keys for the car, well that’s not much good, its not going anywhere until you find the keys. Well, you have to use the exact same concept when you think of a website.

Sure, a business here in Wales, may hire a web designer, they may fork out a ton on the website, and it may well be bespoke, with every bit of the PHP coding written by some of the most talented web designers that this area can offer, but here’s the thing, you as the business owner have to pause, and think this, how will customers find your website?

Sure, you might be a well-known business, one which has been operating in Cardiff for donkey’s years, so yeah, sure people may find you business they know your company name.

But let’s say just for a second they don’t, they haven’t the foggiest that your business exists, well, this is why you often need a “digital marketing agency”- that’s to say a business here in Cardiff that can build say a good-quality website, and also improve your seo.

Search engine optimisation

it’s all well and good having a fancy website built, this means you might have gone back and forth with your designers for a long period of time to get the design that you are very happy with.

And you know believe that you have simply brilliance website, is well designed, all the coding has been done to a really high standard, it’s been user tested so any glitches are also sorted out.

But here’s the thing, you might have a really good website in terms of its design, but is absolutely no point in having a well-designed website unless you start to have customers visit it.

It’s kind of like owning a high-performance car, but never been given the keys to actually drive it so you don’t know how well it can do on the open road.

For this is the same concept for a well-designed website, you might look the part but you needed to actually generate your business.

This is where SEO consultants or agencies often help, if you pick the right one, and is one of the things that they offer is to add blog posts, on a routine basis.

What we got the say here is whether you pick a company to write your blog posts which is simply somebody working from a spare bedroom or you pick somebody who runs a very large marketing agency, the work has to be top quality.

This article will therefore aim to elaborate on why so many businesses write long blog posts, the purpose of this work and why you might wish to hire an agency to write work for your company.

Can help to make your website more relevant

let’s say you are setting up a business, your business is about retailing goods, and you sell really high-quality scented candles, now you have a warehouse in Cardiff, that is full of candles and you need to start selling stock.

Is all well and good having an e-commerce website, which has over a hundred different candles for sale, but is no good unless the website is generating sales, one of the ways that the agency might help to improve the businesses SEO is the star writing content marketing, this is often added to the blog, and this is why written work is often added to a website on a regular basis.

With that said website design is often needed to help make the work more interesting, adding graphics, infographics and also visual aspects to further engage the reader so that the information they are being offered is more interesting.

This give you an example let’s say that you are selling candles which have natural ingredients, would somebody rather read 3000 words about how saucy candles, would they want to read a bit of text watching YouTube video, read an info graphic and start to learn more about your business and how it makes it candles, therefore it’s about making the work interesting.

Could help to reduce your businesses bounce rate

If you talk to any good marketing agency what they are aiming to do is bring organic visitors and other visitors to your company website say to Facebook they then want them visitors to turn into paying customers.

What you don’t want is something landing on say the homepage, and then leaving straightaway, avoid this contributes to increasing the bounce rate on that page which is something they don’t want.

Obviously, the overall aim of the businesses to sell products, so you want them to go onto the actual pages that sell candles and to make a purchase, therefore it’s up to the marketing agency to try reduce the bounce rate.

Therefore, what they might do is you might launch a new range of candles let’s say they are made from natural ingredients, they have a wick which makes the last a bit longer and also you completed this new subscription on your website where candles are sent every month and you can also send the glasses back to refilling so it’s more eco-friendly.

Though this concept is obviously going to needs explaining to the customer, so you might advertise on Facebook, and you might draw them into a blog post that you have written, which has a YouTube video as well explaining how the candles returned and how you want the centre customer instead of the glasses having to be sent to say was cycling, they can be sent back to the company from refilling.

This is obviously a different way of selling candles to some companies therefore you can use your content marketing to help promote this, you may want to make the work interesting also so that you lower the bounce rate.

