Category: News

When most people think about search engine optimisation (SEO), they invariably consider keywords/phrases, anchor text for links, readability and other well-known SEO factors that relate solely to the textual content of websites. However, SEO is not just about the text that appears on a website: several other factors may affect the placement of a specific site in search engine results. One of the most important of these, and the topic of today’s blog post, is web design.

The Intersection of SEO and Web Design: How Web Design Decisions Impact Visibility

The intersection of SEO and web design is a lively topic of discussion among certain industry participants but is often neglected outside of this circle, which we feel is a big mistake. It is important to utilise all the tools at your disposal to achieve the best results possible in terms of website visibility, and web design is one of the most important of these tools in our experience.

While content is still king as far as ranking well for specific terms and phrases is concerned, a poorly designed website is unlikely to feature highly in search engine results, even if its content has been highly optimised. Below, we consider some of the key ways in which web design intersects with SEO:

• Navigation – The ease with which visitors can navigate a website and find the information they are looking for plays an important part in the overall user experience. Simple, clear navigation helps ensure visitors do not become frustrated and abandon a website before they find what they are looking for. It also facilitates the indexing of individual pages by search engine crawlers (sometimes alternatively referred to as search engine spiders or bots). Webmasters who want to ensure that every page on their sites is crawled by search engine bots need to pay close attention to navigation.
• Page Loading Speeds – In order for a website to rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs), it is necessary to ensure that design choices do not negatively impact page loading speeds. The average user will only wait so long for a page to load before they return to the SERPs and choose another website to investigate. Search engine operators are aware of this fact and will penalise slow-loading websites for this very reason. Overly large background images, overenthusiastic use of animated page elements, outdated or inefficient coding practices, too many plugins, and ineffective caching strategies are all known culprits when it comes to slow loading speeds for individual pages.
• Text-to-Image Ratios – While there is no secret formula we can turn to when designing a new website, we do need to bear the text-to-image ratio in mind when creating new websites and individual pages within those sites. There is no doubt that eye-catching images and immersive video content can attract and hold the attention of visitors in a way that textual content is not always able to but, as with most things in life, too much of a good thing can be bad for you. When considering the intersection of SEO and web design, we need to acknowledge that search engine crawlers get very little information from an image when compared to a block of textual content. If we want to ensure that a website is properly indexed and appears in SERPs for relevant searches by our target audience, it is important to provide search engines with ample material on which to base their rankings.

• Mobile Performance – Over half of the people online at any given point in time today are using a mobile device to access the Internet. The majority of interested parties are already aware of this fact, and more forward-thinking organisations have already taken steps to ensure that the mobile versions of their websites provide the same high-quality user experience as the desktop versions. However, far fewer people are aware of the fact that, since early in 2018, Google began to index the mobile versions of websites before the desktop versions. This means a poorly performing mobile version of a site could have a negative impact on the desktop version too. With this in mind, it is of crucial importance to follow best design practices for mobile performance when creating any new website today.
• Alt Text and Filename Choices – We have already discussed the reason that images and videos should not be overused on websites, but it is still possible to help Google and other search engines determine what a website is about, even if heavy use of images and videos cannot be avoided. By using descriptive alt text for each image on a page and by using highly relevant filenames for video elements (there is no alt tag available for video elements at the time of writing), we can ensure that search engines are able to discover what websites with a predominance of visual content are all about.

By following best design practices when building new websites and creating new pages for existing ones, it is possible to positively influence SERPs rankings and capitalise on the power of the well-crafted textual content that every good website should feature. Good web design practices will also have a positive impact on user experience, as discussed below.

The Effect of Web Design on User Experience

User experience does not directly influence SERPs rankings at this point, but it is still of crucial importance. Having invested so much time and energy into attracting visitors in greater numbers, it would be counterproductive to present them with an unsatisfying user experience upon their arrival. For this reason, it is important to consider the above factors from the perspective of the target audience as well. For example: how will our navigation, performance and image-to-text ratio choices affect the experience of visitors?

For more information about the intersection of SEO and web design, please don’t hesitate to call or message us.

Whether you are planning to build your very first website or looking for tips on how to improve what you already have, this blog post will help you get off to a great start. We’re going to take a deep dive into the basics of web design, covering all of the essential things you need to know to create an effective website.

