Date: 29/11/2024
Author: W&P Marketing

Introduction

So what is all this talk about WordPress? We hear you cry!

You might be thinking about getting your current website redesigned for a brand-new website designed for your business?

You might have gone around various web design agency’s offices, and they’ve offered you every single type of fancy coffee and the sun?

You might have been offered flat whites and double espresso’s, and if the web design agency is really fancy, you might have been provided with a “pumpkin spice latte”—that’s our favourite.

Jokes aside, if you’re interested in having a website designed, you’ve most probably heard about the content management system “WordPress”. In our humble opinion, it’s the best CMS out there, and we create most of our clients’ websites using WordPress.
WordPress was launched in 2003, it is now, by a large margin, the most popular content management system worldwide, powering over 60 million websites worldwide!

One of the reasons we recommend WordPress is that we’ve seen companies being talked into using bespoke content management systems that either been built by the web design agency itself or it’s a CMS the web design agency has recommended that practically no one outside of the web design company may have heard of!

The question we always ask our clients is, why reinvent the wheel?

Why choose a content management system you never heard about?

Why not pick one that’s good quality, reliable, and used by millions of businesses worldwide? This is why we recommend WordPress. So don’t invent the wheel, choose a system that’s popular worldwide, choose WordPress.

It’s like buying a car; some brands are reliable, dependable, and designed to be, well really good, so there is a safe bet. Why would you want to go for car brand you never heard of, that is more expensive and perhaps less reliable? Unless you’re looking for something high-performance sports car to make a statement that is!

We deviate again; lets get back on point is, why reinvent the wheel?

So, whether you run a small business with a large company, WordPress is fantastic for most businesses’ requirements. This is why we recommend it to our clients all the time.

Avoid basic, nasty-looking websites

We see this all so often: the business is in a rush to start up, could be a self-employed consultant or small business, and they have a bash at builing the website themselves.

When ends up happening? Is a website that looks like a glorified business card online? It’s naff, its full of stock photos, and it’s too basic.

So we can recommend a WordPress hands down, everytime to our clients.

Table of contents:

• What type of websites can be designed and built using WordPress?
• What are the main benefits of choosing WordPress?
• How long has WordPress been running for?
• How to start building WordPress websites

What Is WordPress?

WordPress is simply an open-source CMS. If you don’t know what CMS stands for, it stands merely for the “content management system. The benefits of owning a CMS such as WordPress are clear; it allows the owner to log in using a username and password to the administration panel.

However, in the admin panel, within WordPress CMS is called the “dashboard”; there you can change almost everything about the website. Depending on the template or design, you can change the wording, the colour scheme, the pictures, and the page layout.

So, many businesses, hear in Cardiff, allow web developers to build their websites for them initially because this often a lot of work and the business may not have the time to do this work themselves.

Yet, Because they’ve been built using WordPress, they can change the design later themselves later. For example, they might move from Cathedral Road to City Road in Cardiff; they can change the address themselves if they own WordPress website.

A WordPress website has benefits because the content management system has a simple and straight forward to use dashboard. You don’t need any coding knowledge or even know what PHP means. You can make the edits yourself within the dashboard.

What type of businesses use WordPress?

When WordPress was first launched in 2003, most websites were rather simplistic blogs, which were designed using WordPress. However, things have now changed substantially. Intricate e-commerce websites can be built using WP and the plugin, WooCommerce, and many global brands even use WordPress because it’s a fantastic quality content management system.

WYSIWYG editor

The WordPress WYSIWYG editor is built into the actual CMS, which is fantastic and allows you to edit blog posts that your adding.
Therefore, without coding knowledge, you can make the text bold, add a H1 tag, and add internal links and anchor text.

In our opinion, out of all content management systems and the sun, we think WordPress and the WYSIWYG are superb.

What things do I need in place to design a WordPress website?

Think about the domain name and make sure it’s available

There are a lot of businesses that contact web designers to get a website designed, yet they may not have finalised a choice of business name just yet. So they may not have purchased a domain name.

Sometimes, for example, a customer might ask, “Can you go ahead and start designing the website and we give the business name and domain name later?”
Often you cannot.

That’s because the content marketing needs to be written to include the business name.

We must also register a domain name for a company such as GoDaddy, and the domain name must be available.

What you often find is that when you select the perfect domain name, that’s a short name, that sticks in your mind, well often sometimes it will already be taken.

That domain name might be reserved by another businesses, or someone has parked the domain and now asking thousands of pounds for your domain name every year for another business to use it.

So before you contact the web developer or designer, think about a business name and check whether it’s available on a domain name registrar such as GoDaddy or on 123Reg or 20i. if your domain name is available, say for £9.99 a year, snap it up, as someone else might take it. For example, sometimes a business might have to pay thousands sometimes, if it’s a really good domain name that they want, but someone else has parked it.

You have to install an SSL certificate

You should ask your web designers to add an SSL certificate to the page.

Start burning the midnight oil and start writing!

So you do have to burn the midnight oil sometimes and write a lot of content marketing in order to get a website up and running; for example, even with a small brochure website with just seven pages or less, you could sometimes have an excess of 3000 words that need to be written!

This can’t just be any old waffle. The content marketing must be high quality.

It must be well-written and persuasive so people want to buy your company’s products or services.

Therefore, we ask our clients to write the text before contacting our web design agency. Sometimes, writing this text can take many months, so you might want to have the text in place before contacting your web designer to start building a website.

Different page builders

When you select WordPress, you can choose from different page builders such as “Elementor” and “Divi”. However, our firm favourite is “WP Bakery”.