It’s important for a lot of businesses to improve their SEO, the aim to get on the first page of Google

So the point that our web design business is trying to get over is if the written work which is added to your website is really top quality, it cuts the mustard it’s well written, by an expert, so you simply spend time researching it and offering quality advice to the customer, then the overall aim of this is to try and improve where the business ranks on Google.

Now as you know if you are a business owner, you can’t let the grass grow underneath your feet, what we mean by this is with SEO, and web design it always has to be improved, because you normally have hundreds of competitors if not thousands which are biting at your heels to overtake you, so this is why written work is often added on a regular basis.

Can help to promote new products

The written work, added to a blog, is sometimes written to help promote a new product or service.

Useful advice  

The information must be useful, what we mean by that is you have to put yourself in your customers shoes, think about the questions that they have before they buy a product, if you can answer these better than your competitors can, then you might retain the shopper on your website, and they might be more likely to make a purchase, because they have found the answer to a pressing question that they have about the products that you sell.

How to keep your website more up-to-date

Let’s say that you are a company that manufactures garden furniture, obviously not going to want your website to start looking really dated, that the garden furniture that is listed, garden furniture that you have made 10 years ago, you go to want to bring out different designs every year therefore this is why the website should Up-to-date because if it doesn’t advertise a current stock or services then you might have a really high bounce rate.

Needs to be high quality work

The work needs to be super high quality, if it’s not then this is likely to damage your SEO lot improve it

Often needs to be implemented on a monthly basis

task that is completed and then that it, no you competitors are always going to be trying to nudge their website forward, there always gonna try and have a competitive advantage, there always going to try and beat the competition this is why SEO is continuous.

Can be very time-consuming

SEO, therefore writing written work can be time-consuming this is why a lot of companies within Wales hire us.

The overall aim is therefore to improve for your business ranks on Google.

Design does matter

There’s no point in adding 10,000 words to your website which are at all read, and are likely to send the shopper to sleep, instead you need a well written by a copywriter and often you will need a website designer, somebody who is good at building graphics to start making the work more interesting to read.

So, for example let’s say that you sell craft beer, you might want to create graphics explaining the different hops the going to the beer, where it’s made how long it fermented for what makes the lager good quality.

Can be a landing page

Remember that the blog posts that you add to your website might be so well written that they become landing pages, for example let’s say that you sell cotton socks which are superior quality.

You might bring up a range of festive Christmas socks to send as gifts, therefore you might make the blog post all about explaining the different cotton socks that you retail, because the blog post is so well made by your web developers, you might find that this becomes a landing page.

How we can assist you

We are a group of highly skilled web developers and web designers and also marketing consultants in the city of Cardiff within Wales.

 

Why high-quality company branding should be created prior to the website being designed

/in /by

 

Okay, so let’s say your stuck in traffic, and around you are a sea of cars and company vehicles, and all may look pretty bland, rather generic you might say?

Yet, every now and then, there’s a company vehicle that stands out, it might be a van with simply brilliant graphics, a bright bold colour and an easy to remember website which is bold, and grabs your attention.

For example, a builder that focuses on high-end builds, using a bright colour, a picture showing a large extension they have built, and a company name that may have nothing to do with construction, but one which sticks in your mind, and so does the website.

Or it might be a rather fancy restaurant down in Cardiff Bay, it might have a really modern name, a colour which is rather unique and again a name which you won’t easily forget.

Now, you can start to see why having a set of brand guidelines, or “marketing strategy” created before the web design process starts is so crucial, as you want consistency, you want the same colour scheme used on the shop front, as what’s used on the companies lorries, or on the companies website.

So for example, lets say you run a recruitment agency, and you want to standout from your direct competitors here in Wales, so in the companies brand guidelines, you use a bright colour purple, this can then be assigned a “hex code” this code can then be used so that the companies cars match the companies shop and the website.

So, when it comes to hiring a local website designer, you can simply send in an email your companies brand guidelines, that’s including which hex codes to use, then the web developer, when designing the brand new company website, they will know to use that colour purple lets say in the main design of your companies new website.

