Where do you live?

Not sure about location? Whether you live locally, in the UK or Europe, or even further afield, we can make you a website – email, messaging, Skype and more mean it’s all very easy for us and our non-local clients to remain in contact.

Benefits of having a website

Increasingly more people now look for products and services online (it’s quick and they can do comparisons), and people can find your contact details quickly.

So, with a website you can:

• Get found
• Have more control about what people see
• Tell people in more detail what you do
• Sell things
• Get people to sign up
• Get people to comment on content and to share it
• Optimise your site structure and content so that you appear in search engine results (SERPs) for your keywords
• Use part your marketing budget very effectively
• Integrate a blog and/or have some others pointing to your site

Why it’s best to have a website

A few years ago you may have got away with not having a website – you still could today, so long as you have a good presence elsewhere on the internet.

Even then, you can still be at a disadvantage:

• Facebook, etc, keep changing their rules – and you’re at their mercy. Yes, we know… Google keeps changing rules too! But you’ll still have a website, and you’ll still have business cards with your website address on
• Search engines will bring up your results in directory listings: a) they don’t show much, b) they get out of date and c) they’re not very enticing to look at
• You’re not in control of what people see about you

What sort of website do you want?

What sort of website are you looking for? And, we should add, what is it that your users need in order to not only find and stay on the site and to take action?

By ‘taking action’ we mean, when you want your website visitors to do one or more of the following:

• Call, email, fax or write to you
• Visit your business/your shop
• Find out your opening times
• Find out what you offer/have in stock
• Buy from the site
• Sign up for your newsletters/special offers
• Follow you on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc
• Tell others about you
• Choose you over your competition
• Etc

You might want any of these, for example (or a combination):

• A simple squeeze page site (designed to capture the contact details of people of people who want to hear from you)
• A straight forward 3-5 page website, giving you an online presence
• A 200-page site
• A site with an integrated blog
• A simple site with added functionality (built in optimisation help; testimonial rotator, etc)
• A site that is designed to sell one product (your book, for example)
• A site you can sell a few products from
• A site you can sell many products from
• A membership site

Getting your website online – ‘hosting’

Some people get a little confused between owning a site name and a website, and the site’s hosting. Hosting means you pay a small monthly (or yearly) fee so that your website can get seen on the internet.

You can sort out your own hosting or we can do it for you.

When we build a website for you, we throw in a couple of months’ free hosting; after that we charge a small monthly fee, or you can use another hosting company.

Depending on your package, our hosting includes at least two FREE email accounts; for example, info@mysite.co.uk and Jamie@mysite.co.uk.

Already have a website?

Do you already have a website? We may be able to help you! For example:

Do you have a blog? That’s an essential part of a business’ armoury nowadays. We can build one for you and show you how to update it (or do the posting/updating for you)

Is your content up to date and interesting and helpful for visitors? We can offer you a website analysis to help you answer that one

Is your site:

• Getting seen on page one of Google?
• Getting clicked on?
• Capturing visitors’ details?
• Tracking what people do when they come to your site?

We can help your site do all those things and more.

Is your site structure dated?

• Was it built ages ago using older software or coding?
• Does it not show up properly on mobile devices?
• Had the navigation been bolted on as the site has grown (rather than being planned and simple to use by all)?
• Do you want to add/delete/update content yourself, but find it’s just too plain difficult with the setup you have now?

If you’ve answered yes to this or similar, contact us and we’ll advise you whether you need to update/renew or not.

Getting the right look for your site

You can choose from a huge range of looks! Funnily enough, we find most of our clients prefer slightly plain, easy to navigate, sites to the very pretty ones. You can get an idea of looks we can create by clicking on the links below.

By using readymade ‘themes’ (looks), we can help keep prices down. Themes can be adapted to suit your own branding or we can do one for you from scratch. If you wish, our graphic designers can create a logo, header, featured images and buttons for you.

Corporate sites we design from scratch – please contact us for details.

Here are a few sites you can look at to get an idea of the looks or ‘themes’ available.

• WordPress.org (free)
• Theme Showcase (free and premium)
• ThemeFuse (premium)
• Elegant Themes (premium)
• Theme Forest (premium)

Once you have a theme installed, you can adapt it to your needs – some are easier to do this with than others!

Why we usually use WordPress

We’ll happily build you static html sites but, in the main, we use the very popular and effective WordPress open source software, based around HTML 5 and CSS, to build our sites.

