So you’re wondering why web design is important? I’ve got 6 key points that will help you to understand why web design is so important.
It’s Sets The First Impression
When your audience first visits your website, it gives them a feel for your company. If your website is visually appealing, it will give them the impression that you are serious about what you do. However, if your website looks unappealing, your
audience will have a negative impression of your business. The reason impressions are important is because positive impressions means that your audience is more likely to stay on your website, rather than turning to a competitor.
It Aids Your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Strategy
If your website is clean and easy to read, it makes it easier for the search engine crawlers to index your website. The more information the crawlers can gather, the more it will help towards your visibility on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Therefore, the higher up on the list the more visits your website will get from your search engine optimisation efforts.
It Sets The Impression For Customer Service
Like the first point having a well designed website gives your audience a good impression. One of the impressions it sets is about your customer service. For example, if you have an outdated website, your customers will feel like your company won’t put the effort into helping them, as you didn’t put your effort into your website.
It Builds Trust With Your Audience
A good-looking website will make your audience feel secure and worry-free about using your site and services. The more they feel secure, the more they will trust your company. Whereas a website that isn’t designed well, will give the impression that it is shady. Therefore, it will make your audience skeptical about using your site.
Your Competitors Are Doing It
In business you always have to know what your competitors are doing, in order to remain in the competition. Therefore, having a well designed website will make it easier for your audience to use your site and they will choose you over your competitors. What also helps is if your web design sets you apart from what’s out there, making you seem more interesting than your competition.
It Creates Consistency
If your website is designed properly you will have consistency throughout. This is because you will have the same fonts, style, and layout across your site, making your site look professional, which will make your audience trust your site. Therefore, this will help build your brand, as your audience will become familiar with what your brand looks like.
I hope these 6 points have helped you to understand why web design is important, and how it will impact your business and audience.
Nowadays typography has become an increasingly popular graphic design technique and trend and it is massive that you get it right for your design to be a success. Adobe Illustrator has a lot of tools made for manipulating and creating typography which are often overlooked and unused. People that often have a workflow that works are reluctant to use other tools and are often intimidated. In this blog I will be discussing some overlooked tools in adobe Illustrator which could make your workflow improve or add some extra design elements.
Text Box
The text box tool is especially handy when working with a lot of text for graphics as it contains all. It is great for making text look neater and tidier. You create boundaries for your text to sit in and drag it or resize it to any particular area of your artboard. It is also great when using dummy text for concept designs such as website mock-ups. Text box can allows your design to be more strict with where your content is placed.
Envelope distort tool
Envelope distort is a creative feature that allows you to squeeze and fill any shape you desire. It can be used to create quirky and maybe abstract designs as the results can vary dramatically. It is done by selecting both the text and desired shape and then selecting object, envelope distort. It is a simple process which can sometimes produce varied results.
Character’s and Glyphs
This is often known but many typefaces in illustrator offer alternative characters to choose from. As a graphic designer it is common to find a font which has a letter that doesn’t quite work or doesn’t look as good. The letter might often be to quirky or just not look the same as the rest. With this tool you are allowed to change certain characters of the text without it looking out of place. It is a alternative font that also works with the remaining letters. This can be found by highlighting the text which then provides a drop down beneath.
Type on path
This tool can be great for creating text that needs to be curved or what follows a certain path. This tool will be often used on logos if text needs to be curved in a circle like fashion around a logo. It is done simply by creating any path either using the pen/pencil tool or creating a shape. Clicking on the type on path in the tool bar section should allow you to select on the path and type whatever is needed.
Warp tool
Similar to the envelope distort tool, warping allows us to transform our text into many different shapes, including an arch, wave or zig zag. The great thing about this tool is that the text which has been warped is still fully editable and words can be changed without disrupting what you have already created. To undo any warp effects added to the text simply go to the appearance panel and deselect any warp effects by putting them in the bin.
Staying on brand is what all companies should be doing all the time. All big companies know how to do this really well and this is why they are so recognisable in today’s world. By not staying on brand can slow down the growth of your business which isn’t ideal.
You should stay on brand to be able to win over more customers but you have to give the right reason to. People are going to remember your business if your brand is very recognisable.