 

What are “brand guidelines” and why are they important

 

So, brand guidelines are simply a list of design choices the business has made, so for example, often the guidelines will stipulate, which logo to use, which font to use, and which colours, as well as for example what the colours of the main menu should be, what the font colours should be and much more.

Now, sometimes, a business that’s setting up in Wales, well, sometimes they jump straight into having a website built, but if you don’t have a set of brand guidelines, what can often occur, is that the marketing starts to get inconsistent for that company.

What do we mean by that, well, simply put the font and company logo used on invoices, business cards and leaflets might not match the companies website.

So, why does your agency think the brand guidelines should be created before the website gets built?

It can really help your web developer, this is regardless of whether they are building a completely unique PHP website, or using another coding, what often the “front-end” web developers need is a set of brand guidelines to work from, this will instantly tell them, which font to use for example, or which colour the footer should be.

It does also save the Cardiff web developers, who may well be building your website time, as otherwise, it might mean that you as the business owner needs to receive many phone calls from the web designers, such as which colour the footer should be, which font should be used, how the drop-down menus should work.

So many questions, yet, if the designers were to have a set of brand guidelines, well, this can sometimes help a lot.

The company website should be built so its all consistent with the companies brand guidelines

There’s no point in say having 100 lorries on the road, each which are painted, lets say a colour of red, yet then when you go on the companies website, well the same colour red is not used, this causes the marketing to be inconsistent.

 

Be consistent

Having your marketing agency create a quality set of brand guidelines, can help your digital marketing agency to be consistent.

So for example, the right logo can be used on the companies website, on the companies social media accounts, such as Facebook and on the companies business cards.

Also, lets say you own lets say a restaurant in Roath Cardiff, and you have say 10 delivery cars, you may want the colour of those cars to match the companies website, for this, often a set of brand guidelines will need to be created by designers.

 

Tell your company’s story

Okay, so it shouldn’t just be the case that your business needs a new CMS website built, lets say using the coding language PHP. And, its not just a case of e-mailing around say 10 agencies, and getting a quote and that’s it.

No, you should pick a design agency that wants to take the time to understand your company, how its evolved into what it is today.

So, lets say you run a parts store, your company is based in Leckwith Cardiff, and you’ve been selling parts for lets say 50 years, why not make this central in the design of the website?

So, for example, why not sit down with the web developers and the marketing staff, and say, lets make the companies history central to the websites design?

Why not therefore:

–        Create a company timeline

–        Add to the companies logo how long the business has been trading, for example a date of when the company formed, and the current year

–        Add an about us page, which adds all the companies staff

Therefore in the brand guidelines, you may wish to stipulate, that you want to make clear that your company, based here in Wales, has been trading for a long time, so why not add this to your companies logo?

 

Standout

Create a set of brand guidelines, and a website which allows your business to be different, this way you will be creating a more unique brand.

For example, if your web designers use a bright colour, such as a bright shade of orange, with a unique PHP design and a bespoke logo, your business will standout.

Can you hire an agency in Cardiff that takes care of brand guidelines, designs a website and also takes care of your businesses online marketing?

Yes, here at Top Space, many companies in Wales hire us to build a website, improve the companies seo, design a logo, write content marketing every month, so we can offer a complete marketing solution.

If of course you just want a company website built, then our web designers and developers can build a brilliant website for your company.

What information do your web designers need, in order to build our new company website?

/in /by

Introduction

For every website that we build and design, whether it be a simple five-page brochure website, or a really large e-commerce website, say for an online clothing retailer, we are going to need quite a bit of information in order to allow our web developers to start the ball rolling on building your new website.

Now, for a lot of businesses here in Wales, that company might not have had a website built before, or if you are investing in a new website, the last website might have been built a very long time ago, so you might have had a really basic company website built, and you might have only needed say a few lines of text, and wanted something really simple, because the company may have only been starting up in Cardiff?

With this in mind, purchasing a website is not an everyday occurrence, so normally the business owners will not know which information we will need, for example, they might not know which hex codes or CMS to choose?

