The vast majority of users will leave a page within the second it takes to load, and many will never return. The loss of users is often something a site owner will not notice, since it often has a good-looking design. From the owner’s perspective, a functioning site is a complete site.
We design and build websites that are user-centric. We consider the end goal of the site’s visitors and build with that in mind. The appearance of the site is important, but will take a back seat to utility. A site that is beautiful, but difficult to navigate, will be considered bad.
WordPress
We develop sites in WordPress. More than 40% of the web uses it. That says something about longevity. As a business owner, you can run your site easily once it’s built. Once the site is live, you can update content, add pages, and change almost anything without code. Even if you eventually need something built that requires code, it’s not forever tied to us, or really anyone.
Small business sites can be a simple 5 or 6 pages while more complex sites can include e-commerce, booking systems, or custom features. The sky is the limit. The fundamentals are consistent; fast load times, quality code, good optimisation for all devices, and SEO friendly structural organisation.
Mobile
More than half of the web traffic comes from mobile devices. It’s well over half in some industries. We build sites that respond to different viewport sizes from the start of the project. We don’t consider mobile as an afterthought. The usability of your site affects its ranking. Sites that struggle to load and interact with on mobile devices, in general, rank lower.
Design
Most of the time, clear design is the key to good design in a commercial sense. A potential customer should be able to come to your site, learn your business, navigate to what they want or need to, and take the next step, whether that’s a call, a form submission, a purchase, etc. That is what your business site is existing for.
Most design portfolios are filled with examples that rely on some flashy visual design, and it makes sense. However, if your site has flashy visuals with poor design, people are not going to stick around, any more than they would a site that looks outdated.
Technical SEO From the Start
With no content present, a new build is a great opportunity to establish a solid foundation. During a new build, it is a lot easier and can have greater benefits to establish a heading structure, implement page speed optimisation, utilise clean URLs, configure indexing, etc., as opposed to doing this on a site with live content. If it is part of the business strategy to invest in SEO, the first steps will be much easier if the website is built properly.
Ongoing Support
WordPress needs continual maintenance in the form of core updates, theme updates, and plugin updates. Delaying updates can introduce security issues and lead to serious software incompatibilities in the future.
We provide maintenance services to businesses that choose to outsource this task. We also have an option for clients to take over the task so that they can maintain their business the way they see fit.
Whichever option you choose, you will not receive a completely backed up, uninstructed website.