Fresh Design Solutions

When it comes to having a website, you can either choose to have it built using one of the many popular off the shelf content management systems or a bespoke one. Which one you choose very much depends on what exactly you want your website to be able to do.

If you have a website that is going to be fairly straight forward and you wan it to be easy for many different members of your team to be able to update it and make changes then you may deicide to opt for an off the shelf one. There are often a lot of different help guides, tutorials and videos out there to allow you to easily find out how to do something if you get stuck. The other added advantages of these systems is that if you have to move website provider, they can often be taken over by a different company with ease.

If you need a website that has a lot of bespoke functionality or that you want to be able to grow in the future without restrictions, then a bespoke CMS system may be more for you. This can be added to as and when needed and if the functionality does not already exist it can usually be programmed in.

When building a website to promote your business it’s important to first think what type of clientele you are aiming your advertising at. As a professional photographer your main jobs will probably be weddings, baby photo shoots and family portraits. You may also look to showcase work you could do for model/fashion shoots and professional head shots.

Having a gallery of your previous work is essential and you may want to organise these into clickable links of photo albums such as ‘Weddings’, ‘Baby shoots’ etc.

You could also offer packages for your work to get people interested in booking in with you.

Many photographers offer gift vouchers which you may want to promote on your website as ‘The ideal baby gift’ or ‘Beautiful mother-to-be photo shoot’ as these would be popular website purchases.

You may want to include a contact form on your website too so that people can message you for a personalised quotation.

If you want customers to be able to use the website to log-in and view their photographs once you have uploaded them, you will need to have this built into the website design.

You may also want to offer an online booking calendar that shows your availability for customers to book in jobs directly.

Most businesses have hundreds if not thousands of competitors all fighting for attention and ultimately business. So, in such a dense area of competition how can you make sure that your business stands out? One great way to set yourself apart from the competition is through your website. Here are some top tips to create an eye-catching attention-grabbing website to boost your business.

• Nice clear font choice – this is really important, if a potential customer is struggling to read your chosen font, then they will quickly lose interest in the text that they are reading.
• Easy intuitive navigation – there is nothing worse than getting lost on a website unable to quickly find the information that you are looking for. If people have to keep clicking through to different areas of the website you will find they will quickly lose interest and search for a better site.
• Eye-catching colour scheme – this doesn’t necessarily mean bright over-the-top colours either. It could be a trendy colour scheme such as grey and mustard or an interesting shade of similar tones that suit your brand and logo design. 
• Regular relevant content uploaded – this could be in the form of blogs or relevant news articles to keep regular visitors to your website interested.

The advantages to any business of having a website is obvious as for so many people the internet is their first port of call when they are looking to buy, but if the website is going to promote the business it needs to be designed in such a way to attract customers and keep them interested and ultimately purchasing.

Some of the most important aspects for a vintage clothing site are good quality images and accurate descriptions of the products so that customers know exactly what they are buying. There is no need for images to be taken by a professional photographer as most of us have a high-tech camera, in the form of a smartphone, in our pockets. There are many photo editing apps available to make the images look professional whilst also keeping them true to life.

It is important to spend some time thinking about the home page of the website making sure that it reflects the ethos of the company as this will be the first impression anyone visiting the site will see. The trend for more minimalistic web pages may not fit the image conjured up by vintage clothing but try to avoid putting too much content on the home page, rather add details of the business on further pages on the site.

There is nothing more frustrating when visiting a website than if links are broken, graphics do not work as they should, and the website pages are slow to load. Regular reviews and ongoing maintenance of the site should help to eliminate these hitches and keep the website optimised.

It is time consuming to make sure that your website is optimised on a regular basis but if your company relies heavily on business generated through your website it is vitally important to do this.

Employing a web content strategist to keep your website up to date and optimised is a good solution to this problem as they will have expert knowledge concerning the most effective way of achieving the results you need. The cost of using their services will easily be recouped from extra business that is generated and sales that have not been lost through potential client frustration.

Business owners need to have regular contact with the web content strategist either face to face or online to update them with new website content and any changes within the company that are relevant such as new products and services. This partnership between tech expert and web client is the key to keeping the website relevant and effective.