As our web design business here in Cardiff is all about helping the customer as much as possible, we thought we’d write a rather short article here, explaining some of the information we often need from our customers, in order to start building a new website for that company.

Which CMS is your business going to choose?

Now choosing which CMS (Content Management System) you want to opt for, we always think it is rather like picking which type of car engine you would like fitted, for example different engines will suit different needs, for example you might want a really powerful and large engine, or you might want something much more simple?

This is the same when it comes to purchasing a website, which CMS do you want your company website based on, you might want WordPress,you might want another CMS, a lot of businesses here in Wales, will not know which CMS to opt for, so our web developers and web designers can spend time with you explaining which CMS we would recommend for your company, as different companies will require different CMS.

Has your business created a set of brand guidelines for our web developers to follow?

A lot of businesses these days, will have a set of brand guidelines to follow, that’s to ensure that all of the marketing, whether it be the flyers, the website, or the company’s cars, are all consistent in terms of the marketing.

So, let’s say for example that you run a construction business, you might use same colour on your companies signs, the same colour on the company’s vans, say for example the same colour on the companies machines and the same colour on the company’s business cards, this will make sure that all the colours are consistent, and to do this often why web designers will need hex codes, and this is often part of creating the businesses brand guidelines.

So, one of the first things when a web designer is building a new company website for your business, you will often need a set of “hex codes” to use, so the company logo and also which fonts you wish to use will need to be stated, for example you might use an exact colour of yellow, you might also use say Arial font across your website?

So therefore when you sit down with the agency here in Wales, that’s the web design agency that you have hired, often one of the first questions they will ask over a cup of coffee is, have you created a set of brand guidelines?

As these will help steer the design, they will help the web designer to know exactly which hex codes to use, where the company logo should be placed, and they also tell designer which font to use.

So, for example when you go say a solicitor’s website, often the font is quite different from say the font that is used on a local coffee shop, there were literally thousands of different fonts to choose from, so often it can accelerate the web design process, if you have to hand for your web developers, a set of brand guidelines, which can stipulate which fonts to use, what colour the font should be, company logo, and also the branding company might come up with a set of social media icons as well.

Do you know how many pages, or if have you created a site-map for your web designers?

What can really help the web design process, is if you pass to your website designers what is called a “site map”, that is you have thought about how many pages you want on your new company website, what you want from them pages to be, for example an “about us” page and how many pages your business will need.

If this is not thought about right at the start, then it’s entirely possible to miss out a service or product range that your business offers.
So, let’s say for example that you run a business in Cardiff, the business specialises in security, so you approach a web designer to build a website to advertise and install alarms and also CCTV.

However, halfway through the web design process, you may have realised that you have missed out talking about barriers which are fitted at car parks and that you also install these, therefore is really important to sit down with the web design business, talk about everything your business offers, so this can get translated into a really good web design.

Will you require our copywriters to write the text?

A lot of the businesses we work with, ranging from companies in Llanishen, right through to Cardiff Bay, won’t have the time to write all of the text, we therefore have copywriters who can write the text for you.

Why a lot of businesses often need ongoing support from their web designers

/in /by

Introduction

For a lot of start-up businesses, it can sometimes be a bit of a rush to get the business up-and-running, and this often means that there are so many things to think about and it can be a very hectic time.

For example, you might be meeting with various estate agents, to find a suitable office premises, you might be interviewing staff for many different jobs that your company needs filling, you might be purchasing furniture so that you have everything ready the first day at work.

Now, like most businesses, you might have recognised that you need a brand-new website for your business all set-up and ready to go, yet some business owners, make the mistake of hiring a web designer, just purely on the basis of price alone.

That’s to say, you might be on social media see a business that offers say a fixed-price CMS website offer, and you might be like, wow, that looks like a great price.

However, this article has been written, by our web designers, to highlight why it’s important to pick a professional web designer or agency, not just on price alone, but on the basis that you wish to work with them on a long-term basis.

