Best Website Design Review Blog

Whether you are interested in small business web design or ppc Raleigh, a local web development company should be your first choice. While larger companies might seem to be the best choice, the truth is a local web design and SEO firm will probably know your market better and thus will be able to deliver more targeted services.

Of course you need to check portfolio, testimonials and case studies before you chose a web design or SEO company to take care of your website. No matter if big or small, a web development company should be able to provide enough information to help make up your mind whether to hire them or not. A good plan would be to start by looking at larger companies and check out their services and a few case studies. Then you can start looking at local web design and SEO companies and see which one could bring more value for your money.

One thing that I have been pondering recently is whether to use web templates or (WordPress) themes more regularly in web design projects. Yes, you might view this as a cop-out or some indication of lack of creativity. On the other hand, if you want to jump-start a website design and get straight into the front-end build CSS and HTML, perhaps a theme/template is a good starting point?

Whilst I was thinking on this, imagine my surprise (perhaps surprise is too strong a word but you get the idea) when Sabrina Dent, a designer whose work I have often admired, wrote this blog post called Confessions of a Template Whore where she outlines some of the advantages of using templates. One of the main reasons cited is for clients who don’t have a large budget. Hey, I get that all the time!

In my experience, a client is rarely satisfied with a template off-the-shelf and customisation will always be required. However, when a template or theme ticks most of the boxes, customisation becomes easier than starting from scratch. In addition, you can always learn from the way that another designer does things. Just because you always float a specific element does not mean that is the only way of doing it!

Now, I’m not saying you just choose any old template here. The client’s objectives, budget, and type of business will all influence your choice of theme. You might decide to spend quite some time at the start of the website design process choosing one or more themes or templates. Although a template can be a quick start for your web design process, don’t rush the template selection process. I like to look at a variety of themes and assess which might be best.

So, what’s your take on this? Are templates bad for web design or are they a smart way of getting the basic structure and design established quickly, with client customisation to follow?

We’ve just launched a new website for the Red Lyon, a pub in Slinfold, which is a small village in West Sussex. It’s one of our local country pubs near Horsham so it was good to get involved with the redesign.

For this project, it was quite important for the website to be updated by the pub landlord so we chose to use WordPress as the content management system and a theme from ThemeForest as the basis for the design. WordPress has traditionally been used as a blog platform but after customisation it’s equally suitable for a brochure-style website with individual pages.

We also wanted to make sure that the website is effectively indexed by search engines and that a Google sitemap is automatically generated when the website is updated. There are many plug-ins for WordPress which enable you to tweak the core functions and these are the search engine-related WordPress plug-ins we used for this project:

• The Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator
• Add Meta Tags.

We also modified the page titles using a custom field and several other plug-ins were used, in part to give more flexibility with the page sidebar if we choose. WordPress is a very good website content management system but it usually requires customisation to get the best from it (in my opinion).

Here’s the story: Not so long ago, I was asked to redesign a client’s website that, to be frank, was long past its sell-by date. Great! An exciting new project and I was looking forward to it! Unfortunately, there was some ‘baggage’ with the job, namely the client’s logo. Without going into detail, it needed a redesign as well but this was not within the project scope. So, how should I work with the logo? Here are some options that I explored:

• Use high quality images in combination with the logo. Professional stock photography, as long as it is not too clichéd, can enhance an older logo. A montage effect, although not very original, can confer an attractive surrounding or background for the logo.
• Modify part of the logo to minimise its effect. Perhaps there is an element of the logo that can be removed to improve the overall look without detracting from the company’s identity?
• Make the logo a smaller part of the overall design.
• Add an attractive background colour or image to the element that contains the logo.

In an ideal world, none of these options would need to be considered because a logo redesign would be part of the website work… but small company web design isn’t always like that.

What have you done when faced with this situation? There may be better options than mine. Let me know if you have other suggestions.

As a freelance web designer/developer, deciding on your pricing structure is pretty important. Get this right and your business has a much better chance of survival… and you might even be able to go on holiday now and again! I think it’s important to review your business regularly and pricing is one part of that. Here are a few tips about pricing from my own experience as a freelancer in the UK.

Comparing and setting your prices

How do you know if your prices/rates are too much or not enough? A comparison with other designers or companies could be a good way of answering this question (at least in part). However, this can be difficult because many other web design freelancers, companies, or agencies do not publish their prices and/or it’s difficult to know if you are comparing like with like.

My prices were roughly in the middle of the range

I confess that (occasionally) I have posed as a potential customer with other local web design companies in order to get an estimate of what they charge. It’s a standard business practice to study your competitors and this subterfuge was suggested to me by a business consultant. That’s my excuse anyway! The results showed that my web design prices were roughly in the middle of the range.

Another way to make a price comparison is to take part in, and browse the results of, web design industry surveys, like this recent survey of web design prices by Phil Matthews or the Web Design Survey by A List Apart. The results of this type of survey may give you just the answer you want. Additionally, by talking to other designers/developers at conferences or on Twitter, you can often get a good idea of the ‘going rate’ (although the figures can be quite variable).

It may be tempting to set your prices lower in the belief that this will attract more work

At the end of the day, it’s up to you to come up with a figure (perhaps an hourly or daily rate or a range of website prices) that represents the value of the work you do, the cost of running your business, and the marketplace that you are in … and enables you to make a living. It may be tempting to set your prices lower in the belief that this will attract more work. Don’t do it! I learnt from experience that this does not work (cheap is sometimes associated with lower quality in the client’s eyes) and often means that you end up working all hours for very little money. That’s not good for you or the client because the job quality is often compromised under these circumstances.

Prices don’t have to stay the same

Don’t be afraid to raise your prices! Your business costs will increase every year and you have to cover these. I know that I learn more every year and I like to think that I am better at what I do now than when I started. If you are the same, this means you are offering a better quality job and this is worth more. Clearly, you need to be reasonable about increasing your rates (and give your clients some warning) but there is some justification for raising your prices every year in my opinion.

You know what the job is worth

My final piece of advice is to stick to the prices you set and not be tempted into a ‘bidding war’ with other designers who (the potential client says) are willing to work for less. Yes, it’s possible to be flexible with any price to a small degree but not when it means that you grossly undercharge for something. For web design jobs, when the potential client asks about the price, my policy is to explain what the price includes, what the website build process involves, and how it will benefit the client’s business. If they ask if the price is negotiable, I say No. I explain that I can reduce the price only if the job specification is reduced. This may sound like a tough approach but I believe that it will not benefit either the customer or me if the price is less than the job is worth.