Written by: Bob Hoskins
Date: 01/08/2024
Topic: Web Design Cardiff

WordPress as a headless CMS might sound like a mouthful, but trust us, it’s a game-changer. If you’ve been using WordPress for blogging, you’re missing its superpowers. Let’s dive into what a headless CMS is, why WordPress rocks in this role, and how it can supercharge your website.

So, there’s a bit of a buzzword among web designers at the moment: design a “headless” website. And, well, it’s a game-changer. We shall explain why having a well-designed “headless” website could benefit your business.
What is a headless CMS, anyway?

So, what exactly is a “headless” content management system?

So, we will have to get a bit technical here but bear with us as we elaborate. Quite put, a headless website is a type of content management (CMS) for short, where the front end, the part the shopper sees, is decoupled from the back end, which is the part web developers use to design the website.

What this means, in a nutshell, is that you display your website on apps, websites, etc.

Are you still confused?

Let us elaborate a bit more.

What are the main benefits of going headless for your WordPress website?

Here are the main benefits of gaining a headless WordPress website for your business:

You can use different designs for the front end; for example design used Vue.js

Faster, well, it can be supersonic to be fair

Excellent web developers can deliver your content through some things web designers call an API. This means that this increases how fast the website is; therefore, opting for a headless WordPress website can help to improve the website’s UX user experience.

So, how does a headless website work?

Step 1: Obtain a WordPress website

Your web developers will need to enable Rest API. It’s important to know that WordPress actually comes with a built-in Rest API. In layman’s terms, this means that content, such as the homepage, can be fetched using JSON data, which can be used anywhere.

The next stage is to choose your front end

So, often, a web designer will use either React, Angular, or another popular option, Vue.JS, which then allows the web developers to start designing the front end of your new headless website.

You then fetch the content via an API

Your web designers can then request the API fetch the content; for example, many web design agencies rely on REST API to pull the content directly from WordPress.

Display the content

Then, using the REST API, you can directly place the content onto front-end technology. Therefore you will then gain a headless WordPress website.

React. app

Many businesses globally are using WordPress to gain a fast e-commerce website managed by WordPress, yet because it’s headless, you can use React—app to display your products.

In conclusion

There’s one thing for sure: Customers and web design companies alike will be talking about headless CMS websites for a very long time to come. You will be able to use WordPress CMS, which web designers all over the world like using, yet now you can get the front end to display on apps.

So whether you want a headless website to improve your SEO performance, gain a faster website, or perhaps improve security, we can help you gain a headless WordPress website and improve your web design.
With prices starting from £950.00, it’s clear why our web designers work their socks off throughout the year. Every month, our web developers design brochure websites for many well-known Cardiff businesses. They come to us because we offer unbelievable value for money.

So, if you’re on Google now looking for “Cardiff web design businesses”, do call us; we have a range of packages available. Do call our expert team today.

Date: 31/07/2024

Written by: Bob

Okay, so it’s still in the prototype stage, yet as we all know, A.I Technology is moving at a rapid pace. So, if your SEO team is solely focused on optimising your website for Google (that’s a full-time job in itself), well, you also have to consider when SearchGPT comes along.

So, what is SearchGPT, and how will it change search engine optimisation, web design, and how shoppers shop for products/services online?
First things first, what is SearchGPT?

So SearchGPT? It is still in the prototype stage, yet it’s a hybrid between a standard search engine and A.I., so it will provide real-time answers. For those who don’t know, the Chat GPT you’re using at the moment, even if you’re paying a monthly subscription for the latest version, is trained on a language model. This means, well, the information is from a few months back, so ChatGPT doesn’t know about, say, today’s news.
Yet, with SearchGPT, well, that’s all about the change. It will have the latest information.

Human testers

So, we always think of search engine giants such as Google as companies that are all mathematical formulas and AI. But Google and Microsoft use human testers to test things out, and their feedback is normally what’s used to design the search engine around what shoppers want.

So Chat GPT has reportedly asked 10,000 people to test this service.

What’s all the fuss about- what’s new?

So, RankBrain is thought to monitor shoppers’ interactions with a website, including the bounce rate, dwell time, and whether they visit another website.

With this information, Google can monitor “engagement metrics.”

Then Google is thought to reshuffle its results accordingly, based on how interested the shoppers are in that business. After all, let’s say the business sells kitchen sinks; if most shoppers leave after just 2 seconds flat, it’s clear that the website is not doing an excellent job at selling and advertising that product.

So, ChatGPT A. It is different; it’s not there solely to monitor user engagement.

It’s there to form an answer to a question and then to basically have a conversation with the shopper so that they can ask whatever they want about that product.

For example:

“find me a car under 25k.”
– Okay, make that an electric car
– Okay, now show me an electric car with the best safety rating
See what we mean? So, instead of starting a new search, ChatGPT Search knows that you’re asking more and more questions to find a car that best suits you.