A lot of businesses think, that they should go for the cheapest quote, however we think it’s much more important to pick web design agency where each offers you an affordable price, but also one that you are happy to work with over the long term basis.

One which your happy to pick up the phone and chat to, one which explains everything to you, one which answers their emails in a timely manner.

As this article will illustrate to you, you don’t just need your marketing company to design the website, and then that’s it, instead often you need the web designers for ongoing services such as website hosting, domain name renewal service, writing blog posts say every week, organic SEO and also sometimes CMS training on how to use the website as well for example.

So for example, getting a website built might just be the start, you may have a really well-designed website, say built in PHP, it’s a WordPress site, your really happy with the work the web developers have done, your over the moon.

But, you might not want to hire say one business to manage the seo, one to manage the businesses social media, such as Facebook, another to write the blog posts, and a separate hosting company, and a separate domain name company, so why not think about hiring Top Space, here in Wales, as we can offer all of these services under one roof.

Professional Website Designer

First things first, we think it’s really important not just to pick any old web design company, but to pick a professional website designer, which designs high-quality websites, which will really take the time to understand your business, and to produce a really good CMS website of your company.

Far too many businesses, offer cheap quotes, and so many companies hire the wrong agency or business, then end up your website this very hard to edit, SEO cannot easily be applied, and it may suffer from a lot of glitches because the CMS might not have updates. For example, the site might be a bespoke site, built by PHP developers, but it might be a poorly designed CMS, it might have a dashboard that’s very hard to use, so even adding something simple, like a 500 word article, that you’ve just been busy writing over a coffee, well, it might be so difficult to add the post, a meta title, meta description and the article, well you give up! And this is what can happen when you hire the wrong web developers, every change you make to the site, no matter how simple it sounds, well becomes difficult.

So, then you might even resort to emailing the web developers for help, which will obviously cost more, so our best advice is hire a respected web designer, or agency, and pick a CMS which best suits your company, for example WordPress might be best suited to what your business needs?

For example, it might be a bespoke website, built in a CMS that is unique to that web design agency, yet what happens if that web designer, or the business was to go bankrupt? Can you receive support for the website?

This is why it’s worth carefully thinking about which company you opt for, to pick a company that offers you really good value.

Hosting and Domain Names

At a minimum, you often have to deal with your website designers on an ongoing basis in order to renew your domain names and hosting, you might do this with a separate company, but a lot of companies often go with the company that either the web designers recommend, or the website hosting and domain name renewal service that they offer. This means, lets say you hire a Cardiff web developer, they build the site, sometimes the domain name, the hosting is included in the price of design sometimes for say a year, yet after a year, often you have to pay each month, or year, yet some web designers, they charge for domain name and hosting right from the start, so this is something worth asking about, as costs do vary depending on which design agency you hire to build your website.

Edits

We would say it is very likely that you are going to need edits in the future for your companies website, this might be something as basic as changing the businesses phone number and the address or it could be something much more complicated, for example, it could be a lot of work, for example that the business is going to change the products or services that it offers, therefore the evergreen content marketing might need to be rewritten completely, which is obviously going to take up a lot of time.

Therefore, whichever company that you do end up hiring here in Cardiff, for example, you may hire a company that is based in the heart of Cardiff Bay near the docks, or perhaps you hire a freelancer which is based in say Llanishen within Cardiff Wales, you should make sure that you have a good working relationship with that person or web design agency, so that you can work with them if edits are needed in the future to your company’s website.

SEO

What a lot of companies quickly recognises is, that they need their business to invest in SEO, therefore rather than hire a separate SEO agency sometimes the web designers will also offer SEO as a service, however as a business here in Cardiff, or whenever your business is based, you should only invest in top quality white hat SEO.

Content Marketing

You may wish to hire a digital marketing agency that’s located here in Cardiff, which also offers content marketing and SEO, this written work often needs to be written on a regular basis, and this can sometimes be very time-consuming, this is why a lot of businesses, ranging from plumbers right through to large law firms, use their marketing agency to write this work for them.