Your web designers should show you how different page builders work. Some people prefer different page builders; we like WP Bakery.
However, another company might prefer Elementor.

It does come down to choice. However, we say you need to sit down with your web developer and ask them to show you how these different page builders work, because you need to use them to edit everything from the text on the website, through to adding pictures, or say adding new blog posts you have written. So you must find the WordPress page builder simple to use.

If you don’t find them simple, you might want to try different page builders. However, you need to talk with the web designer about which page builder you want because changing once the website has been built, is a very hard task to do.

Why Use WordPress?

So why do so many businesses choose WordPress?

It’s a widely stated statistic that over 40% of all websites have been built using WordPress!

It’s a content management system with tens of millions of websites built using it.

This is good for so many reasons. It’s good because it’s been around for a long time; it’s been improved and refined, just like a fine wine; it has improved with time.

It’s now a simple-to-use, elegant and brilliant content management system.

Many businesses can use it, from car garages through to solicitors practices- well just about any business can use WordPress. Perhaps you’re thinking about launching a product range and setting up an e-commerce business, well there are plugins such as Woocommerce, which make an absolute piece of cake to turn WordPress into an e-commerce store.

A Brief History of WordPress

WordPress has been around for a very long time, since 2003. It was first created by Matt Mullenweg, who wanted to design a website that you could edit and improve without modifying the source code. This is when WordPress first started. We here at this web design company have to say a massive thank you to Matt Mullenweg.

The Importance of WordPress 1.0

WordPress 1.0 was first offered to businesses in 2004. It had the name “Davies” back then, and when WordPress since then has rolled out many updates each being assigned with a code name.

An example of a popular, well-known update, the significant change WordPress was called “Gutenberg” update.

Come and have a chat with us

Come and have a chat with our web design agency, we design fantastic websites; we have experience designing websites for a wide range of businesses, everything from dental practices through to car garages.

We are WordPress experts within Cardiff

Why not give us a ring today?

Author: W&P Web Design
Date: 28/11/24

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is developing at a lightning pace, transforming many aspects of modern life. Therefore, our web design team thought it was about time we explained how AI is changing web design

Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is rapidly changing our lives. Many people don’t know that AI is being used across many large online retailers. In web design, AI is not just a futuristic concept but a practical tool that’s helping with everything from customer service to arranging the products we want to buy.

For example, AI can power the chatbot you chat with on a retailer’s website, arranging the products on the page to maximise the business’s sales chances.

Massive international conglomerates such as Meta, Google, and ChatGPT are all investing in AI and developing it to improve it further. This means that web designers and web design agencies should consider how AI will impact a website’s design.

This article will also examine how artificial intelligence is now used in web design, such as creating personalised user experiences, generating content marketing, and automating repetitive tasks.

What is AI, and how does it work?

When we think of artificial intelligence, we automatically think of the film with Will Smith, I-Robot (Brillant firm). However, AI is simply a program used to help people solve problems. Therefore, AI is trained on a massive amount of data, which are called language models.

How are our e-commerce businesses actively using artificial intelligence right now?

It’s widely thought that large PLCs and large online retailers use AI integrated into e-commerce websites to learn about buying habits.
For example, the next time you visit the website, look at numerous running trainers’ products. It might promote running clothing, smart watches, and water bottles to track your running performance.

Many companies believe that AI is being used to target fake reviews in that the A. I can determine whether reviews are being manually written by real shoppers or placed by bots, so they are fake reviews. Artificial intelligence is, therefore, being used to detect fake business and product reviews.

ChatGPT and Midjourney are examples of what is called “generative” AI.

What is generative AI?

Some businesses use ChatGPT and Midjourney to create content marketing and add pictures to the company’s content marketing.

Other AI programs like Midjourney can create images from simple text instructions.

For example, midjourney is used to create images.

If you give AI programmes, such as Chatgpt and Midjourney, a few simple instructions, such as “create a picture of a man drinking a soft drink out of a can on a hot summer’s day,” they can create amazing pictures.

Language models and AI are getting even better every day
At this moment, large language models are being used, and artificial intelligence, such as chat GPT, GPT is being trained on these language models. Then, you can create content marketing blog posts and pages of text using this artificial intelligence technology.

Many think artificial intelligence can help web designers and business owners save time. However, some worry that as AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, it could lead to job losses.

What do we think?

However, we think that AI can be used to save a lot of time. For example, you could use it to help you brainstorm ideas for a blog post you are thinking of writing.

For example, you might ask Chat GPT to develop 10-page title ideas to help you brainstorm ideas for a blog post or write a blog post about your interior design blog.

Therefore, instead of drinking copious amounts of coffee to develop ideas for your new blog post, you could save time and ask Chat GPT for suggestions that might spark your creativity.

Could it be used to design a website?

Cardiff business owners could have a website designed by AI, but it may lack the human element of creativity that comes with employing real web designers.

Therefore, many businesses like to chat with us, explain how they want their website to look, and then leave it to us to design.
Many companies don’t want to use AI; they often prefer to hire local web designers like us to create a quality, well-designed WordPress website. Our emphasis on the human touch and unique design sets us apart.

Comes to the WordPress experts in Cardiff

We can design a high-quality WordPress website for your company. We have designed excellent WordPress websites and work with many solicitors, dentists, and construction companies. Call us today for a no-obligation quote.

When a new business or an established business requires a brand-new website designed, there are thousands upon thousands of web design agencies to choose from. There are everything from freelancers working in their spare bedrooms at home to large web design companies that only build websites for one specific business sector, such as solicitors.

