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In 2017, you simply cannot ignore the web if you are going to ma

What can a website say about your brand?

You only have one opportunity to make a first impression, and for most businesses, your website is the first point of contact that many customers have with your brand, so it's vitally important that your website reflects well on your business.

With the average time an internet user spends on any one webpage being around just eleven seconds, you don't have long to convince them that you are not only reputable (and internet users are particularly cynical in this day and age - and who can blame them with so many unscrupulous people lurking in the more dimly lit corners of the web!), but you are trustworthy, conscientious, that they won't receive any nasty surprises, that your service or product will be of good quality and if there's a problem you will deal with it courteously. If they have even the slightest inkling that you may not tick all of those boxes, then they will quickly jump ship and try your next competitor, and you'll never hear from them again!

On the other hand, should you get your website/branding combo right, then you can give your brand any character and tone of voice you wish, irrespective of the location and size of your business.

Maddison Creative web design Newcastle are specialists in the use of shapes, photography, colour and typography in order to encourage internet users to feel the way your want them to feel about your business and website, whether it's an entertainment brand that you want people to associate with energy, passion and excitement, or a health spa where you want people to feel at ease, relaxed and empowered. Emotion plays a large part in online user behaviour/experience and so it's vitally important you capitalize on that in order to get the most from your website.

What is Wordpress?

Wordpress is an open-source Content Management System built using php. It is probably the simplest to use, most widely-used and powerful CMS/blogging system there is available today, perfectly suited to developing websites.

There are many many websites on the web that make use of Wordpress; big corporates sites, news sites, music sites and famous people use it to manage their website (or have their 'people' manage their website). TechCrunch, The New York Times and CNN all use Wordpress.

Because of its open source nature, there are literally thousands of 'themes' (pre-built designs/layouts for websites) - some paid for and some free, and 'plug-ins' (which give your website added functionality once installed, or 'plugged-in'), again, some free and some paid for.

How do I proactively promote my website online?

There are an ever increasing number of ways to promote your business online, some free and some have a cost, but when running a business it's important to explore every avenue. Methods of promoting your business for free include:

Website SEO Optimize your website so that it will readily be picked up by search Engines such as Google and Bing. This is by far the most effective way of promoting your business online, it is free and it has the largest reach...if done well!
Social Media Marketing Use your social channels and communities to push your business to your peers. You can include share and like buttons from most of the social media providers which removes any obstacles between a happy customer on your site and them recommending you to their peers. Many social media sites allow you to pull content from their sites and display said content on your site. This is a great way of keeping your customers abreast of updates in real-time, whilst also keeping your site content fresh.
Reciprocal links Get as many sites as you can to link to your site, this will not only drive traffic but it will also be recognized as a positive by search engines, boosting your ranking.

Paid for options include:

PPC (pay-per-click) advertising Create an ad that will appear at the top of a search engine results page or on an affiliates' website that you only pay for (a pre-agreed price) when a user is interested by your offering and clicks on your ad. No clicks, no cost.
Facebook ads & Twitter cards This is highly targetable, which means you can define exactly who you want to see your ads based on their interests, their location and a range of other criteria.
Email campaigns Email marketing technology is used by 82% of B2B and B2C companies. Can also be free, depending on your distribution method. Directly communicate with your client base or distribution list with a beautifully designed email. A wide range of reporting tools available, allowing you to see how your email (and different parts of your email) has performed. Can contain dynamic content, can be fully automated and can feature triggered elements.

With the increasing popularity of mobile devices, what are responsive websites and how is web design affected?

Two out of every three minutes spent online in the UK are users browsing on either a smartphone or a tablet. 13% of adults in the UK browse the internet exclusively using their smartphone, 2% more than browse exclusively on their desktop computer.

In the last two years tablet internet use grew by almost a third, and in the same two year period smartphone use grew by 78%, while desktop internet use has decreased.

The way people use smartphones to access the internet has revolutionized the way websites are built. Long gone are the days that companies were happy to have customers browse their full, desktop version of their site on their smartphone, causing users to zoom in and out of areas of the page that interested them, struggling to click on the tiny text links to navigate. If you're building a website for the modern internet user, the likelihood is that if they don't view your site exclusively on their mobile device, they'll at least check you out via their iPhone or Android phone before sitting down later at their computer to have a more in-depth look.

This is why most clients want a 'mobile-first' approach to their website, whereby you ensure that everything looks and behaves beautifully on a mobile device before considering a desktop version, and if something has to compromise, it certainly won't be the mobile site.

A 'responsive' website is one that adapts to the device it's being viewed on, whether that is a desktop computer, a mobile phone or a tablet. The content is then displayed in a way that is optimized for said device, improving user experience.

Flat websites vs CMS - what's the difference?

There are two main categories of website: the flat/HTML brochure style website and the CMS (Content Management System) website. The main difference is that the website owner cannot update the flat/HTML website without web design/development knowledge. They are intended to be built and managed by the web designer/developer, and whenever the site owner requires an update to the site, they would go back to their designer/developer who will be able to make the update for them. This works well for sites that don't require many updates, as they are more cost effective for the site owner, taking less time to set up and build than their CMS counterpart. Flat/HTML websites also traditionally have limited functionality.

A CMS website is built on the back of a content management system (Wordpress for example) and is generally connected to a data source; A database for example (other data-sources are available!). They are also built using more complex programming language; php or ASP.NET for example (along with HTML in many cases) to allow for a greater scope for functionality, enabling the user to interact with the site in much more depth. The main benefit of a CMS website however is that they can be updated and managed by the website owner without any prior knowledge or experience in website technologies. Because they are more complex however, they will cost more than a flat/HTML site, but this is balanced out by virtue of the fact that the site owner does not have to pay a web designer/developer to make updates.

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