Source Credibility

SearchGPT: OpenAi has stated, “We want SearchGPT to provide fast and accurate answers while clearly citing the sources used.”

By clearly citing credible sources, SearchGPT aims to boost their trust and reliability, giving users instant access to high-quality information.

Show sources

It’s been reported that SearchGPT will show its sources. So, for example, if it says this is the “safest electric car on sale in 2024,” it might point to a car review website or, let’s say, a car crash test company. So, basically, the shopper is also reassured of knowing where the facts and information have come from.

How could this change web design?

So, good web designers and digital marketing companies are often hired by their clients to improve their search engine optimisation, which is usually abbreviated to just “SEO.”

So, if you go to a bargain basement and get a cheap website designed, well, it’s close to sure that the web design agency can’t spend that extended writing white hat, ever-green content marketing that’s original. Google E-EAT may flag it as low quality, then if that search engine doesn’t think the work is high quality, then so may Bing and, therefore, SearchGPT.

So, instead, you must invest time or a bigger marketing budget to ensure the text is high-quality, super valuable for your shoppers, and well-written. Think about being as helpful as you possibly can.

Answer each question in as much detail as you can, hire good copywriters, and make sure that you hire web design businesses that can design a website so that you can offer helpful content marketing to your shoppers. However, the website should also be designed so that there isn’t too much text in huge, massive blocks of text, as shoppers often don’t want to read long paragraphs.

So, you must blend good web design with offering information shoppers will find helpful:

Top tips from our web designers:

– Don’t overwhelm the shopper with large blocks of text; split the writing up into manageable sections
– Answer questions your shoppers often have
– Make sure the work is well written and follows the advice of Google E-EAT.

What is SearchGPT, and how could this change web design and SEO forever?

Our web designers, based in Cardiff, explain how SearchGPT could change SEO and how companies design their websites.

Introduction

What can sometimes be perplexing to some people is when their web design agency starts to talk about technical jargon such as mentioning “JavaScript” and “PHP” and also designing an “AMP” version of the website.

To somebody who’s never had a website designed, well all this technical language can get confusing, so much so that you may be reaching for the aspirin during your meeting with the web designers.

But do not worry; we are committed to simplifying the web design process at this agency. We’ve dedicated a whole article to explaining the main differences between web design and web development because these terms differ in terms of what they mean when designing a new website for your business.

Web design concentrates on the aesthetics and the U.X, which is short for “user experience”.

Web design, the aspect most customers understand, and something they often type on Google when they want to obtain a new company website.

Web design is primarily about the aesthetics and the UX. However, its not just about how the website looks but also about how users can interact with it- this is what web designers call the U.X, and this needs to be carefully considered, in order to lower the businesses bounce rate and improve the organic search engine optimisation.

A well-designed website should look stunning and prioritises user experience (U.X), making it easy to navigate.

This unwavering focus on user experience ensures that your customers will interact positively with your website, what we mean by that is the dwell time should be higher, the bounce lower, helping to improve the companies organic search engine optimisation.

So, to give you an example of what we are talking about, we are web designers based in the heart of Cardiff’s city centre, and even though we’ve designed plenty of WordPress websites for various customers, we still encounter websites that are sometimes confusing and difficult to use.

For example, from recollection, we can remember a rather minimalistic website with a main menu designed to be in the top right-hand corner, which you needed to click on it, to expand the main menu, the “burger menu”- well it was very hard to find.

And this had thinking, surely this must be increasing the companies bounce rate.

So, web design is a balance by looking brilliant and also being functional.

Web design, therefore, concentrates on the layout of the page and the design

Therefore, web design considers different aspects, such as how the header section will look, how the footer will look, how wide it is, where the main menu is located, and where the content marketing should be placed.

Colour scheme (hex codes)

Web designers need to carefully consider the colour scheme (which hex codes they will use) so that it replicates the brand guidelines.

If you haven’t got brand guideline, lets say because you are a start-up business, you should carefully consider the colour scheme because it can have a dramatic effect on the look and the feel of the website; if for example you want to go after the premium end of the market, or if you want a different appearance, such being a low cost company, then often different colour scheme are used.

For example, we were recently shopping for kitchen sinks. Some retailers crowd the page with special offers, bright colours so you remember the brand.

On the other end, if you are looking for a high-end copper, hand-beaten sink, the website is often more minimalist, more luxurious colours, such as gold, black and white are often used, to show it’s an expensive premium product.

The typography is entirely different on a premium, expensive website, and often the pages are less cluttered is more about concentrating on show casing high-quality product that justifies sink being let’s say thousand pounds a sink! Wow.

User Experience (UX)

You want to create a positive user experience
Whether your walking into a gym, a hotel, or a fancy restaurant, a friendly, smiling face greeting you changes the whole atmosphere.