Logo and Imagery
You should be using your logo consistently with everything you create and do. It doesn’t have to be the main focus it can be suttle like what we have done here for our one of our websites that have gone live which is in the bottom right corner. However, if you do ever change your logo you should then stick with that logo and not change it back to the old one so people will not think you are two different companies. You should also do this when it comes to your imagery. For example, pictures, themes, fonts and colours should all be consistent. Doing this will help you become more recognisable to the public. This is quite easy when you become familiar with your branding.
Your message
Your company should have a message that is relatable and is easy to remember by people. We use “B Creative B Different” and this is in most of our branding. It is on our business cards, website, videos posters and more. What you should never do is change your message constantly, which would confuse people on what your message is and people associate your brand with. People won’t remember what your message is if you hardly use it or don’t use it at all.
How do you start becoming on brand?
Starting in the office is always a good place to start when it comes to rebranding. As a business you can only succeed as a team so by everyone in the office should be following brand guidelines. This could be using the right letterheads, youing the right headshot for the website or how a blog is set out online. Once your office has got the grips of the brand then it is time to do it online. What we use are templates that have the brands colours, text and imagery which is consistent from our YouTube channel to our email designs. Doing this consistently will eventually become second nature and won’t be difficult to do.
Be consistent and have your target audience in mind
Being consistent is so important. Using your brand colours in ways that you shouldn’t be using them is an example of this. For example, we have two pop colours which are our red and gold which is never used for text. The gold is solely used for our signature golden dot and the red is a colour that we make things stand out from our other two primary colours. We use these monotone colours because they aren’t too much for the eye.
Mallett Stone Masonry is a family run business that delivers stone masonry services, they take pride in the new-build or a restoration projects they undertake.
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What We Did.
Our website design team created a new website that is easy on the eyes and along with showing the company to be trustworthy and well established. The consistently branded colour scheme across the site guarantees that it is sleek and contemporary but also enhances the brand identity and awareness of Mallet Masonry.
We created an uncluttered design to showcase their business and service, ensuring that the high-resolution images stand out to the website visitors. In addition, our web design team incorporated calls to action throughout the website to ensure it is engaging and interesting.
Biggest Change.
As Mallett Masonry was a rebuild, there are many noticeable changes throughout the website. The website has been updated with new styling, new fonts and an improved gallery feature. By laying the website out with a new styling, it provides a much more professional feel to the business and that can be portrayed to new visitors. Overall, it gives the company an online presence to be proud of.
Habitat Shutters is of London’s premier custom-made shutter supplier and installer, that fit shutters to almost any type of window, including bay windows and bi-folding patio doors.
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What We Did.
Our website design team kept to a clean, uncluttered and branded colour scheme for the website design, opting to highlight the company colours throughout the site which enhances the brand identity. We also integrated a branded colour palette with bright pops of blue and grey to highlight the sleek and minimalistic design that perfectly represents the professionalism of the company.
By incorporating a Google Review feed into the footer of each page this shows that Habitat Shutters is a trusted and established company. It was important to allow the services and products to shine and provide their customers with a usable platform where they can contact the company, see testimonials of the previous work and even physically see images of their work with an integrated custom lightbox gallery.
Biggest Change.
The biggest change for the Habitat Shutters website has been the development of functionality. We’ve added features such as a testimonial feed, a Google reviews feed and a downloadable brochure. By including elements like this to the new site, it allows for better functionality across the design and become easier to use for new visitors. They have everything at the click of a mouse.
In such a competitive digital market, it is important to ensure your business stands out from the rest. This requires the work of a professional website design agency in Stockport. In this blog, I will explain why you should choose to hire a professional agency to design and develop your business website.
Professionalism
Agencies don’t just hire simple website designers with no experience. With a web design agency, you know you’ll be getting a top notch, professional and experienced designer who can adequately develop your whole business website. There is also the added aspect of a team: if the designer working on your project is stuck with something, they have a whole team they can turn to for help and assistance. In comparison to simple freelancers, they are limited to only themselves and what they have learnt from online courses and tutorials.
Bespoke and Custom Design
A professional website agency focuses on creating a bespoke and custom website for your business in Stockport. This helps to make your business stand out online against the countless amount of other websites and businesses competing with you. Freelancers commonly replicate their design process across all their customers, using the same themes, layouts and features.
