In order to take your business in Braintree to new heights, you need to harness the power of the internet. For this, you can get an SEO compliant website designed or revamp your existing site.

Many local business owners fail to recognise websites as the powerful medium of advertising that they are. If you get a website designed for your business in Braintree, you can draw some extra customers to your business regardless of whether you sell online or not.

Web Design Braintree: Advantages

As more and more customers expect to find you on the web, in addition to being available on the Yellow Pages, you need to be on the internet. These days consumers search for products and services online before making purchases. An effective website ensures that information about your business that your customers are looking for is available online 24/7/365.

An effectively designed website can bring your business the following advantages:

• An informative web design offers increased awareness of products and services
• It also ensures improved exposure to your Braintree business
• A well optimised website can work as an effective advertising tool

In addition to these benefits, an effective website allows you to improve customer relations by helping your customers make an informed choice. Providing information or support through a website that makes visitors more contented about buying from you will strengthen your business and your relationship with your customers.

What to Expect from a Braintree Web Design Firm

When you are looking for a firm to design a website for your Braintree business, you need to take several factors into consideration.

First of all make sure that the service provider has experience in offering successful web design for local business. Ensure you look for a company who specialises in web design for local businesses in Braintree.

It is better to go for a web design firm that also provides SEO and internet marketing services along with web design, as no matter how good looking a website is, it is no use if it can’t be found. A good Braintree web design firm will incorporate website design, content, functionality, analytics and reporting into a manageable and flexible package.

With a local market just waiting to find out about you, now is the time to take your local Braintree business online with a compelling and search engine friendly web design.

If you are looking for a web design firm in Braintree, feel free to contact us to discuss your needs.

E-Commerce or basically online shopping is something that most large brands have adopted, but what do you do if you are a smaller company and you want to compete in what is sometimes a very saturated market. In fact a market that is not only full of other e-commerce websites offering the same products as you, but some big name brands that people recognise and trust. Here are some things to consider:

• The key is not to get hung up on getting found for big competitive keyphrases, look for long tailed descriptive keyphrases that have less searches but more opportunity for smaller businesses to gain results.

• Make your site interactive by having your social profiles easily accessible through your site and vice versa.

• Become seen as an expert in your chosen field, well written content pages about your products, a regularly updated blog and specialist information about the products you sell will help people to understand that you really do know your stuff.

• Images are very important, make sure people can see the products and if you can have different images showing the products from different angles, in different colours, being used etc.. then this can all add to the customer experience.

• Encourage shoppers to sign up for your newsletter, try offering a one off discount maybe and then keep them informed via email on a regular basis about new products, offers and useful tips about your industry.

• Make sure you interact socially with your customers and potential customers, this is a great way to help build your brand and manage your online reputation.

• Sounds like common sense, but make sure you are offering great service. You don’t always have to win on price if you deliver when you say you will and deal with any issues quickly and professionally then this can help sway someones buying decision away from simply going for the cheapest.

Find out more about how e-commerce solutions can help your business.

For the majority of visitors to your website the first place they will land is on your homepage. With this in mind when developing a website it’s important to make sure that you get your homepage right, if you don’t then visitors will simply disappear and go somewhere else.

Key Information

People expect to see certain elements on a homepage and people view homepages in a certain way, this is why you will often see things in the same place as you browse different websites. These are the key elements that every homepage should have:

• Company Logo – top left

• Contact Details – top right

• Menu – either at the top or left hand side of the page

• Images – images to help illustrate the products and/or services on offer

• Call to Actions – below the menu or top banner of the page, this is the most important space on your homepage

Design Vs Function

It’s important when designing a homepage to get the balance between “how pretty it looks” and how visitors will use the page. Your design should be instantly recognisable as your business, using the same colours and font family can help this along with the way that your content is written and the information contained within the page.

Once someone knows that they are in the right place, it needs to be really easy for them to navigate around the website. The homepage is the start point for this so make sure that your menu labels and call to actions don’t use company jargon and are easy to understand.

Waste of Space

Images are great and as mentioned above are an important part of your overall design, but don’t waste valuable space by having unnecessarily big banners that take up half of your homepage and don’t help the visitor make decisions about what to do next. Your most important space is above the fold i.e. the bit that people can see without having to scroll down and this is where your most vital information should be.

Find out more about website design here

MSK Design are a Firm of Architects based in North London. They undertake a number of projects from Domestic loft conversions and extensions, house builds and commercial projects. They came to us wanting a new fresh website that helped to depict their work accurately. As an Architectural firm, images were incredibly important and are very much a main feature of the website.