You should keep this in mind when designing your website.

Obviously a shopper doesn’t want to be greeted by a vast smiling face whenever looking to buy a product online.
What they do want instead, often is a simple website; a website thats gets them to the product or service that they wish with a minimal amount of effort; they don’t want to be greeted with main menu, that’s overly cluttered, and full of so many products, that the shopper doesn’t find what they want, which will increase the bounce rate.

Creating a good user experience should be like a helping hand, helping the shopper throughout the buying journey, offering advice about the product and assisting in terms of offering good customer service via web chat and phone numbers or offering a contact forms for them to fill out; and they should all be a breeze to use.

Responsive

We live busy lives, so many people are strapped for time when buying items and services. Therefore, many people are purchasing items on the move, on the bus, on the train, or on the subway.

Your website should work on smartphones and tablets and be tested extensively to ensure it works perfectly.

Wireframes

We recently watched a program where a famous car brand sculpted a prototype car out of solid clay.
This is similar to when your web developers wire-frame a website. It’s not the finished product, and is not usable until the web design is complete.

However the wireframing and the web developers allow for an outline sketch of the website to be created, to understand where the different elements can go, for example, where the main menu goes, and whether text can be laid out on the page.

Bring your vision to life without the complication

Some web designers spend forever and a day creating a website; however, we have been designing content management systems for over ten years. So, we have got down to fine art by liaising with the customer to understand what they want quickly; we can then build quality websites for them in a short period of time, often in less than a month from start to finish.

We are the company to call, if you’re looking for highly talented web designers in Cardiff. We have over ten years of experience helping businesses to improve their organic SEO and obtain high-quality websites. Starting at just £950, we are the company to call.

Date: 29/07/2024

For many businesses, getting a website designed is just the start of promoting their business. Business owners often now know that they need to appear on page one of Google organically, and for that to happen, they need to improve the company’s search engine optimisation. You want as many shoppers as possible to find your business on Google.

Therefore, we highly recommend setting up a Google Search Console account.

The reason we strongly recommend setting up a Google Search Console account as soon as your new website goes live is because you will want to monitor the following metrics:

– Clicks – The number of times your website was clicked on in the search results
– Average position – where did your website rank for a keyword? You set a date for yesterday, the last week, or over many months so you can see if your website ranks for that keyword in Google’s organic results
– Click-through rate (CTR): how many shoppers clicked on your business result in the SERPs?

What is Google Search Console?

So, first things what exactly is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is offered for free by Google; it’s beneficial for monitoring how well your business’s search engine optimisation is improving. A good SEO consultant will use this tool for many purposes; here what our web design agency used Google Analytics and Google Search Console for:

– Check backlinks
– When we take over the management of a website, we check to see if there are any manual action penalties
– We use it daily to see where our clients rank for keywords they want to improve their SEO.

Improving the business’s organic visibility

You could have a website designed by the world’s best web design agency, but if SEO is not improved, that website may get few visitors at all.
So, often, businesses want a well-designed website, yet what’s just as important is that the SEO company works very hard to get that business on the first page of Google for as many products and services as your company sells.

So, to do this, many companies use Google Search Console to check daily where the business ranks for specific keywords. When talking to excellent web designers and SEO consultants, they will tell you that, sure, they often subscribe to many various SEO tools; however, a lot of companies like to use Google Search Console because the data has come straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, meaning the SEO data, is 100% accurate and reliable, simply because its come from Google.

Optimise Your Content

Help to write more valuable and helpful content marketing
Google released a significant Google algorithm update called the Google Helpful Content update.
This Google Helpful Content update rewarded businesses that published high-quality, white-hat, well-written content marketing, which showed that the author understood Google E-EAT.

This means that in every piece of content marketing that the business publishes, the author should demonstrate Expertise, Experience, authority, and trustworthiness in every piece of writing they publish.

So, as web designers, it’s essential that content marketing is well-written, white-hat, and written by an expert.
You can also use Google Search Console to see which keywords have the highest impressions. So, let’s say that you’re a solicitor and offer a range of services, yet employment solicitors + name of city gets, by far, by a country mile, the highest number of searches; you can then concentrate on optimising your website to get as many visitors as you possibly can.

Use SEO tools + Google Search Console to improve your website. continually

Many local businesses in Cardiff, the capital of Wales, don’t just want to hire a web designer to design a brochure website and then that’s it. Instead, the business will often need ongoing assistance to improve its search engine optimisation. This is a long road; it often takes at least six months before a local business, such as a local solicitor, can get onto page one of Google.

Yet, most marketing agencies, ours included, use Google Search Console for two main reasons. The first is to know which keywords to optimise the website for. The second is to use this information from GSC in the SEO reporting. Many businesses like the fact that the data has come directly from Google Search Console, so it’s 100% reliable.

