We have noticed while looking at our local competitors websites and those that they have designed that many companies are using wordpress to power their web sites. Some web design companies are even using pre-made skins purchased from one of the many wordpress skin stores. While we do believe that wordpress is a powerful system with many great plugins we do not believe that it is the best option for many of the sites that we have seen. To us it seems like an easy way out, download wordpress, purchase a skin, add or purchase premade modules, add logo and content then sell as your own.
While this maybe a way to turn out cheaper websites quickly in response to the ever growing array of Indian web design companies filling the UK web design directories we feel it cheapens the market both in price and quality.
Would it not be better to explain to clients that spending a little bit more with a UK company will get you a better product and aftersales?
In an effort to stay ahead of the game we have coded our latest website www.logiecountryhouse.co.uk using HTML5. We also plan to make the move on our own website starting today.
Although the HTML 5 standard is not fully supported in all modern web browsers its main benefits are. Arguably the biggest feature is the video tag allowing video elements to be placed directly on a page without plugins or 3rd party programs, this is currently not supported but soon will be. We are more interested in the semantics of the new web standard allowing pages to be indexed and read quicker and more accuratly.
By coding our new sites in HTML 5 now we believe that it will save our clients time and money when other standards become depreciated.
We are currently going through our own site and re optimising it as there seems to be a few changes to SEO trends since we last had a look at it. We will also be adding a new products section where we will have information on our various software products. We aim to grow this section in the next few months as we launch a further 3 planned products.
This week along with the completion of a few website projects (epidote.co.uk and harveyline.com) we have been revisiting www.number7club.co.uk. The first site was designed with its main focus on search engine optimisation as the competition was already well established. Now that www.number7club.co.uk is ranking well with Google and the other major web search engines its time for a redesign to make the site graphically pleasing. We hope to have the new website launched next week with a few new features including some Facebook integration.
This phrase is echoing in our office right now. Many people calling and emailing us asking for a website with a 2 or three day turnaround. While sometimes we are able to turn a website around in these times, we do not agree with rushed work. Before we build a website we like to research its competitors and gather as much market information as possible. A website is far more than what you see when you visit its pages, yes the look and feel is important but its the work done behind the scenes that really makes a difference. Users and perspective customers need to be able to find your site when browsing or searching and this is where the research becomes evident as rushed sites with little or no research are difficult to find.
