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Chichester Business Support – Social Media Seminar Summary

Matt — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:27:40 +0000

On the 25th April 2012, Matthew Milnes from Websites Designed spoke to local businesses in Chichester on how to market their website effectively. See the review from the event below:

Selection of Recent Work: April 2012

Matt — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:50:01 +0000

Time has yet again flown by and we have another handful of websites we’ve just launched.

Between January and March we designed and developed an online Log Book Loan application website for a company in Norwich. The website allows applicants to enter their details and be told the amount they can borrow against their car (based on age, mileage, etc). We built two sites, www.whichlogbookloan.co.uk and www.v5solutions.co.uk, one local and one one national website, for them to use to promote their service.

We helped Clarity Care Consulting improve their web presence and image with a new website.

We helped Kings Estates promote property specifically for University of Portsmouth International students studying at the ICP centre. The new website allows international students to view and book property online.

We helped Tom Rolfe or Rolfe Interior Finishes get online for the first time. We setup a simple 4 page website for Tom, and setup Google Adwords with a free £100 Adwords Voucher, to help him gain his first new customers.

Plastic Surgeons, Care Agencies and Personal Trainers

Matt — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 06:54:23 +0000

It’s been a busy month at Websites Designed. As well as managing many websites for our existing client base, we’ve also built 3 interesting websites that have launched in February 2012.

The first of which is for Personal Trainer, Rob. Rob also organises many running events that support the RNLI. His website acts as a hub to allow thousands of runners to register for his events, as well as support his personal training business. This colourful and inspirational website is designed to make you feel good. www.fitprorob.biz

The second site is for Consultant Plastic Surgeon Jeremy Hurren. Built from a design provided by pB Digital, the site offers a smooth and gentle basis from which Jeremy can promote his work. www.hurren.com

The final site launched this month is for Home Care Agency, Sans Soucie Home Care, based over two offices in Hampshire and Surrey. The website is designed to be a friendly and informative introduction to their business. A classic brochure style website that matches the companies existing offline branding, extending it online. www.sanssouciehomecare.com.

Recently Designed Websites: January 2012

Matt — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:25:08 +0000

A couple new websites to show you, built in the last couple of weeks by Websites Designed.

Click on the picture of the website to be taken to view the full, live website.

Seven Simple Steps to Bring Your Website up to Speed

Matt — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:10:16 +0000

Cast your memory back to when you last looked through every corner or your website, clicked every link, and read every sentence. If you can’t remember when this was it is probably about time to refresh the look, feel and content of your site to keep it fresh and interesting for your target audience!

Here are seven simple steps to keep your website up-to-date:

1. Be Simple

Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. Where do you want them to go? What do you want them to do? If you want them to sign up to your e-list make that the only action to take on that page! If there are too many options visitors won’t hang around to figure out the message you are trying to put across.

2. Be Streamline

As your website is updated you may begin to use different fonts, conflicting colours, and varying margin sizes. Links to other pages within your site may become broken. Take the time to go through each page and streamline your website to ensure that it is aesthetically pleasing to all of your visitors.

3. Re-Design

Take a look at your website. Was it designed a few years ago? If this is the case it may start to look dated and your regular visitors will become bored of the same look and feel to your website. Inject a burst of energy into your websites design and it will keep your visitors interested in your company’s fresh look!

4. Report

Add news stories to your website and allow readers the opportunity to see what areas your company works in! This also allows you to drip feed information to regular visitors to keep them engaged. Reporting also increases media coverage about your company and gets people to read press releases on exactly what you want them to see!

5. Refresh

Go to the ‘About Us’ page on your website. After the main home screen of your website the next most popular place for people to visit is the ‘About Us’ section. Keep this updated with your latest news, information, awards. This will engage your visitors and ensure that they return to your site for the fresh information on their next visit.

6. Blog

Blogging is proven to draw new prospects to your website and will absorb people in your company that may not previously had contact with you. An old, unused blog that hasn’t been updated in a few months may show the wrong message. If you are going to blog you should post new stories on a weekly basis. If you don’t blog regularly, don’t blog at all!

7. Be Direct

Be direct in the message you are trying to convey. Make sure that vital information such as phone numbers, contact e-mail addresses, hours of operation are all easily found. If you don’t show this information clearly enough you may well loose potential business for your company.

Be Simple, Be Streamline, Redesign, Report, Refresh, Blog and Be Direct. These seven simple steps will ensure that your website reaches its true potential and keeps your company’s website fresh and up to speed.