Discovery New Opportunities

Come to a highly experienced web design company.

Most of our clients come from client recommendations, yet we are also easily found on Google for both “web design” and “SEO” terms; the reason is that we are absolutely brilliant at doing both.

So, this is why many people don’t just choose the “one trick pony” web designers; they partner with us because we offer both services, which means our hardworking web designers can design a fantastic website for your business. Then, when the web developers have finished creating a tremendous website, our SEO consultants can take over. For a fixed monthly fee, we can use Google Search Console and our vast wealth of SEO knowledge to move your business up Google’s ranks.

We have helped many Welsh businesses obtain unique websites with a starting price of just £950.00.

You may also wish to hire us to improve your company’s SEO. For 950, we can design a unique, stunning WordPress CMS website for your business.

Prices for local SEO start from just £500 PCM, with a 6-month minimum commitment.

If you need a website designed or help to improve your company’s SEO, why not call us?

We can handle everything for you, from designing a brand-new WordPress website to adding a Google Search Console and Google Analytics account. Once that has been completed, our team can start to improve your company’s organic search engine optimisation for you.
So why not call us today?

HTML, is the backbone of a website, is a crucial element that ensures the site functions correctly and as you would expect. While you may not see the HTML coding when you visit a website, you certainly interact with it and use it, as its what allows all of the buttons to work.

But what exactly is HTML? And why It’s not as complex as it may seem.

HTML is simply an abbreviation, and this stands for Hypertext Markup Language.

Our goal is to demystify the complex HTML language often used by web designers. So, grab a cup of tea and a biscuit, and let’s delve into the world of what Hypertext Markup Language is.

Hypertext

Hypertext is simply text that contains links to other pages or websites.

You might use a CMS like WordPress?

This has a dashboard and an inbuilt editor. This means you don’t need coding knowledge to make simple edits to the text, such as adding a page title or adding an internal link or to make the text bold.

However, it’s still important to know the basics of HTML. This knowledge can empower you, especially when you need to manually edit text a page within some content management systems.

Let’s dive straight into explaining what some of these HTML tags are. Don’t worry, it’s not as daunting as it may sound.

What is a H1 tag?

So we start with this simply because the page H1 tag is essential for SEO purposes and web design
Googlebot will use this to work out what the page is about; for example, if you are selling kitchen blenders, pressure washers or perhaps you’re selling a brand-new refrigerators, you will often write the brand of product and what the item is within the H1 tag.

The H1 tag, therefore, tells what the page is about.

<br> This adds a line break

SEO companies and web designers often use this because sometimes they will be adding a blog post management systems and formatting the text. Adding the line break text to the page allows for a line break to make the text,more digestible in paragraph form rather than it being a massive text block.

Alt text

You can add code to explain what is shown in the picture, this is called the “alt text”.

For example, if it’s a labrador dog with a bone in its mouth, you might wish to write something along the lines of alt text: “labrador dog with a bone in its mouth sitting in the garden”.

This tells Googlebot what that picture is about.

You can have can have some SEO benefits because if there are ten pages of say various washing machines, the alt text alone clearly shows that those pages are selling washing machines.

URL structure

Although this is not technically HTML, you should add a SEO friendly URL, for example, a page about garden fencing; use the URL extension/garden-fencing

Meta title Meta description

Again, you can use HTML code within the source code to label the meta title and meta descriptions; this can help to improve your businesses CTR.

Would you like a website designed?

You might have found all this talk about HTML confusing, but do not worry. We can design a brilliant website for your business in under four weeks, so why not call us to get the ball rolling on our designer’s designing a website for your company?
This is a brief overview of some important HTML text that can be added to a page; there are many more.
Make sure you check back for the latest web design help and advice.

Introduction

Subject: Web Design
Date: 16/07/2024

When designing a website, creating the correct initial impression through a well-designed homepage is absolutely essential. Not only will this generate the right impression of your business, but it can also help improve your company’s organic SEO by lowering the “bounce rate.”

This article will explain how it can further strengthen your homepage web design and enhance your company’s SEO.
In this article, we will cover:

– Why it’s essential to have well-designed website navigation
– Why it’s important to have super-fast website hosting
– Why the homepage must be well designed to help lower your business “bounce rate.”

Introduction

The homepage often serves as the initial point of contact for most shoppers when they visit your company website.
Given that the homepage is usually the first page most customers are greeted with, its design and functionality are of utmost importance. A well-designed homepage not only creates a positive first impression but also facilitates easy access to the product or service pages they are interested in.

For example, someone who wants to buy a new washing machine, will want to go from the homepage, and straight to the product section which sells washing machines with the minimum amount of clicks.