Yet, we think you may choose local companies when looking for a web design agency. So here’s why we believe that:

– Build up a long-term relationship, whereby it is easier to have meetings in person because there are local
– Local knowledge of the city and surrounding area
– Cost-effective: choosing web designers from larger cities can sometimes be more expensive

So, how do you go about choosing a web design agency?

Well, no two web design agencies are ever the same. Most, like W&P, want to provide you with a quality CMS that helps promote your business’s products and services for many years ahead.

However, on the other hand, you have your companies that churn out websites, well, a bit like a product on a factory production line. What ends up happening sometimes is that you have a website that’s cheap yet a bit basic.

So, here are some of our top recommendations for when choosing a web design company:

Clearly define what you need and set a cap on how much you’re willing to spend.

There’s no point in being sucked in by a web design “special offer” only to find when you’ve added up everything you need to get your new website live; it’s treble what you anticipated to spend at the start.

So, make sure right from the outset what the monthly/yearly hosting costs are. Also, make sure that the quote also includes making the website responsive.

For those of us who do not know what responsive means, it simply means the website will work on a mobile phone. However, some web design companies do not automatically include making the website mobile responsive within the initial quote.
So, you have to make sure that when agreeing to a web design quote, it includes the basics needed for your website to work. For example, all businesses will need hosting, a domain name, and a responsive website.

We recommend arranging a meeting with your web designers so that you can discuss everything the business will need. Often, special offer prices do not include everything, and for example, when you add up the costs, sometimes the cost of the monthly hosting can be pretty high compared to the price of getting the website designed. So, this is where some businesses draw your interest through getting a low-priced website built initially, yet the ongoing hosting costs could be high.

Don’t commit to an web design agency before you are ready

There are so many web design businesses splashing out tons on advertising on social media and on Adword campaigns. You may have entered your mobile number for a callback, and before you know it, a smooth-talking salesman is on the line.
After a chat, you might be sent an agreement to sign to begin designing your new website.
Hold your horses and not rush to choose any web design agency. A business often uses a website for an extended period, perhaps over the next seven years.
So our best recommendation is to don’t rush into signing any agreements. Instead, meet with your web designers in person and see if the company is a business that you want to work with over the long run. For example, you may want to hire a company to manage your company’s social media accounts or to improve organic search engine optimisation. Therefore, many web designers offer these supplementary services.
However, these services are ongoing, meaning that you often need to work with the business on a monthly basis. Therefore, we think it’s a good idea to meet with several web design agencies to see which company directors and management you enjoy working with because you might want to work with them over the long run.

CMS

Many people stick with a car brand because they are familiar with its styling, performance, and garages that service cars.
Some businesses are the same when choosing a content management system, or CMS, for short. Often, businesses get familiar with how a CMS such as WordPress works, and therefore, understandably, during a website redesign, they don’t want to switch to a different CMS and have to learn, for example, a totally different dashboard.
Our web design company is solely focused on building WordPress websites. Most of the businesses that contact us to get a website designed or redesigned want WordPress because they are often familiar with the CMS, how the Dashboard works, and the many benefits WordPress can bring.

What’s the ongoing cost?

So, any business does have to work out the ongoing costs of running that website. What you don’t want is to sign an agreement only to find that the ongoing costs are high.

Our business, for example, offers one year of free hosting for the brochure websites we build.
This differs from other businesses, which may charge a fixed monthly fee. After the first year is up, we charge a flat yearly fee, which is very affordable for all businesses.

Time frames

If you see they have made solid progress so far, there should be an element of time where you allow the web design agency to run over a deadline.

Yet what you don’t want is to sign up to get a website designed, perhaps pay a deposit, and then sign an agreement for the website to be designed. Then, you might be left waiting months for the website to be designed. Some brochure websites can often be designed in a matter of weeks.

There are times of the year, such as the peak of summer and the run-up to Christmas, when Cardiff web design agencies are busy bees, yet you should gain an understanding from the web designers how long it will take them to design the website.
With us, if we have the content marketing ready to go and add to the website, we can often design a brochure website from start to finish in

less than three weeks.

Would you like to work with us?

If your business needs a WordPress website designed or help improving its organic search engine optimisation, why not give us a ring today?

Author: W&P Marketing
Date: 26/11/2024

For many businesses today, the main way they draw in new customers is via their organic search engine optimisation (SEO). This simply means that the business improves its on-page and off-page SEO so that it appears on page one of Google for the products and services it sells.

Now, don’t get us wrong. This is not easy, and it’s most definitely not a piece of cake. To get any business from a standstill position to being on page one of Google takes at least six months of hard work. For the more competitive business sectors, where you have more competition, this can take much longer.

Who are we?
We are a web design business based in Cardiff. We build websites for a wide range of different businesses, from small businesses to much larger companies. We can also manage a business’s search engine optimisation for an extra fee. We charge a set fee per month depending on how much work is needed, which is based on how competitive your business sector is.

Yet the whole reason for writing this article is that we wanted to explain why it’s important to consider a business’s SEO right from the get-go. What we mean by that is when the business is designing the website.

It’s a bit like building a house: You have to get the foundations right for everything else to be built on top of them. This is exactly the same when improving a business’s search engine optimisation.

What exactly is SEO?

Google and the other major search engines use algorithms to calculate how good your business’s SEO is. For example, Googlebot crawls and indexes websites regularly.

It then looks at the strength of your business’s SEO by working out how strong the ranking factors are. Examples of ranking factors are a company’s backlinks, content marketing, and also how fast your company website is.

This ultimately dictates how visible your website is. For example, if you have very strong ranking factors, such as hundreds of quality backlinks, then your business is simply going to be on Google’s first page often for many different products or services that you sell.