Web Design Basics: What You Need to Know

If you would like to be able to create a visually appealing website that attracts visitors in large numbers and is a pleasure to use, there are a few key areas in which you will need to excel. Some of these areas may come more naturally to you than others, and you may already have some transferable skills that will come in useful when tackling certain tasks. Whether you have a natural advantage or not, you will quickly need to get up to speed in all of the following areas if you are to achieve your goal of designing an effective website:

• Primary Design Principles – While a website is created in the digital space and a magazine is a physical publication, the design skills required to create eye-catching pages in each are much the same. With this in mind, you should study basic design principles before starting on your first website, a topic we discuss in more detail in the following section.
• Technical Layout of Page Elements – The physical layout of web pages is something you will learn about when studying the principles of design. However, you will also need to familiarise yourself with the technical aspects of webpage layout: what you need to do behind the scenes to ensure that each page and the site as a whole is properly laid out.
• UX Design Essentials – The visual appearance of a website is obviously extremely important, but UX (user experience) design decisions are of equal importance in the vast majority of cases. If you are trying to create a website with which visitors can interact, you need to follow best UX design principles from the very start. How a website responds to user input and how it makes visitors feel are two key areas that you will cover should you decide to study UX design, both of which will come in very useful as you proceed with the creation of your new website. As a discipline, there is a lot more to learn if you wish to become an expert, but you should be able to get by with some diligent research and a certain amount of self-study.
• Design Software – Almost all web designers use professional design software to create new websites and pages these days. There may still be a few diehard veterans who build new web pages manually, by hand, coding each HTML element they need, but they are very much in the minority. With this in mind, we suggest getting to grips with one of the popular web design software suites available today to make your task a little easier. The more familiar you are with the software you use to build your first website, the faster you will be able to complete your task.
• Graphic Design – If you are planning to include any corporate logos or banners on your website, you will need to master the essentials of graphic design. With thousands of books on the topic and a plethora of free online resources from which to choose, you will not be short of study materials should you wish to explore the field of graphic design in some depth.
• Server-Side Coding Principles – Functional websites that respond to user input often use a mix of server-side and client-side code. Any code that runs on the client side (i.e. in the web browsers used by visitors to your site) is normally generated automatically by the design software that you use. Server-side code, on the other hand, is something you may have to write yourself, especially if you want to create stateful pages on your website. In common with most of the fields we have discussed so far, there are plenty of great resources online that you can use to learn server-side coding principles. The only thing that may limit your ability to become an expert in this area, as with most of the areas already mentioned, is a lack of time
• Navigation – One of the most important basics of web design that you’ll need to master is site navigation. You need to make sure that every visitor to your website can easily find what they are looking for by providing a visually attractive and highly functional navigation system. Whether you prefer top or sidebar navigation menus, the most important thing to focus on when creating your navigation system is ease of use. Nothing is more likely to encourage visitors to go elsewhere than poorly thought-out or dysfunctional site navigation.
• Readability – Whatever type of textual content you intend to place on your website, it should be easy to read. What we mean by this is that you should think about readability when creating new page layouts and choosing site fonts etc. When textual content is poorly positioned or hard-to-read fonts are employed, the majority of visitors are likely to do no more than skim through the material at best. Many of them may simply leave your website and look for a more readable source of information. For these reasons, we recommend familiarising yourself with typography and layout best practices for textual content before you embark on your first web design project.

If you give yourself a good grounding in all of these basics of web design, you should be able to avoid making the more obvious beginner’s mistakes, and with a little luck, your first attempt at web design could even be a great success.

Primary Design Principles

When embarking on your first web design project, you’ll probably be most interested in the visual appearance of the site you are creating, which is why we recommend starting with the first discipline in our list above: Primary design principles. To help you on your way, we’ll now take you on a whirlwind tour of the 12 basic principles of design:

1. Contrast – Making various elements on a page stand out from the background and each other through the correct use of contrast is the first design skill you will learn if you decide to follow a traditional course.
2. Balance – All the elements of a webpage need to be in harmony with each other. Whether you prefer symmetrical or asymmetrical layouts, learning about balance will help you to create harmonious web pages that are pleasing to the eye.
3. Emphasis – Learning all about this particular design principle will help you to choose which elements of a web page to emphasise and how to achieve your goals in this respect. Different colours and different fonts can be used to emphasise textual elements, while bold borders and other techniques can be used to emphasise individual visual elements.
4. Proportion – Once you know how to size individual page elements in relation to one another, you will be much better placed to start creating genuinely good-looking websites.
5. Hierarchy – Knowing how to create contrast, emphasis, balance and proportion is of vital importance when designing websites. However, you also need to know how to create a hierarchy for all of the elements on each page before you can put this newly acquired knowledge to good use.
6. Repetition – The art of repetition is an important skill to master. In addition to helping you achieve many of the goals discussed so far, it can also save you a great deal of time.
7. Rhythm – By varying the spaces between each element on your web pages or by making them all uniform, you can create a unique sense of rhythm, as perceived by visitors to your website.
8. Pattern – With regard to web design principles, ‘Pattern’ may refer either to the repetition of certain elements in distinct ways or to the following of agreed standards for the way in which pages are laid out.
9. White Space – Skilful use of white space (or negative space if you are using a coloured background) can help to create a sense of freedom in your web pages: an uncluttered environment that visitors will enjoy exploring at their leisure.
10. Movement – When we talk about ‘Movement’ as a web design principle, we are referring to the way in which certain design choices affect how visitors’ eyes travel across the page and how they will most naturally move from one element to the next.
11. Variety – If you are able to use variety to create more interesting designs, without going too far and causing confusion, you will be well on your way to mastering the basics of web design.
12. Unity – The final design principle to master is that of unity, making sure that all elements and design choices work together to create the desired effect.

As we mentioned earlier, you can find thousands of online resources if you wish to pursue the study of basic design principles or any other areas we’ve mentioned in more depth. On the other hand, if you would rather engage an experienced web design company to build your new site, please feel free to contact us by phone or email.

Today, we are going to take an in-depth look at the topic of user experience and the role it has to play in web design. We think it is fair to say that the importance of user experience in web design really cannot be overestimated: user experience (UX) design principles are at the heart of every successful website on the Internet. If a site is difficult to use, awkward to navigate or just plain ugly, it will always be an uphill struggle to attract visitors in sufficient numbers and, more crucially, to ensure they spend enough time on the website to find out what it’s all about. We’ll start with a definition of UX before moving on to examine the reason it is so vital to master UX design in order to build effective commercial websites.

What Is UX and UX Design?

Whether the aim is to build a commercial site with e-commerce functionality or create an informational resource for research purposes, effective UX design elements need to be employed to ensure a positive and genuinely useful experience for visitors. But what exactly are UX and UX design?

UX, or user experience, is exactly what it sounds like: what a user experiences when visiting a site. UX design is the process that web designers follow when creating new sites, ensuring they are meaningful, relevant and easy to use. The UX design process is normally broken down into a number of individual stages. The exact number and nature of these stages may vary from one organisation to the next but should include the following elements:

1. Empathise – Before any real design work can start, it is vital to establish what the website hopes to achieve: what is the primary goal?
2. Define – Having identified the primary goal of the website, this goal should now be clearly defined to make sure that every member of the design team is on the same page.
3. Ideate – It is now time to start coming up with ideas: potential ways to achieve the goal identified and defined in the previous two stages.
4. Prototype – The most promising design ideas can now be prototyped, to see which is the most effective.
5. Test – Once the most effective design idea has been identified by creating a working prototype, this design should be thoroughly tested.
6. Going Live – Assuming the testing is successful, the final stage is to go live: publish the website online and make it available to visitors from all over the world.

Now that we have a better understanding of what UX and UX design are and how the design process works, let us move on to the meat of the matter; why user experience is so important to the success of a website.

The Importance of User Experience in Web Design

Placing UX at the centre of the web design process helps to ensure that the finished product provides every visitor with a positive and pleasant experience. If the UX design process is followed from start to finish, it should ensure that the website scores well in all of these key areas:

• Usability – First and foremost, a website must be easy for visitors to use. It should not be hard to navigate, rather it should be intuitive. It should also be designed to display well on a wide variety of devices, including desktop computers, laptops, smartphones and tablets. A website that is difficult to navigate and counterintuitive will not encourage visitors to spend much time looking for the information they need. In almost all cases, such a website will actively discourage visitors from returning.
• Simplicity – To achieve the above goals, a website should follow a simple and clear design theme. Unnecessarily fussy, busy or otherwise overly complex designs rarely work well, as they only serve to confuse visitors. Those visitors who can find the products or services they need are often so annoyed by the experience, they will still go to another site to make their purchase. Designers should strive to produce layouts that are uncluttered and pleasing to the eye if they wish to provide a positive user experience.
• Consistency – Having created a highly effective, uncluttered design theme that is guaranteed to provide a pleasant and hassle-free user experience to all visitors, it is important to ensure this theme is rolled out across the entire site. Whilst it might be tempting to create different themes for logically different areas of a site, this idea rarely works well in practice. The vast majority of visitors are likely to prefer a consistent and predictable experience when browsing a commercial website: one that makes them feel comfortable and easily able to find everything they need.
• Accessibility – A website should be easily accessible by people with all types of internet-capable devices and by all types of people, including physically, visually and hearing-impaired visitors. Failure to ensure that this is the case may have serious consequences for the future of a new website, especially sites whose target audience includes members of these groups. To ensure that accessibility is not an issue, extensive testing should be carried out before a new site goes live. This testing demographic should include people with disabilities and as many different types of devices as possible.
• Performance – Page loading times are of critical importance when considering the role of user experience in web design. Even the most beautifully designed website, with simple navigation and easy-to-use features, will fail to attract repeat visitors if individual pages take too long to load. Overly large images, and animated content that loads automatically, should be kept to a minimum to avoid this issue, particularly if server resources are limited.

If you would like to have your site created by a web design company that truly understands the importance of user experience in web design, please feel free to contact us.

In today’s digital age, the importance of an effective online presence cannot be overstated. As businesses strive to reach and engage with their target audiences, web design plays a crucial role in shaping the success of their digital marketing efforts. A well-designed website can have a positive impact on various digital marketing activities, from search engine optimisation (SEO) to user experience (UX) and conversion rate optimisation (CRO). Today, we’re going to explore the influence of web design on digital marketing in detail and delve into the key elements that contribute to a successful online presence.

5 Ways in Which Web Design Impacts Digital Marketing

The design of a website, if correctly implemented by a leading web design in company,can have a positive impact in all of the following digital marketing areas:

• First Impression and User Experience (UX) – The moment a user lands on your website, they begin to form an impression of your organisation. A visually appealing and professional website design will help to establish credibility and trust, ensuring a positive first impression. Users are more likely to engage with a website that is aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate, and fast loading times will help to cement a positive impression whilst encouraging visitors to explore your site in more depth. In short, the importance of the user experience in web design should be at the forefront of every project plan.
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – Web design and SEO go hand in hand. Search engines such as Google consider a variety of design elements when ranking websites in their search results. A well-structured website with clean code, optimised images and no broken links will be easier to crawl and consequently rank more highly in search engine results pages. (SERPs)
• Mobile-Friendly Design – With a clear majority of users now accessing the Internet via smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices, having a responsive, mobile friendly website design is essential. Because so much traffic comes from such users, search engines now prioritise mobile-friendly websites in their rankings. A web design that displays perfectly on a wide variety of screen sizes will provide visitors with an optimal viewing experience regardless of the device they are using, leading to higher engagement and lower bounce rates, as well as better search engine rankings.
• Branding and Consistency – Web design plays a vital role in establishing and reinforcing your organisation’s brand identity. Consistency in design elements such as colour schemes, fonts and images will help to create a cohesive brand image, which in turn will help users to identify and connect with your business.
• Conversion Rate Optimisation – An effective web design will encourage visitors to take the actions that you wish them to take, such as making a purchase, filling out a contact form or subscribing to a newsletter. Strategic placement of call-to-action buttons, clear messaging and persuasive design elements can all significantly positively impact conversion rates.

If you would like to discover more about the ways in which effective web design can have a positive effect on your digital marketing efforts, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

When is the right time to outsource your marketing? 

To outsource, or not to outsource? This is the dilemma many stakeholders face at one time or another. Whether you have an in-house team that is overstretched or are considering starting a new department from scratch, there is certainly a time and a place for an external helping hand. But how do you know the time is right?   

Supporting an in-house team 

Having an in-house marketing team is a blessing and a curse. What happens when your workload outgrows your current staffing levels?  

Deciding whether to add another employed staff member is not one to be undertaken lightly, especially in the current job market. Salary expectations are particularly high with the candidate shortage, and you might find yourself bringing on an expensive hire that isn’t really the right fit. Plus, if the work starts to slow down again, you’re now stuck with a costly member of staff with too little to do. Quite the conundrum!  

This is where outsourcing some tasks or roles can be very helpful. It is significantly less costly than bringing on an employed staff member and can allow you access to a range of experts across multiple disciplines. You can test the water and see how much excess work your team has, and whether it would be enough to justify another body in-house. However, if you find the work is variable, it might help confirm that having a spare pair of hands externally is a better use of resources. 