This article discusses some things you should consider when designing the homepage for your company website.
Well-designed website navigation

As the world’s global brands and major retailers will know, getting a shopper to the right page is essential as quickly as possible. If you don’t, the bounce rate often increases for the homepage. People usually want to reach the right product or service page in just a few seconds of visiting your website. If they find the main menu to be confusing or frustrating, the business’s organic SEO could be damaged.

Therefore, it’s essential to have a well-designed main menu

Keep things simple

We have seen websites that are sometimes too minimalistic, so much so that the main menu is hidden in the right hand corner and sometimes difficult to click on.
If the button to expand the main menu is just a tiny dot in the right-hand corner then we would recommend changing it to a bigger main menu.

You have to think of your website design a bit like you are designing the layout for an airport. The airport is designed to help people get to the right terminal quickly. The same is true for your company website.

You have to design the website to get shoppers from the homepage to the right page with the minimum number of clicks so they can get to the right product page without increasing their bounce rate.

Calls to action (CTA)

A call to action could be something as simple as a contact form replicated on every page, and you could say something along the lines of “do you have a question or want us to give your ringback”. This is a call to action.
This is a straightforward example of what could be implemented to help increase your business’s sales.
Instead of a certain percentage of shoppers leaving the website, they might ask a question, resulting in your business making a sale.

Experienced web designers, whether they work for an agency or as freelancers, understand the importance of CTAs.

They know how to strategically place these prompts, such as “sign up to now newsletter” across your website to guide users and encourage them to take action. Their expertise is invaluable in creating a website that not only looks great but also drives conversions.

Fast hosting

So, the website must be well designed and functional in terms of everything working correctly and ensuring customers get to the correct pages as quickly as possible. This is achieved by having a well designed main menu.

The website should be supersonic fast. This can also help to reduce the bounce rate.

In conclusion, the website needs to be well designed, but it also needs to think about offering quality information.
Good web designers will know about the Google Helpful Content update. This rewards websites that offer valuable content marketing with placing those helpful pages or blog posts higher up in Google’s SERP’s.

The information on your company website needs to be valuable and helpful to shoppers. This will reduce the bounce rate and also improve your organic SEO.

This is why I never recommend buying an overly cheap website. It’s worth paying more for a quality website that explains what the business can offer in detail. You will often need a combination of excellent copywriters, web designers, and highly experienced SEO consultants to work together, to design a fantastic website for your business.

Come to one of the best web designers in Cardiff

If you’re looking for web designers in the city of Cardiff, Wales, whether that’s to design a brochure website has just four pages or need an e-commerce website built that has potentially over 1000 pages then you want to contact us today for a free quote?

Introduction

Let’s say you’ve just started your business here in South Wales. You’ve printed business cards, and the company vehicles, such as your van, have been signed and written. There’s just one thing missing, yes, that’s right: your company website.

Now, you’re thinking, how long does it take to get a new website designed and built?

Well, you’ve come to the right place to find an answer to that pressing question. We are not new to this game but have built websites for local businesses for over ten years. Our experience puts us in a prime position to offer sound advice on how long it takes to design and build a brochure website.

In this article, you will find ways to help your web designers accelerate the web design process and explain why going cheap rarely pays in the long run.

So, without further ado, let’s examine some factors that dictate the time it takes to design a new website.

Have you got a clear vision?

A clear idea of what you like can make things a piece of cake for your web designers. Some businesses don’t have the foggiest idea, so everything from the colour schemes to how they want the company logo to look must be discussed in long meetings.
Yet, having a clear idea of what you want can massively accelerate the web design process.

So, to further help you along with your web design journey, here are some of the things you may wish also to consider:

– How many pages do you require to be designed
– Do you require a company blog?
– Do you have a business address you would like added?
– Have you already got a company logo designed?
– Have you got a colour scheme in mind?
– Who’s going to be writing the content marketing

Who’s going to be hosting the website?

Most web designers, including our web design agency, can offer you a low cost for hosting the website. However, not all web design companies are so fair. Sometimes, the monthly fee to host the website can be very high.

So you must consider this: if it’s going to cost £500+ per year to host the website with that web design company, do you want to use them?
You need to carefully consider this from the outset simply because many businesses choose web design agencies based on the website’s cost. Rarely do companies consider ongoing expenses, such as domain name renewal and hosting costs. For some businesses, these costs can be chicken feed, which is nothing worth worrying about.

Some other businesses’ hosting costs could be high. When you add up the hosting cost over the years, you have the website with them; you could be talking thousands of pounds.

So, to cut a long story short, consider the hosting and ongoing maintenance costs with that web design agency—if they are too high, go elsewhere.

Who’s going to be writing all of the text?

Thousands of words sometimes need to be written for a new website, such as an e-commerce website, which can take considerable time.
So, you have to ask yourself, will you have the time to write all of this text?
As this article discusses how long it takes to get a website designed, hiring copywriters can help save a lot of time. Often, a large digital marketing agency will have copywriters who can write all the text. This means you save considerable time and can concentrate on other aspects of running your business.