How can you improve the SEO from the get-go when designing a website?

So, like when you enter a car into a race or train a boxer for a boxing match, you want to give that individual or car the best chance of winning.

Now, when you have a website designed, let’s say, by a web design agency based in the city of Cardiff, you’re most likely going to want that website to appear on the first page of Google’s organic results. Now, with that said, you have to improve the SEO on an ongoing basis, but also right from the start. So you have to consider Google E-EAT to make sure that the content marketing is high quality.

But also, you have to improve the SEO. Now, obviously, if you rush building the new company website and don’t consider SEO from the start, you are then quite literally fighting with one hand behind your back.

So we recommend that you don’t rush building your website and make sure that you get the SEO right before it even gets indexed. Here are some things that you need to think about.

Improve the on-page SEO

Make sure that you add high-quality content marketing, anchor text, internal links, meta titles, meta descriptions, page titles, alt text, etc., but make sure that all of this work is completed in a white-hat way. You must follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines to ensure that the work is completed in a white-hat way.

You need to add high-quality content marketing.

All of the written work must be white hat. You must understand Google E-EAT. The content marketing must be very high quality if you want the page to appear on page one of Google.

Plus, we recommend hiring a digital marketing agency to add high-quality blog posts, perhaps once a month. As any good web design agency will tell you, in order to get your business on page one of Google, you have to add high-quality articles/blog posts on a regular basis.

You also have to consider the technical SEO

Responsive web design

So when you approach some web designers for a quote, they may quote you to design a brochure or an e-commerce website. They may state a flat fee, yet you have to also calculate how much it will cost to get a mobile version of the website designed. Sometimes, some web design businesses can charge quite a hefty fee, on top of the web design cost, to get a responsive, mobile-friendly version of the website designed.

Here at W&P, we are a well-known web design business based in the heart of Cardiff. Our fee always includes the fee to make the website mobile-friendly. This simply means that our very high-quality WordPress websites will work on smartphones and tablets as well.

Backlinks do take a lot of time to build

So, for some businesses, it’s absolutely crucial that they have high-quality backlinks; otherwise, they stand little to no chance of getting on page one of Google.

We recommend using the method of building backlinks: writing very high-quality content marketing that attracts backlinks.
However, backlinks also need to be managed. A business doesn’t want to accumulate low-quality spam links, as this can negatively damage its SEO. So, if it is to get on page one of Google, a business will need backlinks, quality backlinks.

Yet, with that said, the links need to be managed. By that, we mean that a company needs to use an SEO tool, such as Ahrefs or Moz Pro, to manage the backlinks. This is to ensure that the backlinks are high-quality.

If a business accumulates a lot of low-quality links, it may receive a link penalty.
An example of a link penalty is Google’s Penguin Penalty; this is why backlinks need to be managed.

Conclusion

Whether you’re a plumber, dental practice, or solicitor, we can design a well-crafted website for your business. We offer web design packages starting from just £950.00. For an additional fee, we can also manage your business’s SEO on a monthly basis. If your business needs a website designed and help improve its organic SEO, then do call us today.

Engagement

Large and small businesses alike understand that it’s a constant battle and competition to keep the business rankings high organically on the first page of Google.co.uk. Businesses must also compete with each other based on “engagement metrics”- such how long can they hold shoppers’ interest (dwell time)?

Arguably, at any time in history, our attention spans have become shorter when purchasing goods or looking for a company. That’s because as consumers we are spoilt for choice; we no longer have to search through catalogue businesses to find a local telephone number. We now have a mass of companies all competing for our business on social media and on Google’s results.

This is good and bad for businesses, as it keeps businesses on their toes and requires them to offer excellent customer service.
When you talk to any good marketing agency or web design company, they will tell you it’s all about keeping the shopper engaged.

Keeping the shopper engaged

Therefore in 2025 web designers globally will be focused on building and designing more engaging, animated and websites able to grab and retain your interest.

We’ve all seen websites’ header sections with auto-loading videos, which give a sense of the business its staff working for the business. .

This is sometimes supplemented with drone footage showing the business premises, or its services or products it offers to the market.

So, there you have it, its a constant battle to keep shoppers on your website, lower the bounce rate, and increase the dwell time. So web designers, cant make boring, stayle websites anymore, you need come up with an intresting design, in order to retain a shoppers interest, to do this the web design must stand out from the crowd.

Domino’s pizza have nailed it

Domino’s website is exciting and uses animation to keep the shoppers intrerst. For example on the App, and online, Domino’s Pizza often shows a robot that automatically updates you on the progress of your pizza being baked at the local Domino’s Pizza restaurant.

This is brilliant because it is interactive, it retains interest, and informs the customer on the progress of how their food is being prepared, whether it is baking stage, ready for collection, or out for delivery, for example.
So we can begin to see a lot more interactive, engaging, and fun.

Dynamic and responsive layouts

Many web designers will be discussing dynamic page layouts more we think during 2025. That’s the layout of a page which can change and rearrange themselves based on shoppers’ interactions with the website.

So, let’s say that you are particularly interested in a brand of running trainers. Rather than being presented with 300 pairs of randomly ordered trainers, spread across say 7 pages, if instead you have shown a preference for three particular brands, then the page can rearrange themselves on the page to entice the customer to buy the product.

This includes the user experience (U.X) and improves the click-through rate of each particular product.

Powering this dynamic layout are often complex artificial intelligence (A.I) based algorithms working away in the background, tailoring the results to what the algorithm thinks the customer will want to see next, so in this example arranging the trainers in terms of what the customer may well be interested in buying.

