Introduction

If you’re shopping around for a new web design agency, you are most definitely spoilt for choice. There are endless numbers of web design companies in every city and town throughout the United Kingdom.

This raises the critical question: How can a business whittle down that list of companies to just a handful it wants to shortlist for a quote?

Rest assured, if you do choose W&P, our agency boasts web developers with over ten years of experience designing WordPress websites. This wealth of expertise puts us in a prime position to provide valuable tips and advice on selecting a web designer.

Specialists

The first thing you might want to consider is choosing an agency specialising in your business sector.

For example, you might be in an automotive business, sell used and new cars, own a garage, or be, let’s say, a place that offers car servicing.

Many web designers will specialise in creating websites for the automotive business sector.

Now, you might be scratching your heads, thinking, what are the benefits of picking a web design business specialist in that business sector?

Often, they will know exactly what functionality your website will need. For example, let’s say that your business concentrates only on car servicing. The web designers might have the code ready to install on your website that allows a customer to enter their registration details and instantly get quotes for servicing that particular model of car.

Alt text: Create photo: WordPress logo, plus a car

So, for that specific code, all you have to do is enter the car’s registration to gain a cost for car servicing- and because the web developers have written that code for another customer, they will know to do that again for your business.

So, our first advice is to consider the advantages of hiring a web design agency that specialises in your specific business sector. This can lead to a more tailored and efficient web design process, as they are familiar with your industry’s unique needs and requirements.

Do you want to hire a web design company that employs copywriters in-house?

Numerous web design businesses throughout the UK, such as our web design company in Cardiff, offer copywriting services and WordPress web design.

Yet, as a business, you must consider whether you have the time/energy to write all of the text for your new company website.

Let’s say you have a 10-page website designed by us. For example, there might be many drop-down menus, a lot of text in the footer, and the main text, which usually needs 7000 words.

Create a picture: Someone writing a text on an Apple Laptop.

Now, if you have to go home from work after running your company, and every evening you have to write all of this text for several evenings, you might find it tiring.

So what you might want to do instead is pay a bit more and hire web designers like us, who have copywriters in-house. Make sure the copywriters have a good understanding of the business sector and that what they can do is write the text for your new company website. This can accelerate your business’s whole web design process, where often the website can be designed much faster because you can have a web developer working on building the website. At the same time, copywriters could be writing the text.

This can massively speed up the entire web design process. The text can be immediately placed on the website, and often, the turnaround time to build the website will be much faster.

Do you want to hire local web designers?

Some customers might have a very clear idea of how they want their brand-new company website to look, so they can tell their web design company over the phone or by e-mail exactly how they want the new website to look.

Other customers might want to meet with their web designers in person and discuss how they would like the website to look; therefore, if you want a series of meetings with your web designers, you have to think about how far they are from you.

Create a picture: someone sitting on a train.

So, for example, let’s say that you are an electrician, and there is a company that specialises in building websites for tradesmen/women. That web design company might be on the other end of the country, and you will be here in Cardiff. So, you might find it challenging to convey what you want on the phone.

So, you might want to hire local web designers who are not that far away. These designers can sit down with you and explain exactly how you want the website built.

Consider the time-saving benefits of choosing local web designers. Sitting down with them over a cup of tea to discuss your website’s design can significantly expedite the process. This is rather than train rides or having endless phone calls to ask for changes to the design to be made.

Local web designers can look at competitor websites, identifying their strengths and the functionality they might want to integrate into their WordPress website. For example, you might like other menu works on a competitor’s website and enjoy the same style as the main menu for your website.

You might like how a competitor’s website has a contact box on the right-hand side. Would you want this for your website?

Alternatively, you might like the video on the competitor’s homepage, which automatically starts as you land on it.

You might want this design for your website, and then your web designers can scribble down how you want the website to look and start designing it. They can then hand this to the web developers. Often, this is easier to do in person than explaining everything over the phone or via Skype, for example.