NAP

Your name of your business, it’s address or its phone number (NAP) may need updating, sometimes this means that the web developer will need to rewrite the footer text, the header and also the contact us page, therefore you might need a PHP web developer to do this, in the future.

Plug-in updates

Some CMS, that’s content management systems for those that do not know what this means, will need updating, for example let’s say that you have a rather quality WordPress website built by a website design company, often you will still need the help of your agency, that’s to keep the plugins regularly updated, for example the WordPress plugins will often need updating on a regular basis, you may wish to hire an agency or lets say a local freelancer which can do this for you. Its important to keep your businesses CMS plugins up to date, for example lets say you run a law firm, your based in Wales, you might not employ anyone in the company who updates the website, its therefore important to hire a web developer or agency which makes sure your company website is updated, that the plugins, for example the WordPress plugins, that these are kept updated.

Back-up the website

You might wish to hire a company that not just designs your new website, but will also makes regular back-ups and sends them to you, you should therefore enquire whether your web designers, offer this service to back-up your website up on a regular basis for you, or not?

 

WordPress Training

Your business may require WordPress training, or other CMS training, you should therefore enquire whether your web design company that you hired, in Cardiff, offers the service not?

Affordable amendments to the website

You might get a really cheap quote to design the new website, let’s say to design a WordPress website, but how much does the agency charge per hour, to make web design amendments in the future?

You might find it it’s rather expensive per hour to hire web developers for the web design changes that your company needs, therefore you may have wish to pick another web design business here in Wales, therefore you should ask what the amendment rate is per hour, or the hourly rate for the web designers?

Update the CMS

You should enquire who will update the CMS? For example if you have a WordPress CMS, you will often require regular updates, and you should enquire whether the web design business offers this service?

 

CMS training

Glitches

If a glitch occurs, you should enquire how much it will cost to fix the problem?

 

Good business relationship

Therefore the basis of this whole article is all about whether you think you can have a good working relationship with the web designers, therefore it’s not just about getting a website designed, it’s about finding a company that your business wants to work with on a long-term basis.

Affordable fees

You should find web designers which offer affordable fees.

How our business can help

Whether you run a car dealership, you are a plumber, you run a law firm here in the city of Cardiff, we have web developers and web designers which can build brilliant website for your business.

 

 

 

 

Which elements do you think are important to include when designing a website’s footer?

/in /by

Introduction

If you hire a really good web developer, then every single part of the site should be well-designed.

Time should therefore be spent coding and designing the site, so that your company has a well-designed website. Alternatively, you may well be reading this, as you’re thinking about tasking your PHP web developer, to redesign the footer, and use split testing to see if the design alteration, to the PHP, results in lower bounce rate?

Whatever the reason for wanting to redesign the footer, we have sat down with our web developers, and we asked them, which elements do we as web design company believe are crucial when designing a footer?

Now, don’t get us wrong, we can’t speak for all businesses, what one company has in a footer is likely to be different from another, every business is different, and we think the website should reflect your company’s unique personality, yet with that said, we can make some generalisations, as to what we think you may wish to include in your footer.

So whether you run a gin bar in Cardiff, a hairdressing saloon, or perhaps you sell used cars, and your thinking of having your web designers, redesign elements of your website, whether it be a WordPress site, Joomla or another type of CMS, this is the article for you.

What is a websites footer?

So, let’s say your looking for a local business, which sells organic coffee in Cardiff, yet is also a coffee shop, so you can get your coffee fix for the day, and sample the goods, before you purchase a massive sack of coffee, okay, so at the bottom of the website, normally where the companies address, phone number and let’s say social media icons are, lets say the companies Instagram account, or Facebook icon, or Twitter button is, well, this is the footer, its sometimes a different colour, so the web developers may say code site, so across the whole website, the footer is say black, so then all the social media icons, NAP information, is added to the footer.

How with some WordPress websites, it can be east to edit the footer?