Virtual reality will become our reality

Virtual reality and augmented reality, AR for short is going to become something of a phenomenon. With millions of people owning these headsets in the future.

Imagine, for example, sitting in your living room and watching major sporting events, like the boxing match between Tyson Fury and Jake Paul on NetFlix.

Imagine if there were advertisements that popped out on all the television within your living room when and lets say you were then looking at a giant soda bottle or something to that effect circulating in your living room- this is what we think is the future of advertising and marketing.

This is basically what becomes possible with virtual reality and augmented reality.

Keeping things simple

Although we are entering a time where we will see artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality used a lot in our everyday lives, we will also think that a lot businesses will return to minimalism design as well.

So, for example, we think a lot of websites use a lot of empty spaces, clutter-free design, and text in brief paragraphs.
Because people’s attention spans are shorter, the skill in terms, of designing un-cluttered websites will become an art form.
Clutter-free design is becoming popular again, offering a good, elegant-looking website.

Chat bots

This might not happen in 2025, but we think it will happen in the future. Just as you walk into a traditional shop and a shop assistant greets you, we believe this is will become possible online through an automated sales assistant.

This representative will be like a real-life sales assistant, answering any questions you have about the product or service.

Let’s give you an example of what we mean. When you are shopping for an electrical item, customers often have many questions before they buy, let’s say, a rather expensive television.

Perhaps the customer can’t find the answer through the product description. So they might turn to the AI-powered chatbot to ask a questions about that particular product. We think artificial intelligence has become so good that it will understand the question, and provide an answer the same way a real customer service representative would.

If your business requires a website redesign the website to call us today.

Author: W&P
Subject: Web Design

Introduction

So, many businesses, especially start-up companies that are cash-strapped, might call around various local web designers for quotes. Yet they often find that even freelancers now often want upwards of 2k to design a brochure website.

Now, when a business is writing a business plan, it often budgets a lot less for the website, thinking that it can be built for a fraction of that price.

However, websites can be built cheaply, but do they serve their intended purpose, which is to increase sales?

Often, a DIY job website will have weak SEO and sometimes be very slow to load. The mobile version of the website is also often not considered, so the point we are trying to make is that the design often ends up being very weak.

Yet, if you are going to try building your own company website, we thought we would put together a handy guide.

I hope you will not fall into the trap that so many other businesses do when designing their first company website.
Without further ado, let’s examine some of the common mistakes that some businesses make when designing their first company website.

Lack of mobile optimisation

Walk practically anywhere today, and everybody is glued to their smartphones. This means that more and more shoppers buy goods and services from smartphones.

This means that the company website needs to work really well on smartphones. Now smartphones and tablets come in a huge range of different screen sizes. For example, some Samsung Galaxy smartphones have mini iPhones with giant screens.

So, the website needs to work well on desktops, such as your Apple MacBook Pro, smartphones, and tablets.

So, a common mistake many businesses make, especially small businesses designing their first company website, is that they don’t carefully consider how the mobile version of the website will look and don’t prioritise making it super simple to use.

Therefore, one of two things happens: either there’s no mobile version of the website, or it’s so poorly designed that when the business logs into its Google Analytics account, it will see that the website has an extremely high bounce rate. That’s because the mobile version of the website could offer a poor user experience, so the bounce rate will be high. This means that the business could be missing out on a lot of sales.

Poor navigation

A website’s navigation should be super simple to quickly take a customer from the homepage to the right product or service page. If the main menu is wholly cluttered and doesn’t even work on some smartphones, then again, the bounce rate will be very high.

So, as a hugely experienced web design agency, our best advice is to keep the website’s navigation simple and make it uncluttered and straightforward. So that you are taking the shopper from the homepage, through to the right product page, using just a few clicks.

Don’t add pop-ups

Some businesses think adding pop-ups to the page is an excellent way to put a CTA or call to action in front of the customer.
Let’s say you run a law practice and add pop-ups saying, “Fill your details in now, and we will call you back.” This is fine, but when you land on the website, which is the first box on the homepage, it can be unpleasant for a shopper.

Plus, every page they then subsequently go on, they may see the same pop-up message. What ends up happening is that this might annoy the shopper, who may then quickly decide to leave the company website. Google will know that a shopper is not spending very long at all on that business website, which means that the website has a low dwell time. This means that the business might start to move down Google’s ranks because it has a low dwell time.

So, if a company website is outdated, for example, you might add an award that the business achieved in 2017, yet the company website is not updated with newer awards. This can make the company website look outdated.

This is another reason you may want to hire a marketing agency like us instead. Not just to design a really impressive WordPress website or, let’s say, a Drupal website, but to work with the marketing company on a monthly basis to improve search engine optimisation. Then, you may want to make web design edits more often to keep the website updated.

Stock images

So, many companies make the common mistake of using stock images, which don’t sell the products or services that the business sells well.

What do we mean by that?

Well, let’s say that you run a construction company here in Wales. You hire a local web designer who uses stock photos of diggers, construction staff, and the construction of a building. Yet anybody who’s worked in the U.K. construction industry often can immediately see that the construction work has taken place in America and not here in the U.K.—how would they know that?

Well, the health and safety equipment, such as high-viz vests, often look different, as do the helmets and the overhead power lines pictured in the picture.

So, a customer, somebody looking for a local construction business, will know that those photos haven’t been taken in the U.K. and are stock photos. So, we recommend that when hiring a web developer, either pick high-quality stock photos, which you often have to buy or pay a local photography company for the day to get high-quality, high-resolution pictures for your company.

Stock photos often look low-quality if it’s clear to the shopper that they weren’t taken in the U.K.

