Useful Information

If you are thinking of having a website for your business, there are several points that should be considered before you start.

Domain Name:

The domain name you choose should be relevant to what your business does, rather than the actual name of the business.  This may sound strange, but if your business name is Fred Bloggs but you are a carpenter in Normandy, consider how many people are going to be searching for Fred Bloggs and how many are going to be searching for a carpenter in Normandy. 

So, rather than a domain name of fredbloggs.co.uk or fred-bloggs.co.uk it would be more appropriate to have a domain name of normandycarpenter.co.uk, normandy-carpenter.co.uk, carpenternormandy.co.uk or carpenter-normandy.co.uk.  You will notice that I have include hyphenated domain names in my examples.  We would recommend 123reg for registering UK domains and Hostmonster for hosting and registering US domains. 

Many website designers and SEO experts believe that by having a hyphenated domain name you will be penalised by the search engines.  From our own experience so far, this is not the case.  Have a look at this video by Matt Cutts of Google.  You will see that Google have no issues with hypenated domain names.

The content of your website is critical.  From the point of view of the search engines, a website that is full of images and very little text is not good.  Search engines look for relevant phrases and keywords on a website in relation to what people are searching for.  From a viewers perspective a site with images and slide shows is nice to look at.  The important thing is to keep a balance between images and text.  When you compose the text for your website, make sure you have phrases and keywords that your potential customers are likely to be searching for. 

You will probably re-write your content several times before you are happy with it.  Our advice would be to let other people read it and make comments and also after you have written it, leave it for a few days and read it again, looking at it with a fresh mind.

If you prefer, we can provide a quotation for you to have your content professionally written.

If you have customer testimonials,  you could include these in your content.  Use real ones, not some you have made up!!

Navigation:

When a potential customer arrives on your website, they are looking for information.  Navigation should be kept simple and allow vistors to find their way around and to know exactly where they are on your site.  We have seen sites where you are on a page and there is no clue as to how to get back to the homepage, or in fact any of the other pages.  Also, on every page the name of the company or website should be obvious.

Readability:

You have a great looking website which is arty and cool, but it is impossible to read the text.  So many people overdo it. Too many different fonts, too many colours too many graphics and too much going on etc.  These all detract from the purpose of a business website which is to display a shop window to attract customers. 

Keep paragraphs to a reasonable size and tell the reader what they need to know.

Don't use garish colours, but keep the tones muted.  Stick to colours that blend with each other rather than those that compete.

Don't choose fancy fonts.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  Firstly, fonts that you have on your computer may not be on your viewers computer.  Secondly, some of the fonts are extremely difficult to read.

Branding:

If you don't already have a business logo, it it advisable to have one designed.   Think about the large companies.  You know who the majority of them are, just by looking at their logo. If you require a logo design, we can provide a quotation for you.

Summary:

Above are just a few things to think about before you go ahead.  If you instruct us to create your website for you, we can give further advice on how to make your website work for you.