Here at our agency, we simply think, that the WordPress sites that we build, we think are brilliant, not just because they look brilliant, but because, they have a Dashboard, which is called the WordPress Dashboard, now, this Dashboard, with the sites that we build, have the functionality so that the footer text can be changed, now you might be saying, well, why’s that even important… well, we will explain.

Let’s say you run a company, your business is in Cardiff Bay, yet, you decide to change units, so instead of being at one rented unit, in Cardiff Bay, you move around the corner, as such the address changes, so does the phone number, now, with some websites, built by some web designers, well, they do not allow for edits to be made easily, in matter of fact, with some websites, unless you have coding knowledge, its not possible, because they may not have a Dashboard, or admin area, instead a web developer is needed to make any wording changes.

However, with WordPress, things are so different, without any coding knowledge, so for example, you don’t need to understand PHP, you can simply log-in to WordPress, open the WordPress Dashboard, click Widgets, or another tab, then it can sometimes be as simple, as editing the address, and phone number in the editor.

NAP information

So what does NAP mean? And why is NAP important to have on your companies website?

Well, NAP simply means, name of the company, the companies address, and company phone number, its crucial to have, as if you talk to any good seo agency that’s worth their salt, well, they will tell you that NAP is important to improve your company’s local SEO.

So, when you do sit down with the web developers, or let’s say the person at the web design business that is managing the build of your new website, make sure, that you talk about where your companies NAP information is going to go, can it be indexed? And, also, if you do change say phone number, or address, can this be easily updated in the Dashboard?

If so, can the web designers offer training?

Cardiff or more than one location?

So, lets say you run a business that has multiple locations, for example, you own various bars and restaurants throughout Cardiff, so you need a web design business, that can design a website, but you may want to put the locations in the footer.

Why do this? Well, often the footer is used right across the entire website, so the design of the footer is consistent, now, when you talk to various seo companies, they will tell you, that its important to lower the bounce rate, now, when someone’s looking to book a restaurant, they may want to know quickly, where the restaurants address is, how far is it from them, they might be thinking, right?

Well, therefore, you can hire your web developers to add the restaurants address into the footer, so that, the address is easily found, so this is helping your customers, by clearly stating where your restaurants and bars, across Cardiff are, this might just be one way, that your digital marketing agency uses to lower the bounce rate on your site.

May want to include recent blog posts?

Let’s say you hire a marketing agency here in Wales, and lets say you sell mountain bikes, you may have invested a lot in content marketing, reviewing new bikes, electric bikes and also mountain bikes, so one way to help promote your most recent blog posts, is to hire a web designer, which can add a blog post feed, into the footer.

 

What does my web designer mean when they mention split testing?

/in /by

Introduction

Within this article, our web designers talk about what “A/B testing” is all about, which is also sometimes referred to as split testing. We will talk about why leading brands, and many companies use split testing, to help improve the company’s web design.

For example, a team of PHP web developers might for example, redesign the mobile version of the website, they might make the main menu easier to use, redesign the code, so that the homepage has a new design, they might change the colour scheme, from say one shade of orange, to another, this is to see if the HTML, PHP or let’s say the Javascript alterations help improve the company’s web design or not.

·        What does split testing mean?

·        Why is split testing used?

·        Why a web developer is needed

·        Why sometimes seo agencies and web designers work together

·        How it can help to improve CRO, that’s conversion rate optimisation

·        Why web design now means that a lot companies, don’t just have a new website built, and then leave the design the same, it now means a lot of companies, in Wales, now use split testing, to improve the web design on an on-going basis.

 

So let’s say that your web design company has asked you into their offices for a meeting, and they are showing you the final draft of your company website.

You are pleased with the design, it’s exactly what you wanted, and then the designers turned you ask will you need split testing in the future?

Now, you might have never heard of split testing, you might be scratching your head thinking well what is that why will my business need it?

This article is dedicated to explaining what split testing is, the benefits if the web design agency does it right, and why it’s worth thinking about even after you’ve had your website designed.

So, what exactly is split testing?

So, let’s think of your website as you would a car, rarely does a car manufacture ever make of vehicle, and then think that that design is so perfect that it can never be improved upon.