Therefore, a copywriter can work with the web developers. They will know about each page’s layout (or at least they should), and then, like busy bees, they can get to write the work.

First, before any copywriter starts drinking copious amounts of espresso and is set to work on writing everything from product descriptions to your new about us page, you will need a meeting with your copywriters. This is to discuss things like “tone of voice”—does your business want to sound professional yet funny? Or do you want to come across as a severe company? This is why we urge you to meet with your copywriters to discuss this.

Copywriters can help you save a considerable amount of time.

So, in a nutshell, if you’re in a mad rush to get your website designed, fully built, and live so your customers can start visiting it, then we would recommend hiring copywriters. The reason we say this is that some business owners say, yeah, no worries, I will write all the text, save a few quid, yet they then quickly learn that it takes up a considerable amount of time and can sometimes set back the website going live for many, many weeks. So, if you take nothing else away from this article, think about hiring a copywriter.

Talk to your friends in business.
You might be scratching your head right now, thinking, what have my friends, who are also in business, about getting a new website designed?

Well, we shall elaborate…. So, hold your horses!

Businesses up and down the glorious land we call Great Britain, our home, get talked into content management systems, CMS for short, which can sometimes be rubbish.

The CMS maybe like a 1.0 car—great if you want little performance. Yet, if you wish for actual performance, you don’t go for a small-engine petrol car, do you?

Nope, you go for a roaring 3.0 turbo or naturally aspirated if you don’t like turbo lag.
So, what’s the point we are trying to make? Even we will admit we’re going off track here…..

Well, the point we are trying to make is that you want the CMS you choose to be secure, so as your business grows and changes are needed to the website, you can make those changes; you’re not held back by a rubbish CMS that’s basic, rubbish, and just well naff.
So, this is why we ask businesses, when you’re thinking about making a super cheap CMS website, what CMS is it using? If you have never heard of it, other website designers have never heard of it, or it’s a CMS, the web designers have knocked themselves up. Well, just run and dash.

What you want is a well-known CMS used by millions of businesses. That way, even if you have a falling out with one set of web designers and heated e-mails are exchanged, you can walk away and find new web designers the same day who have experience designing websites using that CMS if it’s a popular CMS.

So we deviate, and you are thinking: What does choosing the suitable CMS have to do with how long it takes to build a website?
As the old saying goes, buy cheap, buy it twice.

Well, this 100% applies to getting a website built for your business. With the amount of rubbish, naf, and low-quality designs, the industry has tried approaching SEO agencies for quotes, and some SEO companies won’t even work on the website. It’s that rubbish.
So, pick a website content management system that’s widely used.

Take inspiration from your competitors.

Even the simplest of websites will need a main menu, a mobile version of the website, and a page layout for each page. When you think of a large e-commerce website, there’s a considerable amount to consider.

So, if you sit down with your web designers and say, well, I like how this competitor has designed their main menu. I like how the footer on this competitor’s website looks in terms of their Instagram feed; I like the page layout of this competitor; well, this is all food for thought.
Just like one giant puzzle, where once it looked like all the pieces were scattered, well, they can all start coming together, and your web designers, web developers, copywriters, and, of course, you can start to piece all of this together to make a new design yet incorporate aspects of our websites you like.

Of course, just to be clear here, we are not talking about copying any competitor’s website because they don’t do that, and it’s likely to get their lawyers contacting the website owner. Your new website needs to look different. We are talking about getting some design ideas.

Hi, yes, sorry, I forgot to mention this page. I need to be added…

As web designers who have been around the block (for those who don’t know, that means been around a bit), we often find that customers forget about an extra page they need added.

So, for example, let’s say you’re a solicitor. You’ve been working for a giant law firm for years, and now you’re setting up on your own. Well, it’s not uncommon for you to think, “O, no.” At 1 a.m., you might think,” I forgot to mention to the web designers that I need an added page for employment law or something along those lines.

So it sounds basic, but trust us, you need to do two things. One, check your direct competitors’ websites. How have they set out the pages?

How have they separated their primary services?
If you want to improve the SEO for these services, later on, have each set out on their page.

Then, sketch the main menu on paper, with the most critical services at the top and the least essential services moving down.

Now, a word to the wise, and listen up. This is a crucial piece of advice; you may thank us later. Set each leading service you offer on its page, then ask your web designers to add essential on-page SEO elements, such as page titles, internal links, H1-H6 titles, meta titles, and meta descriptions for each page. This will improve your SEO and make it easier to improve it later on.