• There are many themes (looks) to choose from and modify to your needs
• WordPress software itself is regularly updated
• We can add all sorts of functionalities to it, depending on your requirements
• Because it’s based upon open source materials, it’s cheaper for you because we’re not coding entirely from scratch
• The blog is integrated (and we recommend you keep it)
• It’s great for SEO (search engine optimisation), making it easier for people to find your sites
• It’s easy to set up so visitors can easily navigate your site and find archives
• Most importantly, it’s a CMS (content management system), meaning you can update, add to and delete any content; you can also set different editing permissions for staff

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – Getting seen on the internet

If your website doesn’t get seen, you might as well not have it! You really need to get ranked on Google and other search engines, and you can do this by using SEO. There’s more about our other SEO services here, but let’s look at it in terms of your website.

Websites can be set up so they perform well in Google. We look closely at your site’s:

• Structure (the behind the scenes bits)
• Content: content, landing pages, calls to action, sign-ups, internal linking, etc
• Visitor retention (how long they stay on your site)
• Incoming links
• social media

Most clients also like us to look at SEO in wider terms – what’s feeding into your website, for instance – which means they are even more likely to get found on the internet.

Do I need a mobile website?

We’re often asked what is a mobile website, and do we need one? A mobile website is a website that been optimised to appear properly on handheld devices such as smart phones and tablets. If your website doesn’t look good on a hand held, talk to us about helping you!

Sites (usually older ones) that haven’t been optimised for mobile devices tend to be slow loading and annoying to read and navigate; users may have to scroll from side to side and zoom in to read the menu, for example.

Mobile websites can be entirely separate (and usually are mysite.mobi rather than mysite.com, etc). Some websites offer a link to their mobile version which needs to be physically clicked for the site to show in mobile mode, and many modern ones can show a version best for the device that comes to the site.

The websites we build are mobile ready and ‘responsive’; you won’t need a separate one building. You don’t need a mobile website if:

• Your site has its own built in automatic version for mobiles, and you’re happy with the look
• Your site has a responsive layout (ie, it automatically shrinks/increases to fit the screen size)
• You have a clear vertical menu and don’t have to squint at a tiny horizontal one

If you want your mobile website to be more like an app, we can either:

• Make an app for you
• Make a website with a separate mobile menu and pages
• Make a separate mobile-ready website

Website Package & Price Examples

There is no one size fits all package; we really need to ascertain your needs first. In the meantime, here are 3 examples of packages. NOTE: Prices will be going up on 05 January 2017, so book your site before then to keep the 2014 prices!

We also offer MINI E-commerce: 1-3 page mini sales website selling 1-3 items: eg, £600

Please read the notes below this table as well.

NOTES

Spam prevention

We add Akismet to each site as a matter of course – please talk about any extra protection you would like.

Emails

Please note, we can make and host your email accounts for you if we are doing your hosting. If you use another hosting company, you will need to set them up and may or may not get them free.

Hosting

Please note, in the initial free hosting we give you, we use a fair usage policy! It’s unlikely you’ll exceed the disk space and bandwidth we’ll allocate you, but if you do, we’ll need to charge.

Pictures

Our quote assumes you will supply pictures (we can show you where to find good stock photos, or you can send your own; we’ll let you know size, format, etc. We do have a photographer on the team who will be happy to take pictures for you – just ask for details and prices. (NOTE: If you are located outside Jersey, we will need to include travel fees as well.)

Headers & Logos

Within the fee, we will add a basic header or simple logo but, if you wish, our graphic designers can create a logo, header and buttons for you; please note, this will cost extra. Of course, you can supply your own – we’ll let you know the dimensions and formats required.

Content

We ask you to supply the content which we’ll edit briefly so help with SEO. However, we are happy to create content (words, pictures, videos) for you, but this will cost more. Please don’t assume we are mind-readers – we’ll still need to talk with you to find out what you want!

We’ll also show you how to add fresh content (for example, the easier blog posts/snippets) and update page content – or you can ask us to do it, paying for one-off’s or on a monthly retainer.

Additional functionality

We add on a number of things like email signup, tabs, tables, events calendar, Captcha – it depends what you need

Newsletters

We will install an in-site autoresponder (you’ll be given a link to the instructions!) and make a sign up form for people to subscribe to your newsletters. If you prefer to use a third party autoresponder (more complicated, more benefits), please talk to us about that.