Come to the web design experts in Cardiff:

Here the services that our company can offer:

WordPress web designers

We have been designing WordPress websites for diverse companies in the U.K.

SEO

We can offer both organic and local SEO services.

Would you like a free quote?

If you’re opening a dental practice here in Cardiff or thinking about starting a plumbing business, whatever type of company you plan on starting, why not give us a ring? We can design and build CMS websites, starting from just £950.00

Introduction

So, we know the score. Everyone likes a good deal. After all, why pay more for something if you can get it for less?

Well, we fully understand that fact.

However, there are some things you can save a few quid on- such as not buying that designer-label shirt.

That kind of decision is not going to affect your business, yet if you opt for a super cheap website that’s slow and doesn’t advertise your business in the best possible way, well, this happens:

– Super high bounce rates (this will damage your business SEO)
– Not generate sales
– Might be slow, therefore offers poor U.X

First impressions
Whether they’re buying a mountain bike or a set of ski gloves, shoppers are spoilt for choice in terms of the number of online retailers they can choose from.

This is good for the consumer, yet for a business, it means that they must have a well-designed website with good SEO; that is, good search engine optimisation offers a good U.X and is well-designed.

So, can a cheap website achieve this?
Probably not.

When a website costs, say, £500 or less, how much time can a web designer and developer realistically spend on it?

Well, the answer is often not that long at all.
The result is often an overly essential website that probably doesn’t sell your business.

A mobile-friendly website is essential.

Your company website must be responsive. Whether you run a solicitor’s practice or a trendy hairdressing saloon in Cardiff Bay, you will need the website to be mobile-ready and responsive. So, whichever web design agency you hire, when you obtain your quote breakdown, ensure that the website is responsive.

Your business will, therefore, need to have a company that is:

– Responsive
– Well designed and has a low bounce rate on smartphones and tablets
– Should be a piece of cake for the shopper to use

Content marketing

For example, writing 3,000 words for a new website can take time.

So, when you obtain quotes for your new website, ask whether that includes copywriting services.

Well-written text is essential to promoting your business’s products and services and to helping keep shoppers on your company website for a long time, improving dwell time.

When you talk to any good and established web design agency, they will tell you that a good website needs high-quality content marketing. This should be written in a white-hat way, and the author should know about Google E-EAT.

Good quality content marketing should have the following

– Be unique
– Written by an expert
– Have a very high Google E-EAT score

The website could have high ongoing costs.

So, many web designers and web design agencies sometimes offer super low prices to design a new company website.

Yet, the ongoing costs, such as the monthly hosting costs, can sometimes be quite expensive.

For example, you might have a website designed for just £700.00, but if the ongoing hosting is 40+ pounds per month, this is close to £500 a year.

So this is what some web design agencies do: They offer special prices to build a website for businesses, say, in the construction sector. Yet, when you look at the web design contract, you might see that the domain name renewal costs and hosting cost every month can sometimes be quite high.

So, when you choose a website design company like W&P, you will find that we offer very competitive prices for our web design services.
We also offer low prices on our website hosting and domain name renewal costs.

So if you want a want website designed for your business in Cardiff why not give us a ring?

Some company directors may have set up multiple companies in the past. This means that they may have a go-to web designer who knows exactly what they want. The company director also knows which CMS they want and the information that the web design agency will need to get the ball rolling.

However, many companies may never have had a website up and running before. So now, they are on Google looking for “web design Cardiff” and trying to whittle down the list and work out which companies to hire.
Yet, before you pick up that dog and bone—that’s your phone—and start getting talked into a website by a smooth-talking salesperson, we recommend sticking the kettle on.

That’s because you do need to mull over what your business needs and what you need the website to do so that you can tell the website designers exactly what you want. This way, you don’t go through the whole web design process and then go, hang on a minute, I forgot about, say, having a responsive version of the website built.

So planning is essential, but if it’s a 7-page brochure website, you haven’t got to go overboard on planning. You need to think about the following:

– Will your website be taking payments? if you so, you need to think about which e-commerce CMS you need
– Who will be writing the content marketing that’s the text
– Will you hire a photography company, or can the web design agency offer this service?
– Will you require help improving your SEO? If so, does the marketing agency offer this service?
– Which font would you like?

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes; what will they need from your company website?

For example, the website will most likely need to be responsive.

In addition, how are you going to design the product pages so that they offer useful product descriptions?

How do you make the website easy to use for selecting items, such as whether they are in stock, price, size, etc?

All this needs to be thought about from the start, including what functionality you will need, because if not, the web designers normally consider this extra work and add it to the price.

What is the competition doing well?

So, take a look at your competitors. We would never recommend copying your direct competitors.
However, think about this: let’s say you’re about to start a brand new company, a solicitors practice in Cardiff Bay. You will know your main three competitors; they may well be ranked on the 1st page of Google. Have a look at their websites and consider the following:

– How many pages do they have?
– How have they set out their services in terms of pages?
– How much text is added to each page?
– How is the text added to the page?
– What parts of the design are good? For example, is the main menu a piece of cake to use?

What features will your business need?

So, every business owner who comes to us to chat about the new website they want designed often wants something different.

For example, one customer might call us in the morning and want a minimalistic, professional-looking website for an accountancy practice.

Another business owner might call us in the afternoon and be setting up a new insurance company and want bold, bright colours used.

Our customers often want something completely different, so you will need to think about how you want the website designed.

However, with that said, all businesses will want the following, so do make sure that this is included in your web design quote:
– Responsive/mobile-ready website
– Super-fast website, so will need fast hosting
– Good logo design
– Who will be writing the text?

