Website Design Davistown

These days there are plenty of people who call themselves ‘Website Designers’. Back in the old days when we began developing websites (we started in 1998 when dinasours still roamed the internet!) there were not many who had the skills to be able to create a great website and get it online in good time and also get it found in Google.

Fortunately, as time has moved on and the software available has improved dramatically, it has enabled us to provide better websites in a quicker time frame and therefore, charge less for the process so it’s a win win for everyone.

Unfortunately there can always be a downside to this progress and with the advent of more and more ‘do it yourself’ website builders out there on the internet. More and more people get drawn into believing that they could indeed ‘do it themselves’ – only to find out that after months of angst and pulling their hair out and still ending up with a website that looks like it was put together with UHU Glue by a 6 year old. That of course is false economy and no money was actually saved at all. And some people still persist using those very bad websites that they made themselves just because they made it themselves and put so much time and energy into it. They then wonder why their website is not being found in Google, or even if it is being found, it’s not making their phone ring! Little do they know that whoever is actually finding their site is probably clicking out of it as soon as they see it because it stinks of ‘back yard job’ with no credibility or professionalism! And in the mean time, their competitors are using a professional website developer and getting all the business!

When you have a professional website developed by us here at Website Guy, you will get a product that oozes professionalism and gives the right first impression from the start. It will also encourage your website visitors to actually contact you or purchase your product or service so it should pay for itself in no time.

Of course, these days, the term ‘responsive websites’ has come into play. What does this mean? Basically, your website should ‘respond’ to the device that it is being looked at on. So if someone is looking at and navigating through your website on a desktop computer (with various sizes of screens and screen resolutions) your website will look and behave a certain way. If they are looking at your website on a laptop, then it may look & behave differently. Similarly with a tablet or mobile phone, your website should ‘morph’ iself to look and behave well on those devices too.

Why is this so important? Well it’s not just about giving the end user of your website a better experience, it’s also about showing Google that your website is giving users a better experience too! Google now ranks all websites based on their mobile friendlyness. So if your website design looks great on a desktop but not so good on a mobile, you’re missing out in Google’s eyes and Google will bear this in mind when it is ranking your website.

All the websites developed by us here at Website Guy are fully responsive and definitely tick those Google boxes as well as giving your website visitors the best experience no matter what device they’re using!

Website ‘page speed loading’ is another thing that has become very important of late. For similar reasons to the ‘responsiveness’ of a website, the page speed loading is not just about having your website load quickly for the benefit of the website visitor, but also to show Google that your website is efficient when loading so that it knows you’re giving the end user the best experience.

This is a double edge sword however, because some of the nice effects that websites need to have to make it a really pleasurable experience, such as ‘drop down Q & A sections / slide show on homepage / effects on hover / video / etc etc are the things that can slow down your page load speeds dramatically. So it’s a fine line between pleasing Google’s automated ‘bots’ (who score & rank your website) and pleasing the humans who are going to be spending money with you for your products and services! Here at Website Guy, we know the right balance to strike because we’ve been doing it for so long and have many years experience doing just this!

One of the things that will determine website speed is the ‘website platform’ that the website is built with. Just like building a house that can be built with timber frame, steel frame, double brick, concrete, etc, a website can be built with many different types of framework such as ‘HTML, PHP, Java, Python, etc’. Seeing as we’re all about giving the end user the best experience and also pleasing Google, we want to be using a platform that ticks all those boxes. It is for that reason that you should be sticking with a CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress or Joomla for instance.

Why these 2 platforms? Well quite simply they are the most widely used CMS platforms used in the world today. Therefore, there is an enormous global community of coders out there who are continually keeping the platform up to date, improving security, creating new and cool features for these platforms as well as a massive amount of coding companies around the world who are creating new plugins, modules and components that work seamlessly with these 2 CMS platforms. There are other CMS platforms sure, hundreds of them, but just like the ‘do it yourself’ website, once you have one of these, you are tied to that website provider for life because no other coder or website developer will or can work with it so you’re at the mercy of the original website provider. It’s just not a good business proposition at all really.

Rest assured that here at Website Guy, we specialise in WordPress and Joomla CMS platforms so that your website ticks all the boxes it needs to from a customer experience and Googles point of view.

These days, businesses have had to respond to the growing trend of more and more of the population being very much more ‘internet savvy’. This means that your website visitors are far more attuned to being able to not only send you a quick ‘Contact Us’ message, but now they are expecting to be able to ‘Book an appointment’ or ‘pay a subscription’ for an online course, or purchase anything directly on your website, whether that be a product or even a service such as a consultation via Zoom or Skype etc.

Over the years, as this technology has become available, Website Guy has been at the forefront of implimenting this kind of thing into our client’s websites. We’ve made a practice of keeping our finger on the pulse of the internet and offering these ground breaking services as they become available.

Of course, these demands & expectations from your website visitors extend to being carried out on a mobile device. The majority of internet searches these day is performed on a mobile device so you need to make sure that even if you do have a website, it’s not something that you had made many years ago when the internet was a very different place with users who had a very different mindset. At the very least, your website needs to be mobile friendly and as a bare bones basic, have the ability to allow your website users to simply click on the phone number and have their phone automatically dial your number. The amount of non mobile friendly websites out there is quite astonishing and those businesses who keep up with modern trends & progress will undoubtably be the businesses who thrive in the future as the internet and website development progresses & improves even further in rapid time!