Some move fast, some move slow, and the road is long, so choose quality

A website is unlike a soft drink; you pick it up, quickly devour it, and then drop it in the bin once it is done. A website needs to last, well, at least for a good few years. So please don’t go cheap; don’t pick a website designer who promises to design a website in the blink of an eye and then be disappointed with the masterpiece they have created.

The road is long…

Pick a web design company that doesn’t rush yet doesn’t move at a snail’s pace; you want quality. This often doesn’t come cheap, but if you’re serious about improving your company’s search engine optimisation later on, well, you need a quality website designed at the start. So, this means no copying and pasting anyone else’s text.

Introduction

Setting up a new business is an exciting time; you might have been an employee within a large company for, say, the last 25 years, and now, you’re jumping into running your very own limited company.

You have bold plans and ideas. You want to bring your company to the market and offer something new to the customer.

You believe you will have the edge over the competition and are eager and ambitious to grow your business.

You therefore want to grow your business into something that you are proud of.

When you sit back and plan your businesses growth, often the business owner often writes out a business plan for say the next 5 years. For some businesses, such as those business which are setting up in Cardiff, Wales, 100% of their customers may come via online marketing.

Therefore you may plan advertise on social media or are working on improving organic SEO, the key to the success of your online advertising is a well-designed website.

So many Cardiff web design businesses to pick from

Now, the good news is this: what is spoilt for choice when picking local website designers.

There are many freelancers which working in spare bedrooms, right through large marketing agencies in the United Kingdom that can easily employ over 300 staff.

So the price point for each company to design the website is different; a point that we are trying to make here is that there is an ample amount of web designers catering for all sorts of budgets, so your bound to find a web designer who can build a new website for the price you had budgeted.

We here at our web designers, have seen websites have been advertised for as low £300, and companies offering brochure websites sometimes well over £11,000.

We have a range of different companies out there to choose from, but this does beg the question, how do you pick a Cardiff website designer?

Well, we are not impartial- as we are a well known web design company.

Yet with that said, we can provide some helpful pointers on things you might want to consider when picking a local designer.

So, without further ado, let’s give you some food for thought on what you might wish to consider when choosing a new web developer or designer.

Can you work with that person

Now? You might think this is obvious- right?

But at this stage, you might be wondering if this blog post is even worth reading? However, hold your horses for a second, as we are going to dispense quality advice your way.

Working with a WordPress designer or another type of web designer is often not a one-off process.

You often need to liaise with that person over many months or years regarding discussions regarding backing up the website, hosting, SEO, and making amendments to the website.

Therefore, if you find a person difficult to deal with on the telephone, that they are quite, well obnoxious, or that they just don’t get back to you within a reasonable time frame, then this is an indication that you need to cut your losses and go to another web design business.

However, you should also assess at the initial meeting can you work with the web designers over a long period of time.

Choose the right content management system for your business

We are huge fans and great promoters of the content management system “WordPress”. It’s important to remember that it’s not the only show in town, and you do have to meet different agencies that may advise you to use different content management systems that better suit your businesses needs.

Take your time choosing the right CMS

Yet, for many of our clients, after seeing the admin panel and dashboard on WordPress, they often find it very user-friendly and simple to use.

As highly skilled web designers, we are sometimes shown other content management systems that are not so user-friendly, they can even be sometimes rather challenging to use, and full of glitches, and sometimes, these companies dissipate into thin air because there’s not a lot of uptake for that particular CMS.

WordPress is used by millions of companies globally

On the other hand, this is why we chose WordPress: It’s been around for a very long time.

Over our ten years we have been running our business, it’s been one of the most widely used CMS by Cardiff businesses.

It continues to be popular because people see that it is good quality, simple to use, open source, widely respected as a good CMS by web developers, and used by millions of businesses. Some global brands use WordPress.

But don’t take our word for it; step back and evaluate which content management system is best for your business. Is it WordPress, or is it the different types of CMS?

Ongoing maintenance

You might get up in the morning and have a nice refreshing cup of coffee and a croissant.
Then, for the day, you might make a list of things you want to do when at your business premises, and you’re excited to get to work to implement those things that you want to do today.

But as any good business owner knows, it’s easy to get sidetracked.

One hundred and one things can get in the way of doing what you’re supposed to do. You might get home-put your slippers on, switch on the television, evaluate your to do list you wrote out in the morning, and think, well, I can even get even quarter of that done today.

As business owners say, it’s difficult to sometimes juggle everything that needs to get done.
You often don’t have time to manage your website’s maintenance: updating the plug-ins, making backups, and fixing little glitches fixed on your website.

So, who will take care of the ongoing WordPress website maintenance?

Again, this is something you should discuss with designers because, trust us, some web designers charge a small fortune for this monthly work.

Often the business gets sucked into a supercheap web design price, so low that even the customers are thinking about how do the designers make money and do this.

Then you see them in the small print.

Sometimes, for ongoing maintenance, the designers charge a monthly fee for hosting and maintenance.