These points are essential to consider when designing a website. However, when you chat with our web designers, they can often recommend the suitable CMS for your business and other functionalities you might need. For example, some businesses might want a company blog section built as well.

Come to an established web design agency.

If you’re opening a new car dealership or perhaps a construction business in Wales and you want to hire an established Welsh web design agency, then do talk to us. We mostly build WordPress websites, yet our company can also offer SEO services and copywriting services. Come to W&P; we have some of the best web designers in Cardiff working for us.

Author: W&P Marketing
Date: 14/11/2024

Many companies are asked whether they want a blog section added when they have a website designed.

As this blog post will inform you, having a blog section can be beneficial to a business in terms of helping to draw in more customers.

However, managing a blog, in terms of keeping up with writing blog posts, can be massively time-consuming, and the blog posts may need updating. For example, if you have added, let’s say, “10 best tents for camping in 2018”,- well if this attracts many organic visitors, you may want to update the blog posts occasionally.

Writing and keeping blog posts up to date can be time-consuming. Yet, a blog can be your business’s opportunity to show off your knowledge and expertise. This is precisely what Google E-EAT advises: It wants a company to show it has real expertise and knowledge about the products or services you are selling.

These websites, which have a high Google E-EAT score, will be the businesses that rank higher on Google’s organic results.

Freshness

As any good SEO business and web design agency will know, it’s essential not to let a website get delayed if you want to improve the business’s organic search engine optimisation (SEO). The website needs to be kept fresh; one way to do this is to add blog posts regularly. For example, you may want to add a social media feed that shows your business’s latest Instagram posts on a page.

The benefits of adding a blog to your company website

SEO and rankings

So, why do businesses spend a lot on creating content marketing every year?

The answer is simple: If done right and the work is high-quality, it can potentially help attract many organic visitors. If the marketing business attracts many organic visitors, the company can turn those visitors into paying customers. So, for example, if you have expert knowledge about a product or service, you can turn this into helpful and engaging blog posts.
Whether it’s about how to change a car’s oil filter or which hair conditioner to buy for split ends, what matters is if the customer finds the work valuable and helpful.

If content marketing offers the following, it can help improve your company’s SEO.

• The work should have:
• High dwell time
• Low bounce rate
• Good CTR from the meta title and meta description

Building backlinks

If you were to ask a top web design agency or an SEO expert, what’s the most challenging part of improving a business’s organic search engine optimisation? They would probably say, “Building backlinks.”

The reason is that backlinks need to come from another website, and the backlinks must have the following attributes if they are to improve your company’s SEO: they are:

• Must be good quality
• Built using white methods
• The websites they come from must be relevant

Now, by writing numerous high-quality blog posts, you can earn backlinks.

So, for example, if you have written an excellent, well-written article that’s high quality, then readers may want to link to you.

So, for example, let’s say you sell oil filters and parts for servicing high-performance cars. If your business writes a series of blog posts saying why your car parts, such as the oil filters, are high quality, this will likely interest many people who own high-performance cars. For example, they may own blogs regarding track day racing, rally cars, and car tuning. These websites may link to your website, meaning that you obtain backlinks.

Gaining leads

Google has released a significant update called the “Google Helpful Content Update.” This means that Google’s algorithms now reward pages and blog posts that offer helpful information.

Also, from a business standpoint, if your business offers helpful advice that helps customers with questions they may have, they are more likely to buy from you.

It could be “Which are the most energy-efficient washing machines in the UK?” or ” Which is the best kitchen blender to buy?” No matter what it is about, if you write helpful advice, customers will likely read it. They are more likely to purchase from you if they find the information useful.

So, what are some of the downsides/drawbacks of owning a blog?

Well, we wouldn’t recommend using A. I do write blog posts. If you want to write high-quality blog posts, you must do the work manually.
A significant downside is the time it takes to write this work. Consider, for example, the top solicitor practices in any significant city in the United Kingdom.

You will see on these solicitor websites that, because the business sector is so competitive, they regularly invest huge time and marketing budgets in writing helpful guides and articles.
If you want good quality work that’s well written and has a high Google E-EAT score, 20+ hours could be spent writing just one long blog post. It might involve a lot of solicitors or a partner in the company. Then, the SEO agency has to do its bit and optimise the work, which costs quite a lot when done right.

So, what’s the downside of having a blog?

We would say the time and expense of writing and creating the work. Some businesses don’t have the time to write, say, 2500 words and then monitor the SEO performance of that work in Google Analytics to monitor the bounce rate, the time on site, and the number of links obtained using an SEO tool such as Moz.

It is half-baked

So, writing blog posts and well-written content marketing needs to be well written. It needs to tick all these boxes:

– Very low bounce rate
– High dwell time
– High Google E-EAT score
– Have many good quality do-follow and no-follow links
– Needs to be written by an expert
– Have good on-page SEO, such as meta titles, meta descriptions, anchor text, etc

The work cannot be half-baked, but that’s exactly what many businesses and even some web designers produce for their clients.
It becomes a bit like a production line. The main competitors publish three blog posts a month, so they feel they need to keep up.

However, this is not the approach to take when creating content marketing. It’s not about quantity or writing blog posts as regularly as possible; it doesn’t work like that.

Quality always pays

It’s, therefore, better to publish quality work than to try and write, say, four blog posts a month that are rubbish and half-baked.
So only publish good quality work.

Have an evident vision of the visitor/shopper you want to attract?

So why are you writing 2,500 words?

What’s the purpose of writing such long blog posts?

That is the question you must ask: what customers do you want to attract?

What are the questions that they most often ask your business?