Still in its early days the aim is to continue to grow the site to show off the quality and scope of work carried out by MSK Design. We will also be working with them in helping them market their business on the internet though search marketing and social media funnels.

The brief design wise was to come up with a clean and simple concept, a site that was easy to navigate with rotating banner  images on every page with content to complement and explain the process behind the beautiful designs that MSK Design have produced for their clients.

MSK Design work with their clients to not only come up with something that looks good, but also results that fit in with the clients lifestyle requirements and usage of each room. After all, there’s no point having a great looking home if the space and layout doesn’t work for you on a practical basis.

The website was very much the same, we wanted to come up with something that looked great but with the user in mind. Many Architects websites are very images focussed but sometimes this can make it difficult for visitors to the website to get to the imformation that they want. We wanted to balance out imagery with a site that works well for customers and potential customers.

As always we appreciate your feedback on our website designs so please do let us know what you think in the comments section of this blog.

When you are in the initial stages of website design and development it is easy to get carried away with how it is going to look. Sometimes you need to take stock of what you are trying to achieve before plowing forwards with what could end up simply a pretty website that does nothing for your business.

The structure of your website needs to be thought out to make sure that it includes all the information that visitors to your website will want to find out as well as any legal requirements. Your sitemap is your plan, it is a visual representation of how the site will be structured, which pages are required, images and video requirements and also the complexity of the project.

You also need to consider how the website will grow over time. You should be adding and updating information on a regular basis and so it is important to make sure that you can do this easily without having to re build the site at a later date.

Your sitemap is also your basis for collecting the content that you need, you can assign different members of the team specific pages to write and come up with a plan adding timescales so that you know when different pages should be completed.

An ‘About Us’ page tells visitors to your website a little bit more about your business, things like company history and experience can help sway a potential buyer one way or the other and the About Us page is the place to talk about it.  But you need to think about how to structure this page and also what kind of information should be included, you don’t want to scare people away by using lots of technical and complicated words to try and impress. You also want to avoid jargon wherever possible.

Here are our top tips for having a great About Us page:

1. Think about those things that your customers want to hear about and write your content based on this. Focus on how you differ from your competitors, your experience and how you can solve that potential buyers problem with your products/services.

2. Back up what you say with facts, if you claim you are the best in the market what evidence do you have? How do you know you offer the best customer service? In most cases you don’t know and if you do you can’t prove it and so write realistically, we try to be the best in the market, for example.

3. Don’t try and make out you are a multi-national company employing thousands if you aren’t. You will get found out and this will damage your reputation. Talk about the benefits of working with a smaller company rather than try and hide the fact.

4. Keep updating your page with new information, a new customer you a working with, an industry aw

5. Remember you are trying to build credibility and speak honestly about why someone should work with you. This is the page where you can really get your personality across so try and make it fun and appropriate to your industry.

There are so many independent retailers out there in Essex that can maximise the opportunity that an ecommerce website can give them. The face of the High Street is changing and as footfall declines and many household names disappear, independents are finding it harder than ever to survive. This is why embarking on an online shop will become a necessity for most retailers.

It can be a mindfield though as all of those high street brands are filling up the number one spot for generic keyphrases. So for a retailer the longer tailed keyphrases, i.e. more specific searches are vital as they are less competitive and actually more likely to convert into a customer.

So if you are thinking about building an e-commerce website then firstly do it, and secondly here are some top tips.

• Make it as easy as possible for users to navigate
• Make sure you can upload products and update prices easily
• Make it difficult for people to ‘leave’ during the checkout process
• Make it really easy for people to pay
• Make your delivery fees visible and don’t charge too much as this can turn customers away
• Think about the layout of your online shop in the way you would your retail outlet
• Categorise your products simply
• Try and always ensure that people cannot purchase out of stock items, there is nothing more frustrating
• Make sure you adhere to your promised delivery times
• Offer incentives to keep your customers coming back again and again
• Strongly consider following up sales with email marketing, ask for reviews and feedback as well as promoting new products
• Have a review section on the website, even better allow people to review individual products

I could go on forever but if you get these things right then you are making a good start. Conversion rates online are about 1% for an e-commerce site and product sales are very much price driven, so if you have the same product as someone else then make sure your pricing is in line. You don’t have to be the cheapest but you can’t be much more expensive for the same item if there is no additional value for the customer.

If you want to know more about e-commerce and how we can help you then please get in touch.

Having a website that looks great is all very well, but if it doesn’t convert visitors to your website into prospects for your business, or in the case of an ecommerce website, a new customer then it doesn’t really matter how pretty it looks.