This might be £75 per month, which doesn’t sound much when you add up over the lifetime of the website; well, that becomes costly for some businesses, especially all you have is let’s say, seven pages or less.

Ask about what is the hourly rate to make amendments

As we know, sometimes staff come and go, the services your business offers may change, and so do the products, and this often means the website needs to be updated.

Now, if you receive your web design invoice for amendments made to your company website end of the month, and it shocks you in terms of the fee, so much that you have a shocked expression on your face all day, all this is no good.

Therefore, you need a web design company that offers a fair hourly price to make amendments to your website. So much so that you are not frightened to make changes to the website because of fearing how much it will cost.

Therefore, you need to check with your web designers how much they charge to make website amendments. You might need many amendments every single month. For example, you might need to amend a new staff member, or perhaps you no longer stock the product so you need it removed.

Functionality

One of our favourite TV commercials, which was on TV long ago, was created by a different advertising firm that used the strapline. Isn’t it nice when things work?

That’s an amazing strapline we think.

Because it’s true: You know things that are produced today are sometimes overly complicated, just too technical, and sometimes we lose appreciation for the simple things, things that just work.

The first thing is to pick are web designers who know how to design quality websites.

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Let’s leave you with that thought: the success of a business can sometimes be in the hands of your web designers to pick your next web design agency carefully and spend your time evaluating what they’re offering for the money.

You might be sitting with a cup of tea before checking your e-mails using Microsoft Outlook. You might be evaluating which web design quote to choose.

Prices for web design that have returned to your inbox may vary wildly. One quote might be for £750, while another is quoted over three and a half thousand pounds.

Yet, as the company’s director, you probably already know that you can’t evaluate web design agencies just based on the prices they offer. And neither should you because it boils down to the quality of the web design, whether the finished design reflects what your business can offer, and how well that website will serve you over the long run.

As the old saying goes, buy cheap, and you often must pay twice.

At the same time, you don’t want to cough up more than you need to.

Therefore, picking the right web design company requires balance, and making this choice is not easy.

The benefits of working with a highly experienced web design agency in Bristol

Functionality and design

If you buy a high-performance car that costs a small fortune, you often want high performance but also want it to work every time the switch is on. There’s nothing more frustrating than when something doesn’t work.

Now, this is the same for web design. You might have a website designed that initially looks impressive, so much so that it blows your socks off.

Yet if it’s full of glitches and the people keep emailing you to say there are problems with the website, this can be a real headache over the long run.

So, first things first, you want a web design company that simply builds and designs quality websites and offers functionality that works perfectly, with all the coding glitches, whether it’s Javascript or anything else, fixed. This often means picking the right content management system, but by having highly experienced web designers, we can ensure that everything works as it should.

Does your business require SEO services?

If a company gets most of its work from the public sector, it might not need to invest in organic SEO. The reason is that the business doesn’t need to advertise or be ranked high on Google for various keywords if most companies work from the public sector.

However, suppose a business relies more on the private sector, such as a plumbing, construction, or scaffolding business. In that case, you should hire a web design company that can also work hard on improving your company’s search engine optimisation every month, as your business may rely on advertising the business on Google for your company to gain work.

So, whether your business wants to improve its local or organic SEO, you will often need a marketing agency to help.

Long road

SEO is a long road; it must step into a long-term process; nothing happens quickly, and every month, you must work hard to improve your rankings on Google. And where your business ultimately ranks is dependent on Google’s algorithms. So, you could work, burning the midnight oil for months, and your company doesn’t rise that much in Google’s ranks. That’s until Google rolls out a major algorithm update; if the SEO work is done right, you can rank higher in Google’s results.

Many companies say it can take over six months to see solid results from your SEO, but how well your search engine optimisation improves depends on the company you hire.

Plus, before any SEO work starts, you will need a quality website; this is where our web designers in Cardiff are often hired. Whether a £950 WordPress website or a £7k WordPress website, our web designers will always design a brilliant website for any business we work for.

Supersonic

Websites today need to be supersonic fast, and whichever web design company you choose, you must ensure you’re getting good quality website hosting.

Purchase quality

You can buy a new winter jacket that is cheap and quickly falls apart at the seams.

However, you could pay more and buy quality, such as a wax jacket made by a British company that might last decades.

This is the same with company websites; often, if you buy cheap, you end up paying twice.

You want a company website that could potentially last a business, say, the next seven years. So, you need a quality website, and thankfully, today, when you pick web designers like W&P Web Design, you can gain a quality WordPress website for your business that doesn’t break the bank.

Mobile and desktop

The website’s mobile and desktop versions must work perfectly and be designed to a high standard. We are experienced web designers based in Cardiff and can create a high-quality WordPress website for your business in less than four weeks.

Contact the team for a quote today.