Agencies will also take the time to understand your business’ unique requirements, goals and objectives. For example, your business may not want to make sales or generate leads online, so you would prefer that your website is designed to increase visits to your physical store. An agency would understand that and take steps to develop your website and content to direct potential customers and clients to your store as opposed to buying online. Many freelancers do not take the time to understand your unique requirements and simply give you an off-the-shelf template design that is not optimised for your objectives and goals.
Website Maintenance
With an agency, the project doesn’t end once a website is completed. An agency can provide the best website hosting and maintenance whereas a freelancer would not have the capabilities for this. Agencies can ensure your website remains secure, stays online and updated, whereas a website made by a freelancer can quickly become insecure and outdated, requiring you to shell out money for a new website in a matter of months.
Search Engine Optimisation
An agency understands a website may look pretty, but if it isn’t driving traffic and conversions then it is useless. That is why websites created by an agency are often optimised for search engines with on-page and technical SEO, whereas a freelancer would be very limited as to what optimisations they can do – if any at all. This is because the freelancer is trained in only one thing: to design your website. Once they have done their job, then they’re completely finished. A professional web design agency wants to see your online website and business thrive.
Hire Our Professional Web Design Agency
Blue Whale Media is the leading creative agency in the North West, we specialise in website design services and digital marketing solutions to ensure your business gets the very best for its online requirements. Learn more online or contact our professional Stockport website designers today.
As a business owner, you may become a little confused when choosing which platform is best for your website. From website builders, content management systems and full blown eCommerce management platforms – there’s quite a lot of platforms to choose from, and even more things to consider when you are choosing! In this blog, I’ll highlight some of the top platforms used in web design and what they can do to get the best website for your business in Stockport.
WordPress
Chances are you’ve heard of WordPress, even if you aren’t quite sure what it is. WordPress started way back in 2003 as a simple blogging platform, but has since grown into the most popular content management system used in website design, holding by the the largest market share. In fact, according to research from W3Techs, WordPress powers 35% of the entire known internet – that’s over a third! Of all the websites powered by a content management system, WordPress powers 62% of them.
But why is WordPress such a popular choice? Simply, it is a very user-friendly and open-source platform, and as such has a massive thriving community of developers who contribute thousands of plugins, themes, tools and extra features you can use on your WordPress website to customise your online brand to your heart’s content.
Now you may be thinking WordPress is only used by bloggers and small websites – surely this thing isn’t an appropriate choice for a large company? Well, let’s have another dive into the statistics with QuantCast (a list of the top 10,000 most visited websites on the internet.) In this, we can see that in the Top 10,000 list, WordPress powers 38% of the websites. In the Top 100,000 list, WordPress powers 36% of the websites. It’s clear to see WordPress is used by a huge range of different users and website types, both small and large.
As a favourite of many website designers, even of our own Stockport-based website design company, you can’t go wrong with WordPress. Even our own website is built using WordPress!
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an extension of WordPress, which turns your simple WordPress website into a fully functional eCommerce store. Due to this, it is very easy to install and configure. In addition, it is very user friendly and easy to navigate – simply because it just uses the exact same WordPress dashboard and back-end system. It is very customisable and has endless opportunities, you can sell actual physical products or virtual items/services to easily take payment online directly from your own website. WooCommerce allows for advanced features and configurations such as shipping costs based on area, product weight, features to up-sell related products, automate emails to customers, easy to optimise for SEO and more.
Joomla
A common name to appear alongside WordPress. The general view of Joomla is that while it is not as user-friendly as its CMS counterpart, it can prove to be more flexible in certain areas. An example where Joomla may outshine WordPress is for the creation and management of websites that doesn’t require much text-based content, such as a graphic design portfolio. It also provides more advanced user management, making it a good choice for websites that feature account membership subscription plans. Not to mention Joomla provides multilingual support for website visitors without the need of extra plugins or extensions, always good for a large international business or a website that needs to cater to different languages.
However, Joomla is limited in the number of plugins, extensions, themes and templates you have available compared to WordPress. This means you may have to manually add the more advanced features you require on your website.