A website design can be a truly make-or-break asset for businesses in the current hyper connected world. As the internet has developed, businesses have only seen their customers move more and more online, requiring them to have a presence there to take advantage of the extraordinary opportunities available there. There are various ways to do this, but, undoubtedly, building your own website is sure to play an important role. However, a website design is by no means a simple matter, and your choice on this matter will determine your ability to find potential customers, convert them into sales, and service your business in an efficient manner. Therefore, finding a web design agency that can take a holistic approach to this subject is essential, and here are some steps that you can take to vet them effectively.

Thankfully, one of the most valuable sources of vetting that you have at hand is free and easily available, which is their presence in search results. If a website design agency is unable to achieve a relatively decent position on search results for what you would assume is an important area for them, then you would only doubt their capabilities. As achieving good results in a search engine such as google is important to any online business, if they can’t do this for themselves, what faith can you have that they will achieve it for you?

It is also important that the design agency that you choose is able to meet your needs. It might be the case that the best option available to you is to use a service whereby a web design is the only thing you get, but for most businesses, you may be significantly advantaged by having a management system put in place with your website as well. These can help to manage stock and sales, in addition to content management that will enable you to make periodic changes to your website that will otherwise be expensive.

The next best option, and the one likely to be the most informative, outside of sitting down for a meeting with the web design agency, is to look over testimonials. Often times, the techniques for designing and programming a website will undergo subtle shifts depending on the market of the website in question, so finding testimonials that are relevant to your business is particularly important. In general, a testimonial will tell you a lot about the quality and scope of an agency’s work. Another thing to bear in mind is that testimonials on their own website, while potentially important, shouldn’t be the only step in the process. You should also look at independent sources, and also check whether or not the businesses included in the testimonial have maintained a working relationship with the agency.

So long as you’ve carefully reviewed your options through the previous methods, you should be ready to contact a web design agency and see if they are able to meet your needs. At this point, you should make sure that you have chosen an agency that can meet your timetable, and that can produce a website design of a high quality.

The beauty of websites is that once they are built you don’t have to stop there. They can be continually added to over time and evolve. There may come a time when you feel you want to start over completely with a fresh design but a good structured website can withstand a number of additions and changes before it gets to this point.

Once your website goes live you can start to straight away think about what steps you may want to take next. Often it is a good idea to leave it as it is for a few months until you have some data to work with. This will tell you roughly how many visitors you are getting to the site and what they are doing once they land on the site. From this information you can then decide what you may need change or add.

If you have an ecommerce site where you sell products online then you may start to add more and more products over time. You may also look to expand the back end system to allow return customers to log in, view past orders and even track order deliveries or place repeat orders.

If you are a web designer or developer then there may come a time when you really need to push your services in order to bring in more work and expand. Before you expand you need to ensure that you are ready to take on the extra work. This means not just having the time to do the designing or programming but also the time for the admin that may be involved. It could be that you decide to employ someone else to work for you which would mean changing the business structure if you are currently self employed.

Finding good programmers and designers is very hard. You need to ensure that they are reliable and trustworthy and that they are able to work to deadlines. Deadlines are vital when working on web projects as you may need to get a website live for a certain date. Ideally, you need to work back from the live date to plan when you want the designs to be finished and then when the programming will be completed giving you plenty of time to test the site before setting it live. You can also then give your clients timelines for when you need the content and images etc.

If you are a web developer then you may consider making a template website to sell. Using a template website can make it easier for you when you come to do the programming as most of the hard work is done and you just need to adapt it each time for your new client.

Often smaller businesses do not have the funds to be able to spend thousands on a website and many programmers offer them something that is beyond what they want or need. This can mean that they simply do not go ahead with having a website created. Instead, it may be a good idea to create a template site that you can sell based on a 4 or 5 page brochure site. You could also create a list of addons that you could sell along side the main site if some clients which to upgrade.

If you use an off the shelf content management system such as WordPress, then you may decide to build your own theme. This theme can then be duplicated on a number of sites and adapted accordingly. This can also make it easier to do updates as the updates will probably work across the board.