Start-ups and SMEs 

Most business-minded people don’t start a new enterprise because they want to wear a dozen different “hats”, they do it because they have a passion and want to make a successful career of it. So, naturally, sometimes marketing causes something of a dilemma, particularly for small, or new, businesses. If those heading up the business have limited practical knowledge of the breadth and depth of marketing, is it reasonable to try and hire in-house talent, or is outsourcing the only feasible option?  

In the short term, getting seasoned experts to handle your marketing externally is often more time (and cost) effective. Not only will you be able to pool the skills and knowledge of numerous people without having to hire a single employee, you will be able to leave your marketing in proven hands. Rather than the paperwork and expense of hiring a marketing manager or a whole marketing team, you can get the ball rolling on your promotion and advertising without a single hire.  

Outsourcing may seem like a big leap, but when you have seasoned professionals acting as an extension of your existing people power, it seems like a bit of a no-brainer.

We see it all day every day – via our social feeds, emails, podcasts, documents, websites and personal messages. Copywriting is everywhere and like most commonly occurring things, drifts in conscious ambiguity colliding with us daily, its impact going unregistered.

The recognition of good copywriting and its distinction from just writing really shouldn’t be glossed over. Modern consumers are flooded with nonsense and distractions every waking moment of the day, simply put – if your message doesn’t cut through, you lose out.

Why is copywriting Valuable?

Having a professional, well-written copy on your external communications is simply vital to your success. It fosters profitability, offering an exponential return on investment by convincing your target audience that your offering will meet their needs and offer greater value than your competition.

We all have a rough idea of what copywriting involves, but it is a niche skill set. A skilled copywriter can look at a message or language objectively, in relation to your target market and create a message that optimizes its impact across your entire audience.

Many businesses will simply put together general descriptions on their websites, social media feeds or even pitch decks – ultimately wondering what went wrong when conversions fall. Keeping your target market in mind is key, that’s what skilled copywriters do best.

Effective copywriting turns strangers into customers and customers into loyal, brand-advocating, repeat business. It’s a no-brainer to use copy that sells.

Types of Copywriting:

Copywriting takes many different forms, each with its own tone, structure and desired outcome. The task of copywriting becomes more difficult when writing to account for these varying styles while maintaining consistency in the messaging and brand voice. The target audience should also, always be considered. Copywriting typically comes in one of the following forms, though there are many more.

1. Ad Copy: Short, memorable and to the point. Ad copy is typically the product of an entire paragraph, whittled down to its most effective, concise form. Often just a few words.
2. Blog Posting: Blogs need to take a light, open tone. Humour is great in a blog and keeps readers engaged. Blog posts should always be informative and used as a gesture of goodwill towards your readers to build rapport.
3. Product/Service Copy: Often the most important element for a copywriter to consider, other than the checkout, these are the words that will push customers to make a purchase decision. You want a skilled copywriter to maximize your conversions here.
4. Web Copy: This is the product/service copy above, only for your entire company. This copy sells you, who you are, whether your brand can be trusted, and its importance can’t be understated.
5. Video Scripts: Must relate to the video and its contents. Adding impact where needed, structuring sentences to have the maximum effect upon delivery and ultimately engaging and involving your viewers.

Branding Consistency:

The great effort and expense that go into logo design, colour schemes, fonts and everything else that comes with branding, get thrown away by not remaining consistent in all of your brand’s copy across all platforms and external communications.

This can be a lot of work and much harder than anticipated, mistakes are inevitable without experienced help. While a picture tells a thousand words, one word can destroy a picture. Without effective messaging to accompany your no-doubt, costly, graphic designs – the impact disappears.

Copywriting is as important as anything visual, even in the increasingly visual world we live in.

Good Copy Builds Audiences:

In carefully developing a tone for your brand, copywriters put your brand’s visual assets and core identity in verbal form. By doing so, copy ties your marketing material together to speak thoroughly and consistently to your target audience.

Consistency becomes reliability to your followers – maintaining that sense of reliability while providing unique experiences and interactions with each user is how copywriting builds a loyal and active following.

In short, you can’t afford to be sub-par when it comes to something so common in our daily lives. Your messages will just sink into obscurity. We understand how time-consuming and laborious the process of copywriting can be. You’re already stretched thin so why not offload some of your copywriting work on our skilled team?

We’re always happy to offer free consultations to understand your requirements and to explain, in detail, our services and credentials.

Contact us directly, use the chat window, or leave a comment below if you would like to explore our content writing services.