Then, can you write a perfect answer to that question? If it ranks on the first page of Google, it may attract thousands of organic visitors, and you could potentially convert some of those shoppers into paying customers.
So, don’t just write, say, 700 words of absolute marketing waffle; instead, put yourself in your customer’s shoes and ask yourself:

– What are the questions they most often ask?
– How can you answer that question in the best way possible
– How can you create a piece of content marketing that your shoppers will find helpful?
This is why we always say it’s better to write a perfect piece of content marketing than to try multiple low-quality pieces that will not help your business attract customers.

Google E-EAT.

Have multiple staff member’s input.
You know earlier that we mentioned Google E-EAT. Well, Google now wants the author of any blog posts or pages to show that they are experts on whatever they are writing about.

This is why it is a good idea to have multiple people within your company provide input or completely write the work.

We say that because within your company, you will likely have different experts in your services or products.
For example, a large solicitors’ practice will likely have family, employment, and business lawyers.

Now, all of these skill sets are different, so we recommend having a “content calendar,” which ensures that you write about your business’s different services.

So, let’s return to the example of a solicitor’s practice. You might want to obtain more work for the employment law team, the family law department, and the business law staff. So, to optimise the business’s organic SEO, it’s a good idea to create a content calendar that sets out who’s writing what and when.

This means you can optimise your organic SEO for multiple keywords rather than writing many blog posts about one thing.

How we can help:

WordPress web design

Many businesses in Cardiff have come to us to get a WordPress website constructed. Whether you run a construction business or accountancy practice or are about to start your law practice, we are here to help. We can build quality WordPress websites, often in less than three weeks.

SEO: Our business can also offer SEO services, such as organic and local SEO, which require a monthly payment. We have some of the best

SEO consultants working for us.

Would you like a quote?

If you would like a quote to design a new website or perhaps you would like help improving your business’s organic search engine optimisation, why not give our web design agency a call?
 

Introduction

Let’s face it: start-up businesses often don’t have the budget to spend money on expensive photography shoots. Sure, they may do this later when the bucks start rolling in, but they often want to get a website up and running for now.

This means that web designers are often tasked with finding the right stock photos. Adobe Stock Photos is a brilliant site for really high-quality stock photos that are not free.

We have used these on most websites we build, yet they are not offered for free.

Some of the websites we recommend below, however, are offered for free. So, if you’re about to design your own website or perhaps you hired a web design agency, but they want you to pick out some photos for your new company website, well, these websites are brilliant for getting stock photos.

Unsplash

Website: https://unsplash.com/

So, a viral stock photo website is Unsplash; it is brilliant. It has been around for a long time, since 2013. Unsplash originally started as a Tumblr blog, but now it’s a website that web designers all around the globe switch to when they need stock photos. The reason why is that the website now has a huge, gigantic collection of stock photos, over 1 million high-quality photos.

Unsplash is brilliant, as it has a very simple-to-use website. When you search for stock photos, say of an excavator, that’s exactly what you get.

You might be thinking, shouldn’t all stock photos do that?

The answer is no; ask any good front-end web designer when tasked with finding a stock image of something generic and basic, such as a garden fence. Some other stock photo sites sometimes show gardens, ponds, lawnmowers, and anything they think is remotely related to a garden fence.

Now, as you would imagine, this can get rather annoying when designing a new company website because, well, it can take a long time to find the right photo.

However, this is why we like Unsplash so much. We often go straight to this website when we need stock photos simply because the results are accurate. When you’re looking for a picture of an excavator, that’s exactly what you get back.

We highly recommend Unsplash. It offers great stock photos, accurate results, and is simple to use. Our web design team here at W&P gives it a massive thumbs up.

Pixabay

Website: https://pixabay.com/

Another really popular website is Pixabay—it’s massively popular with web design agencies. The reason why is that it has over 1 million free stock photos.
This is important because when designing a website, the designers will often need choice. Whether it’s a picture of a car dealership or a Christmas tree, it’s always good to have a choice. This is exactly what PixaBay offers: a lot of choices.

Freeimages

Website: https://www.freeimages.com/

Getty Images owns free images and has a massive collection of stock photos. Therefore, it’s very popular with web designers.

Pexels

Website: https://www.pexels.com/

Pexels is one of our favourite stock photo websites. We have built numerous websites for clients using Pexels photos, and there are a massive number of stock photos to choose from.

Pexels has been around since 2014, and this is important because the more established websites have a large number of stock photos.

Does your business require a website to be designed?

We know exactly what it’s like; even though some business owners could build a website themselves, do they have the time?
Even searching for the right stock photo of someone passing over a bunch of flowers takes time.

This is why so many businesses come to us in Cardiff: We can design a fantastic website with a starting price of just £950.00. We can select the stock photos, helping you to save time. Therefore, we can assist you whether you’re a plumber in a hurry or a solicitor with a diary full of meetings.

Most of our websites are designed using the CMS called WordPress.

Have you never heard of WordPress?

Well, you are most likely to have been on a WordPress website. Over 40% of all websites are built using this CMS. It’s trendy, and we have already built many websites for various Cardiff businesses using this content management system.

Why build it yourself?

So, if you read an article about free stock photos, you might be thinking about building a new website yourself.
Yet, writing all that text and selecting all of the stock images can take a lot of time. So why not let us design the website for you?

We can design a new CMS website in a very short amount of time. Most of our websites are built and designed in less than three weeks from start to finish, which helps you save time. With a starting price of just £950.00, our websites are very affordable.

Why not contact us for a quote?

Our web design company can offer the following services:
– WordPress CMS web design
– Drupal website design
– Organic search engine optimisation
– Local SEO
– Logo design
– Cardiff business