Selection of Websites Designed in November 2011

Matt — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:20:18 +0000

Another month has flown by, and we’ve launched a bunch more websites for our customers. Some interesting websites this month, notably www.vegexchange.com and www.caringforwomen.co.uk

Click on the picture of the website to be taken to view the full, live website.

Recent Websites by Websites Designed (Pictures)

Matt — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 08:56:37 +0000

We’ve been so busy recently designing, developing and building websites for others – we’ve accidentally neglected our own website recently! However, what better point to show you some of the fantastic websites we’ve put together for some fantastic clients over the past few months.

Click on the picture of the website to be taken to view the full, live website.

Who’s In The Studio : July 2011

Matt — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 18:08:35 +0000

What are we working on this month? It’s been a busy 6 weeks at Websites Designed and the workload doesn’t look like it’s holding up!

In the last few weeks we’ve:

Launched http://www.curtisplumstone.com
Designed 2 new landing pages, undertaken a string of updates and optimised the Google Adwords pay per click campaign for Harley Street nutritionist, The Nutrition Coach: http://www.thenutritioncoach.co.uk/ibs-index.html
Launched a new website and bespoke car management system for http://www.newforestestates.co.uk
Several updates to: http://www.bdtukltd.com
Several updates, and new designer page on http://www.bridesofwinchester.co.uk
Ongoing Search Engine Optimisation for http://www.mercatorcargo.co.uk
Completed online charity donation forms and Worldpay and Event Espresso payment integration for a Portsmouth Client.

So what have we got to work on?

Ongoing SEO for a Portsmouth based Freight Forwarder.
Further development of a Worldpay plug-in for Event Espresso.
Financial Services lead generation website and PPC campaign for a Portsmouth client.
Conversion of a photoshop mockup to a HTML website for a Bournemouth motivation expert.
Re-design of a website to allow ‘grown your own’ enthusiasts to swap their excess harvests (a very interesting website!).

A very busy month!

Top 10 Tips for a Better Website #2 – Freshness

Matt — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 12:36:10 +0000

Having lots of content on your website is great. However the content must be fresh to be valuable. If you haven’t updated your website content in 3+ years then your customers may find your content is out of date, or irrelevant. This also impacts on search engine ranking rankings. Search engines track how regularly you update your content. Whilst they understand your content – they can understand that content that hasn’t been updated for 3+ years is far more out of date than a website that was updated last week. The more often your content changes, the better you rank in the freshness category.

So what can you change? Well anything really. Keeping a good blog or adding frequent articles to your website will produce good results. It’s understandable that some parts of your website (such as an about page or a page listing products or services) are not going to be possible to change. Google realises this too. It’s about supplementing this core content with secondary fresh content at frequent intervals. However it’s possible to keep these pages fresh by adding blog, news and social media feeds to these core pages.

Top 10 Tips for a Better Website

Matt — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 19:37:11 +0000

I see many small business owners in my local area of Portsmouth in Hampshire and the surrounding area struggle with the task of managing their website. The following are all key factors in maintaining a successful website. Follow these yourself or get your website designer to follow them for you, and you WILL do better and make more money from your online presence (what it was meant to do, right?).

Content
Freshness
No Tricks
Links
Structure
Accessibility
Quality Code
URLs
Style
Images

Over the next 10 weeks, I am going to talk about each of the above factors and how they affect your websites credibility, reputation and the amount of business you receive through your website.

1. Content

On the internet, content is King! Search engines ‘scan’ your website and remember the textual content and use it when providing search results (e.g. if your website mentions ‘cleaning company Portsmouth’ then your website will appear in the results for that search term. The more content you have on your website, then the more search engines can scan.

However the relevance of the content is also important. You may have hundreds of visitors to your website every month and only 1 in 100 of those visitors goes on to ‘convert’ to a customer and perform an action which makes you money. Having quality and engaging content on your website will mean that customers find your website interesting and informative and are more likely to ‘convert’.

On a well organised website, there is always room for more content. Take this article – it’s fairly useful information to many of our visitors. However it is also extra content which is helping our website do better. Writing articles associated to your industry is a great way of showing your website visitors that you are knowledgeable, credible and also makes it
easy for you to produce content.

You can never have too much content. If you do have a lot you or your web designer should structure your site in a way that means it doesn’t feel like too much to your visitors by organising your content effectively.

Set aside at least an hour a week to devote to adding content to your website or blog. It’s worth it.

I’ll be answering the remaining questions over the next 10 weeks, so make sure you check back or follow us on twitter to receive regular informative tips about how to improve your website.