Drupal
Drupal is very similar to Joomla: it is great for custom-post type websites, provides advanced user management options and has multilingual support straight away. There are additional features which sets Drupal apart from its CMS competitors. Drupal uses an advanced taxonomy system to categorise and organise your website content and products, making it a good choice for large scale eCommerce websites. Another benefit is advanced security: many web developers have consistently pointed to Drupal as being a far more secure content management system than both Joomla and WordPress – another reason why many large eCommerce stores prefer Drupal.
On the other hand, Drupal is extremely unfriendly for new users (as far as a CMS goes.) One look at the user interface will have many people scratching their hands and wondering what to do – which is why it’s recommended to have some sort of professional website development experience before dabbling in Drupal.
Magento
Magento is a CMS purely dedicated to running an eCommerce website. So if you’re planning on creating a blog, portfolio or service-based business website – give this one a skip! This CMS is a favourite of many Fortune500 companies and very large retail eCommerce companies, including the likes of Nike, Ford, Vizio and more. Magento provides many advanced eCommerce features that your customers will love, and that other CMS platforms simply can’t provide. These include things such as: shoppers accessing purchase history, saving products, advanced payment options, and the advanced feature of managing multiple eCommerce stores from a single website dashboard – very handy for those Fortune500 companies!
Conclusion
So there we have it, just some of the many content management systems you can use for your business website! There’s even more platforms out there, but we decided to keep it simple and stick with just the well-known ones. As you can see, every platform has a unique usage and you should be very careful when deciding on which platform to use for your business website.
Require a Business Website?
Do you need a professional website for your business? Contact our professional team of website designers in Stockport. Our team takes the time to get to know your business, understanding your unique requirements and, if needed, suggest the best choice of platform we can use to develop your business website. Give us a call on 01925 552050 or learn more on our website design service page.
If you use Facebook regularly you will notice the huge rise with video content being the main type of content on your timeline. This type of content is more popular than any other content on Facebook because of how it grabs your attention and makes you want to watch the full video. This is why we use video based content on nearly every advert we post on Facebook.
Why should I use videos for Facebook Adverts
Facebook Video ads are a great way to make sure people recognize and remember your brand. Video content is a great way to get engagement across multiple social media platforms that will bring traffic to your website, creating leads. When we use videos for our Facebook ads we get a lot of people liking, sharing and commenting on it and from the engagement that is generated we got more leads who will email, phone or even message us directly through our Facebook page.
Facebook Advert strategies
Videos that don’t need sound might sound a bit strange but a lot of people who are scrolling on social media are only doing it to kill time when commuting, in a public place or even to just have a rest at work. This is where sound is not appropriate for listening to a video, and this is why having videos without sound has a lot of engagement. Even if you do want to use sound you still can just maybe think about using captions.
Get your point across
When making any type of content for social you want to grab the attention from people quickly and then get your point across to your audience. On Facebook Ads you are able to post a video for a length of 2 hours, no one is going to watch a video on Facebook for two hours and videos that are less than 30 seconds are more watched by 80%.
Keep your Facebook ads short, engaging to get your main points across faster.
Watch your video metrics
After you have posted your Facebook ad and you have got all of your metrics back you need to evaluate them. You need to see if they have been beneficial to your business. How many people have watched your advert? How many clicks were made on your ad? How many visits did your website get? Understanding these questions will give you a better understanding of how Facebook works. This will eventually give you a better understanding of your targeting for the future.
When it comes to marketing on social media it can become tricky when it comes to remembering all off the guidelines of the different social platforms. However, there are multiple companies that are already doing extremely well on social media that you can get inspired from.
Reebok
This sportswear brand is a great example to look at when it comes to getting inspiration for social media. They have a good
digital for social media. They have a good digital marketing strategy and uses multiple different platforms to help them sell their products but don’t post the same content on all platforms. They do well when by posting regularly and link to their blogs with athletes, fitness tips and more.
The Reebok Instagram uses a lot of colour and fitness photography. The Facebook page shows off their latest Reebok shoe. They also use YouTube to post some entertaining content showcasing their products and the one social platform that Reebok does well is LinkedIn.