Which content management system do you want?

Nearly all of the websites that we design and build use WordPress; however, some businesses might not want to use it.

Create a picture: WordPress logo on a laptop.

Therefore, there are other web designers who specialise in building websites using different content management systems, such as Drupal. It could be that the business has had a website designed before using a different CMS, such as Drupal, and therefore, they are familiar with using the dashboard or admin area of that particular type of CMS.

You might want to use the same CMS in the future, so web designers often specialise in designing websites using a specific type of content management system.

Think about SEO

Quite often, businesses will require help to improve their organic SEO. Many companies might be happy going and shopping around the various SEO agencies in Cardiff to get a quote to improve the companies local / organic SEO.

Yet, many businesses also like the convenience of having their website designed, and then the company can also offer seo services as well. Here at W&P we can offer both services, that’s to design a company website, plus to also improve the seo as well.

This saves the customer a lot of hassle, such as having to go around and find a separate company to help start work on improving the SEO. For example, here at this digital marketing agency, we are often hired by so many Welsh businesses, because we can design the website and offer to improve the companies organic seo, our monthly prices for this service, start from just £500 per month. It is also worth noting that this is an extremely long process and usually takes well over six months to start seeing some actual results from your SEO- so do bear this in mind, as we or not seo agency can generate results straight away.

Ongoing costs (website hosting, domain name renewal, website maintenance)

Whenever you choose a web design company, you must consider the ongoing and long-term costs of owning that website. Many businesses that have never designed a website think it’s just a one-off expense; that’s to just pay to have the website designed- yet there are on going expenses as well.

So when you have a website designed, there will always be ongoing costs.

For example, there is domain name renewal and hosting. You might also want to ask your web designers to maintain the website by making backups and updating it. Therefore, you’ll need to know the monthly cost of this service.

Our web design company is different from many other Cardiff web designers because we provide the first year’s website hosting for free to help the customer. We often use Siteground hosting, as its very good quality. So our customers haven’t got to worry about paying for hosting or domain name renewal within the first year because we offer this free of charge as long as we can purchase the domain name for under £50 a year.

After that, we offer fixed rates for website hosting and domain name renewal, depending on whether the website is an e-commerce or brochure website.

We can also offer a service whereby we make backups of the website or where we are updating the websites plugins, every month. We offer a fixed monthly price to do this work.

Often, website maintenance will cost between £40 and £100 per month for website maintenance and hosting.

But as we said, our company charges a fixed yearly fee for this service, and we often offer most of our customers the first year free.

How fast can the web designers / web developers build the website?

You’ve just opened your business as a sole trader or started your first limited company here in Wales.

And you’ve been super busy buying vans, purchasing tools, and getting your business up and running, such as interviewing staff for example.

Now, you may well be in the situation where you might have left getting your website designed until the very last minute, and then when you start to call around various web designers, you might see that they are saying it will take over three months to create the website.

Some companies can design it much quicker; we can usually create a brochure website in less than four weeks. This is another reason why so many businesses choose W&P to get a website designed, because our WordPress web designers, can design the website so fast.

Another reason many companies come to us is that we have WordPress web developers who have built websites for Cardiff businesses for over ten years. This means that often, we can create a website in less than four weeks; it might take it a bit longer if there are any coding glitches that need to be fixed, yet we will always e-mail or call to say if there are delays in building your company website.
The vast majority of the time, however, we can quickly design a brand-new website for our customers.

Wireframes

We would highly recommend that whichever web designers you are going to hire, that you have a meeting with your web developers and ask to see the wireframes whilst they are designing the website.

So when a car is being designed often the designers will make a rough outline of a sketch of the car outline on paper or some car designers do an actual real-life size car made of clay.

This is so the company can get a good sense of what the car, will look like before it is built.

This is precisely why our designers can offer to show wireframes of what the website will look like. They can understand where the text is laid out on the page. The pages will be laid out as wireframes and will show where the company logo will be, where the footer is, and will be a rough outline of what the company website could look like.