Now turn this concept to your own website, it’s likely that even if you have paid a lot for your website, that’s the say you gone to a top web design company, it’s still rare that it cannot be improved upon.

And when we say improved upon, what most companies mean is improve it so that it improves the bottom line.

So, for example, let’s say that you sell electric mountain bikes, let’s say that the web developers change the homepage, they for example make it easier to go to each section of the company website, which sells different brands of electric mountain bikes.

After the change is implemented, you notice that it’s people are going straight to the brand mountain bike that they want, and that your sales increase, now you might not want to make this change, without checking that it is improving sales, so what some web designers do, is use split testing, and split testing is used to compare your design with the new design to see if this helps to improve sales.

 

Is A/B testing the same thing?

Your web developer, might refer to split testing, as a B testing, sometimes these terms are used interchangeably.

Why is split testing so important?

Split testing is so important, because it’s improving the design, for example you might have a website designed, think it looks brilliant, it’s just when you use split testing, your agency might tell you that when they voted say the design of the main menu, the your sales increased by on average 7%, and obviously as a business, you want to do everything you can to help improve the design.

It’s kind of like owning a shop, and you are rearranging your stock in the best way that you know how to increase sales.

So, let’s say for example that you sell shirts suits and ties, and you notice that when you put your ties at the front of the store you sell more of these, as people pass to the store to purchase shirts, so this is exactly the same concept with your company website, you might want to have an ongoing relationship with your web designers, so that they can constantly improve the design, to hopefully help increase sales.

What does conversion rate optimisation mean?

When you visit your local SEO company, you might hear the SEO consultant talk about conversion rate optimisation, now they might talk often about backlinks, on-site SEO, but it might not talk about conversion rate optimisation that much, so it might be a term that you’re unfamiliar with?

However, the same concept is used here, it’s about altering the SEO and the design to help improve sales, so for example let’s say that you have a company website designed using WordPress, and the WordPress web developers then redesign the homepage, and they do that by adding items which are the most popular in terms of sales to the homepage.

Let’s say for example you are an electrical retailer, and you specialise in retailing kitchen items such as cookers, fridge freezers, washing machines and toasters.

You notice that when you put your bestselling washing machines on the home page, this increases sales, so this is the web developers, making a design improvement and this is what conversion rate optimisation is about., That’s making changes to help improve sales.

Why is it, now for web designers to work with a SEO agency?

A lot of businesses, still think that once you’ve got your website built, say using WordPress, then that’s it it’s built and it doesn’t need to be improved, however this is not the case, a lot of businesses still have their website improved on a regular basis.

So, where you might have contacted web design agencies, got a quote, got the website designed, and some businesses might have left design the same for a long period of time, however now it’s more Common is the businesses to have a website designed, then to have it constantly improved using split testing for example.

Let’s give you an example, let’s say that you run an e-commerce business and you sell flowers online, and the flowers then delivered to people’s homes.

You might find that working with a digital marketing agency, they are able to improve the design, so that it makes it easier for customers to find the flowers that they want, that they purchased the items quicker, therefore the web designers are using split testing to improve the design, and this means that they might be making design alterations on a regular basis.

So, as you can see, a lot of businesses now don’t just have a website designed, and then leave it the same for a long period, instead they often use a marketing agency which offers split testing

So, are what you saying is that a website needs its design constantly tweaked?

Some businesses do use split testing, and some businesses therefore change the design on a regular basis, however some businesses just keep their website the same

What are the benefits of split testing?

 

If done correctly, by a respected web design company, then it’s possible that split testing, can be used to improve the design

What’s features of the website are sometimes changed?

It could be anything, from the main menu, and to the homepage, through to the colours that are used

Will this mean altering the code, for example the PHP?

Often it does mean altering the code, so for example a PHP web developer might be needed

How our web design company can help

We run our web design company within the city of Cardiff, we therefore have many clients within Cardiff, yet we also work with companies that are located all over the UK