Web Design - I Say! Digital Search Marketing Superstars

Website ‘Dead Ends’ Causing Sales Losses

Posted on December 16, 2012 Leave a comment

According to a report from Mashable.com, approximately three quarters of online shoppers have abandoned the purchasing process after becoming frustrated with website design, costing the retailers concerned significant amounts of revenue.
As well as complaining that assistance services on e-commerce sites tend to be FAQ-type answers that lead the user round in circles, consumers revealed a marked preference for sites with fast and effective customer service provision. 75% said that they would prefer a site which offered ‘one-click’ customer service assistance over a competitor which did not.

In a world where it is easier than ever before to find and purchase specific consumer goods, it is essential that e-commerce sites provide a user experience that is swift and efficient. As this survey shows, speed of service can be the deciding factor in a potential customer’s decision-making process. If you want to streamline your site’s purchasing and customer-service processes, give us a call – we are able to provide expert website design services together with a personal service thanks to our micro-business setup.

Why We Recommend The WordPress Blog Platform

Posted on March 15, 2012 Leave a comment

If you want statistics to help you figure out just how ubiquitous WordPress is go here and the stats tell us there are over 50M sites running on WordPress worldwide, including media giants like Techcrunch, CNN and the NFL.

Others using the WordPress blogging CMS platform include the New York Observer, the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD, the MLB blogs, Lollapalooza and Jay-Z’s Life+Times lifestyle blog. For a few more examples browse along to the WordPress Showcase site.

The WordPress CMS is free Open Source software with the support of thousands of programmers worldwide. Yes, free and it rocks too! The number of free and commercial themes, plugins and frameworks available to WordPress starts with around 14,000 free plugins and 1,300 free themes on the WordPress.org official community repository alone.

The software is infinitely customizable with thousands of free (and paid) plugins and themes and you don’t even need to get your hands dirty with any HTML coding. The software enables you to edit your website from any browser from anywhere in the world. No need to fire up your Dreamweaver web design software anymore.

We find WordPress to be infinitely easier to grasp compared to other content management systems we’ve tried, such as Drupal, Mambo and Joomla , the support network for WordPress dwarves any of those platforms by a mile too.

More recommendations…..

Five Reasons Why WordPress Is The Ideal Platform For Small Business Websites:

Some keywords that keep cropping up when anyones talks about WordPress: Ease of Use, Solid SEO, Intuitive, Reliable, Vastly Extensible, Flexible, Secure, Adaptable, Powerful Social Media Tool and Widespread Support.

If you are interested in how we can make WordPress work for you, your band, store or SME, don’t hesitate to contact us for help using WordPress and we’ll talk you through the options.

Domain Name Tips For New Brands

Posted on March 9, 2012 Leave a comment

It may not be something you would be thinking of when naming your new brand but a useful tip if you have yet to decide, is to search Google for instances of your proposed brand. If it’s unique and available then the next stage is to check whether the .com and .co.uk domain reg is available.

Don’t take it for granted that because Google didn’t find it, that it’s available, many people (like us!) buy domains on a whim after coming up with an idea and either sit on the name or ‘speculate’ (ie: hold on to the name for a while in the hope that it becomes valuable).

Make no mistake, having your own domain name is an essential part of your online branding and with a .com costing around £10 a year, you really have no excuse for not owning one!Owning your own domain name and having your own website adds value to your brand and is also added security for your data (because you own it, not someone else).

It’s also important to choose a keyword rich domain name, to help your search to rise to the top of the search results naturally. If you need help choosing a great domain name and getting it registered, it’s all part of our service.

One crucial bit of advice, keep your hands on control of your domain name at all times. Do not give administrative powers or ownership to a third party. Many a sad story has been told about somebody losing their domain name usually by forgetting to renew (put it on auto!) but also by giving admin powers to some fly-by-night webhost, web designer or angry ex-manager. If someone other than you can get access to your domain DNS you could be asking for trouble, so keep those logins safe!