StubHub
StubHub uses Pinterest really well even though it must have been difficult when it comes to actually create the account because they sell tickets. They have created a board for every type of event they sell tickets for and the pins range from interviews with performers to photos of athletes. Even tho they have a diverse following they cater for all of their viewers.
When working with Pinterest and you don’t really fit into the bracket of what most people are looking for on Pinterest. You may be required to think out of the box and really think about what your customers want to see content-wise.
Wayfair
As Instagram has been developing over the years, it has new features that make it easier for marketing. With its new shopping feature, it is much easier to show off your products with them linking to your website making it better for them to buy your products.
With Instagram, you have to create attractive images of your products tag your product which then has the products name, price and details with a link to your website. 60% of users on Instagram fine new brands, meaning your business must take advantage of.
Blue Whale Media
With our social media, we want to portray our values of the company and that we always have the customer in mind. We post content of our new websites, projects, trends and office life. We mainly think about how we are portraying our brand only so it is recognisable to our clients and future customers. We also post regular podcast about certain topics that can help you as a business improve your marketing.
The social platforms we use is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Vimeo and Pinterest. We want to be able to connect with as many people as possible and we don’t post for the sake of it. We post content that is relevant to us as a brand and to our customers. However, you have to think about who our target market is and what platforms they are using to be able to reach them through social media.
A colour palette is a staple in any branding. They can be used in different aspects of work but it is predominantly used in the design. Colour palettes can help you style any designs you create to ensure your branding is consistent throughout. In this blog, you’ll find out why colour palettes are needed for every business website design and see an example of the perfect colour palette.
The Importance of a Colour Palette
As previously stated, a colour palette is needed for every company. Not only does it help establish your brand but it also allows people to recognise what sector you work in. Colour is also a great communication tool as colours can affect how people feel and what they do. This might sound a little crazy but stay with me. It has been confirmed that people will decide if they’re attracted to marketing message based on the colours they use. Think about the connotations that already come with specific colours. Yellow usually
portrays signs of happiness and sunshine whereas green signifies nature and freshness. When you see red you think of danger and power and when you think of black you relate it elegance and authority. Now you know the importance of a colour palette, it’s time to start thinking about what colour palette will work for your business.
Picking a Colour Palette
Picking a suitable colour palette for your business can be a time-worthy task. It’s important to get it right so you’re branding is always on point. Firstly, you want to do some research on similar businesses within your industry and see what colours they are using to portray their message. See what colours are used to represent the industry you work in and go from there. It’s important not to copy someone else’s colour palette as this can get confusing when trying to establish your unique brand. You need to have a good idea of the colours you want and then play around with different shades and tones. This way you can see what looks best for your business. There are many tools online to allow you to do this but it’s important to remember the hex code for each colour within the palette.
Colour Palette Representation
The colour palette I have chosen is the perfect example of a neutral scheme. These specific colours are very calming as there is no vibrancy in any of the chosen hexes. The theme of this colour palette is a very mature and modern feel. This is portrayed by the mixture of brown and grey. The colour palette itself represents a very peaceful mood as the colours do not portray any negative connotations.
Industry Colours
As mentioned before, every colour palette has some relation to a specific business industry. For this colour palette, I would say it would be best suited to a coffee shop. The reasoning behind this is the fact that the colours used are similar to coffee colours which shows the connection with the business and the colours. The colour palette is also very calm and neutral which links to how you would want to feel when sitting in a coffee shop. As people go there to usually relax and take a minute to enjoy their drink, you would want to try and represent that feeling within your colour palette. I would say that this colour palette is the perfect choice for a coffee shop business and has probably already been used by cafes already.
Where to Use
Now you know why a colour palette is important, how to choose your own and seen an example, it’s important to know where you can incorporate your colour scheme. Firstly, you would want to include your chosen colours on your website. This is where the majority of people will notice your colour palette and it’s easy to showcase it across the different pages you have. Another obvious place to use the colours is in your logo. Your logo is the face of your branding so having the same colours will give you the standing point you need to have a recognisable palette. In addition to this, you can also use your colour palette on social media on any graphics or videos you are promoting on your platforms. Print marketing is also a good place to show off your colours by using them on leaflets, business cards, stationary etc. Pretty much anywhere you use colour for your business, the colour palette needs to be the main focus.
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