Web Design UK

Question 1

Answer

Web Design features in everything that you see on the internet. Web Design is basically the function that combines the UI (user interface) graphic design, content writing and UX (user experience). Whenever you land on a new webpage, all the items on that page will (or should!) have been carefully considered, planned and designed to offer the best experience possible. A visually appealing website that is easy to navigate, will retain users for much longer than a website that looks poor and is hard to use. Likewise, the actual content on the website is also very important, as that is the core value that the user is seeking from the website. A good web design builds a strong brand experience (this starts at your logo and page design) and it will subtly navigate you through its pages to complete an end goal, without you realising it. A good layout, strong visuals and excellent content should provide a great user experience which will give a low bounce rate, good CTR and resultantly help build traffic to your site over time. SEO Leaders can build your website to tick all of these boxes, so feel free to book a free call to see how we can help you.

Question 2

How much does Web Design Cost?

Answer

Any quote for quality web design should begin with discussions between agency and client. Pricing for even a simple website design would have to be calculated based on an appealing design and the need to stand above your competitors.

We have worked with a wide variety of businesses so we fully understand the best UX factors. The cost to build and design a new website depends on the requirements and complexity of the site but a simple brochure website that takes us a few weeks would be around £3500-£5000 whereas a large ecommerce site with a wide product range and possibly customised functionality would require a custom quotation. For an accurate cost estimate this depends totally on what type of design and functionality you want to include in the website or ecommerce site.

Question 3

How to choose the right Web Design Company?

Answer

There is a variety of web design agencies out there and it can be very tricky to know who to choose and trust with the design and build of your website. For many people this decision can be simplified by picking the cheapest quote!

It is possible that the best web design agency for you may be the cheapest one, but this is not often the case. It is very important that they have the experience and knowledge to understand precisely what you need and that they have the technical ability to build a unique website for your business that has the functionality you need to convert visitors to customers (because that’s the point when all is said and done!). Another key problem that we see in many cheap websites is that they have absolutely no built in technical SEO factors and often score very badly against Google (and other) website quality testing; not a good thing at all for growing a business.

Always talk to your agency before accepting their quote. Conduct some due diligence on them; do they have good reviews? proven history? listen out for the sort of words they use when talking about your project; are they just slinging a clunky site together or building something to grow your business or brand?

If you are undecided drop us a line and save yourself the hassle and risk of choosing an agency; every site we build is focused on making you more money, bringing you new customers and helping your existing customers (and any website visitors) out.

Question 4

How much does Web Development cost?

Answer

The majority of our client sites are built in Wordpress (CMS for brochure sites, business sites and more) and Opencart or Woocommerce (ecommerce websites). This is for two reasons, the first being that we are experts in these platforms and have a lot of experience with them; the second being because they are the best off the shelf platforms to start with and keep website development costs down for the customer.

We still develop custom systems when required, but using wordpress or one of our ecommerce packages allows us to spend more time working on what makes the difference to you and your brand:, the website design and UX. We create custom designs, unique to your brand and its objectives, and then apply them on the selected platform. The benefit to using frameworks with high adoption and a massive userbase are regular security patches, infinite customisability and not having to update ageing legacy code when a custom site is a few years old.

Web development is not really a standalone cost because it is used within the website design process to create your website. But a quality brochure site that takes us a few weeks would cost from £3500-£5000+ . Ecommerce sites are custom quotes because they depend on if you need a site migrating, how many products you have, what functionality the site needs and so on. A starting cost for a basic turnkey ecommerce site would be £5000.

Question 5

How much should an Ecommerce Website Cost?

Answer

The cost of an e-commerce website design and development depends entirely on the project. Whether you’re selling a small range of 10 drill bits or a range of 10,000 different building products, an e-commerce website requires a strong knowledge of website design, website development, technical SEO and ecommerce . Many people shop from their mobiles so the added challenge of making an ecommerce site responsive on all devices and browsers while maintaining the UX functionality and site speed has to be understood.

We build sites in Opencart and Woocommerce because these are two robust packages that are very SEO friendly with some tuning, and we have experienced developers who can do anything with the platforms. As to cost, with a small product range (<10 items) a starting cost would be £5000. Costs depend totally on if quality product images are supplied, unique product description texts, unique web page content for all site pages etc.
We typically create payment gateways for Stripe and Paypal on our ecommerce sites as these cover most requirements, though we have built for Alipay, Wechat and many more.

Question 6

What is usability in Web Design??

Answer

Usability in web design terms is enabling a human user to complete a goal on the website with minimal difficulty. It’s not always perfect in a first version of a website, as its success is based on user testing and adapting to constantly improve the user’s experience. Our website designers envisage the likely user and build suitable wireframes and structure and functions right through to the final website. During the design and development of a website we will be studying the accessibility of the site, a good structure, fast loading times and mobile responsiveness. We will also design with simplicity and ease of use, and also consistency using familiar design elements and clear information architecture. Good usability requires thorough research and testing to be sure it is truly relevant to your target audience.

Question 7

What does Responsive Web Design mean??

Answer

Google now puts mobile search first and indexes your website based on it’s mobile experience! As a result we pay huge attention to how your site looks and performs on all mobile devices as well as desktop computers. Mobile first indexing means that if your site is image heavy or poorly optimised it will score poorly in Googles mobile search tests which is not good for business.
Our processes for optimising the mobile experience and responsiveness depend on the website but particular attention is paid to navigation and adaptation to different screen sizes (computer, phone, and tablet). Regardless of the device you use, the site will always be well optimised and readable. Other factors are code quality, image sizes, time to paint (time to a fully loaded viewport) and many other criteria.

Question 8

How to know when your Website needs an Update?

Answer

Knowing when to update your website depends on the reason behind doing so. You may need to add some features or change the design or refresh the entire website. Depending on what framework or type of website you have will play a part in the answer. Generally CMS based sites like wordpress , joomla or similar need regular updates , the nature of a a heavily used framework means (certainly for wordpress) there are a lot of security patches and version updates over time. This goes for ecommerce sites built on popular frameworks too, but Opencart is a good one for being secure and not needing updating too often.
If your website is a custom or flat site (not engine driven but static code) it may be very out of date. For some flat sites, they are quite secure as there is little to them behind the scenes (they are not database driven basically) but as to remaining responsive and up to date with Googles algorithm requirements, that will not be the case over time. As for custom sites, they can be ignored for years and not updated at all, which gives the term ‘legacy code’ meaning something that is written in old format.
We would advise updating a website monthly, and really you should be adding new content at regular intervals.
Another factor is hosting, you cant have a secure website on an insecure server. This factor depends on if you have a self managed server (vps or cloud instance etc) then it needs maintenance but if you are on shared hosting, then technically it should be patched and updated with a good hosting company but very often is not with cheap hosts due to the work involved.