So, we recommend asking for wireframes and a rough outline of the website’s appearance before it is finished. This allows you to make changes to the website before its built, which is beneficial to both the web designers and the business.

Choose highly experienced web designers.

There are thousands of web design companies here in the U.K, yet we would say pick a highly experienced company in building WordPress websites.

For example, let’s say a plumber. A highly experienced web design company has often built many websites for plumbing and heating businesses. They can usually recommend different functionality your business will need. They can also recommend other types of CMS and help you think about how you want the page structure to look.

We wouldn’t ever recommend going with a one-page website for any business.

The seo will be much harder work later on if you do pick a one page website. So, pick a brochure or e-commerce website and set up each main service or product on its own page.

That’s because if you talk to a good seo, agency / consultant later on down the line, they will always say its best to have each main service on its own page, so the page as its own page titles, URL extension, and content marketing.

So in terms of seo, its best to have each service laid out on its page.

Comes the experts in Cardiff

Whether you run a car dealership or perhaps you are a tradesman, such as a construction company, and you need a brand-new website design. For just £950, you can have our designers design a brilliant brochure website for your business.
The vast majority of websites we build are for Cardiff businesses and our websites can be turned around in less than four weeks. Therefore, if you are looking for highly experienced web developers, contact us today.

As WordPress web designers, we have to regularly consider how we will design a homepage for one of our many clients. A homepage design needs a lot of consideration, as you want the initial impression of the company website to be impressive—to blow the socks off the visitors and impress them!

For instance, take a look at the homepage of South Wales Demolition Ltd, which effectively uses a clean layout, compelling visuals, and clear navigation to make a strong first impression.

So, how should you go about designing the homepage for a website?

Well, because we have super-talented WordPress designers who have been busy designing quality WordPress websites for over ten years, we are well-placed to answer this question.

The homepage must look impressive to retain the customer and the design should help to keep the bounce rate as low as possible.
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who leave a website after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate can indicate that the homepage is not engaging enough, leading to potential customers leaving the site without exploring more products that you sell.

Don’t overwhelm the visitor.

It’s a common mistake that businesses throughout the United Kingdom do make, especially when selling products online. That’s to add as many products as possible as possible the homepage, then they add too much text, and this can make the homepage look too busy. This can overwhelm the shopper; instead of the shopper being able to go to the main menu and find what product they want, you might find that there this is just too much information and they leave your company website.

Always put yourself in the customer’s shoes.

It’s crucial to empathise with your customers and understand their needs- when designing a brand new website. Before finalising any homepage design, seek the opinions of your family and friends- it’s important to take on board some constructive criticism.

For instance, ask them to imagine they need a new electric oven. Then do they find the website your web designers have built easy for them to use, and to navigate the website looking at the different products? Their feedback is invaluable in creating a user-friendly experience.
You might find that they can’t sort the electric ovens by brand, yet all the other competitors are allowing this option, to sort items by brand. This type of functionality can mean that another business clinches the sale and potentially the shopper leaves your website because they find it difficult to use.

How does your business have the edge over the competition?

Perhaps your business has been trading for over 25 years. Perhaps you have a superior-quality product or offer a longer guarantee period than most other competitors. Whatever the case, this needs to be communicated instantly on the homepage.

Therefore, web designers need to instantly communicate your businesses unique selling points, which must be made clear through say a scrolling banner or somewhere on the homepage. A unique selling point (USP) is a factor that differentiates a product or service from its competitors, such as superior quality, longer guarantee period, or extensive experience. A good web designer can advertise your business’s unique selling points, helping to attract and retain more customers.

Make sure your website is fast

You might have some web designers who recommend that you add auto load videos because they can look good and grab the shopper’s attention.

For example, let’s say you run a barbershop. You contact a web designer who may recommend getting an autoloading video added to the homepage. It could show say a 30 second video of your barbers improving somebody’s lovely Barnett.