This is where conversion architecture comes in, this is basically the art of getting people to do what you want when they visit your website. These things are known as call to actions and can include anything from filling in a form, picking up the phone and calling, through to making an online purchase.

The best way to think about it is to compare it to a shop in the real sense. So a retailer spends a lot of time and effort working out the best layout to have in their shop. Where certain products should be to optimise sales and also to sell more of those products with the best margins. They tempt us with BOGOF offers which often still end up more expensive than non branded items, or end up being purchases that you didn’t plan to make.

Well the same should be true of your website. Think of conversion architecture in terms of a framework, one that sets out the form and function of the site, its look and feel and overall content. Each and every person that comes to your site does so with a specific purpose in mind. You need to make sure that as soon as they get there it is plainly clear that they have come to the right place and that you can fulfil a need that they have.

It should be blatantly obvious to someone where they need to go next on the website through ease of navigation and really strong call to actions, don’t distract people with anything that takes them away from their purpose, things like flash which used to be popular, basically to show how great a web developer you were have died a death purely because they create this kind of distraction.

Here are some points for you to consider for your own website:

• Try and understand the different reasons why someone would come to your website, what are they looking for, what is their need?
• Make it as easy as possible for someone to navigate from page to page
• Ensure you have enough information about each of your products/services
• Make sure you write for the reader rather than just tell them what you want to say
• Think about where your call to actions need to be on each page
• How easy is it to find out how to contact you?
• How well do you use images and video?

These are just handful of some of the most important aspects of conversion architecture and as internet marketing consultants something that we are pretty knowledgeable about (if I do say so myself). If you want to find out more about how you should be structuring your website and how to make the most of every visitor the give us a call on 01279 647003 or email us directly

Competition online is much stronger these days with the vast majority of businesses now having a website it is vitally important to make sure that your website stands out from the crowd. But let’s get something clear here, you want to be standing out for the right reasons and design and colour should never be at the detriment of functionality and user experience on your website.

The industry that you are in and the market you are targetting will have a massive impact on the kind of website design and colour that you go for. Whether you are in the corporate environment where you need a professional and impressive looking website, to the more funky world of fashion where you can be much more outrageous in your design.

But those weird and wacky websites are less common and are the exception to the rule, here are our top tips for getting started.

Don’t use anything too garish unless this forms part of the specific brief, IE for a young hairdressing salon this may work but for the vast majority of businesses stick to more muted natural colours. Try and pick out the same and/or complementary colours from your company logo.

Make sure that the text stands out, use darker colours on a light background as this has been found to be the easiest to read of any combination. Steer clear of white text as a rule unless it fits in with the industry and theme of your website.

Don’t have too many colours, pick a few and keep them consistent throughout the whole of your site. If you have a striking colour then keep it to one choice and use it as an accent rather than one of your main colours.

Make sure your colour choices fit in with the whole brand identity of a company and that this colour scheme is followed throughout all of that company’s marketing activity.

If you want to talk more and discuss website design then please call us on 012479 647003.

Often people rush straight into the design stage of website development without actually really working out their objectives for the site. You really need to start with an online marketing strategy before you do anything else. Once you have this in place design needs to start with your landing pages, these are those pages that people will ‘land’ on when they visit your website. Usually the most visited page will be your home page although if you have a PPC campaign running or are targeting specific keywords in your search marketing strategy then this may include other pages on your site.

These are the most important pages to design in the right way, if you don’t then people won’t hang around and you will have missed out on the opportunity of converting that visitor into a lead for your business. So where to start, well you need to consider the following:

1. What content needs to be on your landing page?

You want your most critical information to be on your landing page, the things that will help someone make a decision about whether they are in the right place and what they need to do next. It needs to be instantly recognisable that you do what the visitor is looking for. You must have your phone/email on your page and also your call to actions, any sign up opportunity whether it’s to download an e-book or subscribe to your newsletter. Anything else can be left for other pages, things like Company information and history just shouldn’t take centre stage.

2. Who is gooing to land on your page?

You may have different types of visitor come to your website, for example clients or prospects, people looking to work for you, the media and many more. Think about the types of people that are likely to visit, who are your most critical visitors and design your landing page with those people in mind. If you have more than one group that fall into this category then think about setting up different landing pages for each group.

3. What do you want people to do

What action do you want visitors to take when they visit your website? Your design should help them to be able to take that action easily and quickly, make sure these call to actions stand out and that you keep your page clean and simple to avoid the eye being distracted away from this more important action.

If you have thought about these things thoroughly then you are ready to start on your website landing page design.