This will instantly give the shopper an impression of your shop, the staff you have, and the type of haircuts you offer.
That’s without the shopper even having to read any text.

However, there is a downside: the homepage can be slowed down, which could negatively impact the business’s SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

SEO refers to the practice of increasing the organic visibility and ranking of a website in search engine results on Google.

A slow-loading homepage can lead to a much lower ranking in search results, potentially reducing the number of organic visitors to your site.

Navigation is so important.

Some web designers make the main menu cluttered and challenging to use, making it a nightmare to find the product or service you want.
If they had thought out the layout a lot better, they might be able to design a better main menu, which could potentially decrease the bounce rate.

We believe shoppers like a simple layout

Look at a brilliant websites and fantastic online businesses such as Amazon. They sell hundreds of thousands of different products, yet the main menu is a piece of cake to use.

Whether you’re looking for brand-new razor blades or bags for your hoover, you can normally find what you want in just a few clicks.
The reason for that is they have had brilliant web developers and expert web designers who have carefully considered business UX.

Therefore, your business should aim to create a user-friendly website, that allows shoppers to get anywhere they want simply.

Use titles and break up that page.

Whether you’re writing a rather wordy blog post or perhaps you’re writing the text for the main pages, you must break up the text with titles.

This can also benefit your businesses SEO and help the shopper; for example, they might want to know about a particular product rather than have to read through 2000 words of text.

Using good font and well-written page titles often keeps the shopper on your website longer. This is the game’s name when it comes to improving your SEO: you want to keep the shopper on your website for as long as possible.

We would recommend avoiding pop-ups. They can be a nuisance

Some web designers, and some web developers they might have coded an e-commerce website, so that a pop-up appears regularly asking the for customer’s email address, let’s say, every five minutes. This could be a nuisance to the shopper.

It might discourage the shopper from purchasing from you, so our web design agency would highly recommend against using pop-ups; they can annoy the shopper if they keep asking them for their e-mail address or phone number.

Calls to action

In our previous point, we mentioned that we wouldn’t recommend having pop-up boxes. But you might want to embed contact forms into the page. Therefore, these might be embedded three times throughout the homepage. It just gives that extra opportunity for a shopper to send you a message or enquire about the service that you sell.

Choose excellent web designers.

If you hire the wrong web designer, they might provide a website that is too basic and a bit rubbish.
The difference between a good web design company and one that simply churns out websites is clear.

A good web design company invests time in understanding your business and your main selling points of your products or services, and knows how to communicate these selling points on your homepage. This strategic approach can significantly impact your business’s online presence.

Do you require a WordPress website to be designed?

Many businesses in Cardiff don’t want to pay for managed website hosting; some companies charge over £100 per month for this service.

This can be rather expensive for some Welsh businesses, and they may, therefore, wish to manage the website themselves, both in terms of updating it and managing the hosting.

Therefore, for this to happen, they need a content management system that you can log in into and update the website with just a few simple clicks, you don’t want to use an overly complicated admin panel that causes confusion when your trying to update your website.
To keep things simple, many businesses come to us and ask our Cardiff web designers, what type of content management system that they recommend. We often answer that with a resounding answer and shout loudly “use WordPress”.

We often recommend WordPress and shout its benefits from the rooftops simply because it’s an absolute piece of cake to use.

We know that when you’re running your business, you’re likely to have a million and one things on your mind, so you don’t want to have to worry about whether your WordPress website is kept updated or not.

Therefore, you can update your WordPress website in a few clicks; it’s simple. Plug-ins made by various companies also allow you to back up your website in a matter of minutes; this is free, and you can do it as often as you like.

This again helps the business owner because they have the total reassurance that their website is backed up entirely, and that they have updated the website, helping to make it more secure.

Would you like a brand-new website designed and built here in Wales? We design brilliant websites starting from just £950.

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