Why Your Website Should Have A ‘Who We Are’ Page

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People are naturally wary of what they don’t know. This is why a ‘who we are’ page is an important part of web design. Your customers will be able to get an idea of who you are, how long you have been in business, and what services or products you offer.

Do I really need a ‘who we are’ page?

When landing on a home page or a landing page, some users will naturally want to gravitate to a page that tells them more about the business, so if you don’t have a ‘who we are’ page, you are missing a great opportunity to tell your story and increase your site’s dwell time. If they understand more about your business, they will feel more confident about buying from you – resulting in higher conversion rates!

What to include on a ‘who we are’ page

Your company’s culture is one of its biggest assets. It sets you apart from your competitors and makes you unique. A ‘who we are’ page gives you the opportunity to share what makes your company special, and shows potential customers that you are a business they can trust.

Including videos and images on your page is a great way to give people a snapshot of your company culture. You can also use text to explain what values drive your business and how these are reflected in the work that you do.

If you have won awards or been featured in the media, be sure to mention this on your page as well! This will help build trust with potential customers and show them that you are a credible business.

Make sure your contact information is up-to-date and easy to find on your website. You should also consider including a contact form on your page, so people can easily send you a message. This makes it easy for potential customers to get in touch with you if they have any questions or want more information about your company and means you can maximise the number of potential leads this page drives into your sales funnel.

Get started today

A ‘who we are’ page is an important part of any business website. It helps build trust with potential customers and showcases what makes your company special. Don’t miss this opportunity to sell your company and its fantastic people. To find out more about creating a ‘who we are’ page, contact us at Real Internet today.

Is Web Development Part of Digital Marketing?

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By now, most business owners know what digital marketing is in general. For those who are unsure, digital marketing is marketing your company online via digital channels. Although it sounds simple to grasp, the individual parts which make up online marketing can sometimes be less clear.

In this blog, we’ll be taking a look at whether web development can be classed as part of marketing via digital channels.

Can web development be included in digital marketing?

The simple answer is that web development is part of digital marketing. This is because any website you develop exists online in a digital format and has a direct impact on how your business is perceived. Even if you do not use the site you develop in marketing campaigns per se, it can still be the first place people interact with you online and can help you to attract new customers.

In addition, a website that has been expertly built can be a valuable marketing tool for showing consumers you are a professional company. When people use your site and see you have invested resources into its core functionality, they will view you in a more positive light.

Web development takes the basic design of a site and brings it to life for consumers with scripts, dynamic content and coding.

Web development is key for SEO

It is not just the impact on brand image and showcasing your business online which makes web development essential for digital marketing. The functionality of your website also has an impact on SEO.

Search engines will take into account how well your website functions, how easy it is to navigate and how long it takes for pages to load. By getting the development of your website right, you can improve your SEO and move your website up to the top of search engine results pages.

At Real Internet, we know how important expertly built and developed websites are for digital marketing. Based in Wotton-Under-Edge, our affordable web development services help clients get the functioning, agile websites they need.

Get in touch today for more details.

 

What is a Sitemap in Web Design?

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A sitemap is one of the most crucial aspects associated with developing and designing a website, but what is it exactly and why is it so essential to creating an effective, user-friendly site?

Sitemaps explained

A sitemap is akin to a blueprint or road map for a website. It’s a visual representation created by a web developer to detail the layout of a website and its contents before it gets produced.

Usually drawn on a large piece of paper, a sitemap consists of boxes to represent each web page, set out in a hierarchy, with the most important at the top. The boxes for each page will detail what content will be included, with arrows to show how each page connects to each other.

A web design company will also list on the sitemap what the goals and functions of the website will be, so close collaboration between the website management company and the client is key to creating a successful sitemap, and, therefore, an effective website.

Easier collaboration

Since there are often lots of parties involved with creating a website, including the client, developer, designer, web hosting company and, possibly, an account manager, having a sitemap that everyone agrees on before the website is created ensures it can be developed smoothly and seamlessly, with fewer problems along the way.

By creating a website’s layout on paper before it gets put together for real, the website design company can make sure each part of the site will flow together and function effectively so that no costly or time-consuming changes would need to be made once the site is in the actual design and development stages

Improved user-experience

A sitemap also provides benefits for anyone visiting a website, as it allows a user to see how the pages are organised in a hierarchical structure, to enable easy navigation and an improved user experience. Since the sitemap includes details of what will be included on the website, it also ensures there’s no room for any duplicate or superfluous content. This promotes a high-quality website that will be favoured by search engines.

Indeed, search engines and web crawlers look at sitemaps when determining the ranking of a site, so it’s a good move to have an effective sitemap as part of your SEO strategies.

If you’re looking for effective web design services in the South West UK, contact us at Real Internet today.

What is a Web Design Company?

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Having a top-class website is a must for digital marketing in the modern age. To create a great website, you’ll need to work with a reputable web design company, but what are they and what do they do?

What is a web design company?

In simple terms, a web design company is a company that designs and builds websites for businesses, public bodies, charities, and personal use. During your first consultation with a web design company, they will sit down and find out more about their client. They will also dig deeper into what the client needs their site to do, how they want it to look and what features they need on it. Once this consultation phase is complete, their team of expert web designers will build the site according to the client’s wishes.

Web hosting

Although designing and building websites is their prime service, many web design companies also offer web hosting services. This makes it convenient to find reliable hosting in the same place you have your website built.

In addition, some can bring existing WordPress sites into their hosting plans, even if you do not want a new site built. Some web design companies also specialise in areas such as graphic design and branding, which can be useful if you need help in sourcing the best marketing materials to stand out from competitors.

Why hire a web design company?

Some business owners may wonder why they should spend money hiring a web design company. After all, could you not save money by designing and building it yourself? While this is possible, it is likely that the site you end up with will almost certainly not be as responsive, stylish, and practical as one built by professional web designers.

Contact Real Internet today

At Real Internet, we have many years of experience in building websites that are not only feature-heavy and fast, but great to look at too. We also offer a range of additional services to clients in South West UK, from web hosting to graphic design and branding. Get in touch with us for more details.

 

 

What is a CMS in Web Design?

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If you’ve ever tried to build your own website, you might have come across the term ‘CMS’. CMS stands for Content Management System, and it’s a type of software that can be used to build and manage a website. Building a website using a CMS is a cost-effective and practical way to create a website that can be edited by anyone in your team for years to come.

What is a CMS website?

A CMS is any specific software that is used to create a website. Inside the CMS dashboard, users can edit website features, tweak the website design, and add and remove content to webpages. To manage websites at this simple level, most CMSs do not require any programming knowledge.

Some examples of popular CMSs include:

  • WordPress
  • Drupal
  • Magento
  • Duda
  • Joomla
  • Wix

While all CMSs are designed with the goal of creating easy, accessible website building and editing, they all look and work a little differently under the hood, which is why many people prefer a particular CMS over others. Here, at Real Internet, we tend to use WordPress, but we also have experience in using other systems.

CMSs are designed to make website building and editing simple and accessible to everyone. Web developers and designers build websites using CMSs because it’s fast and effective, and because these sites can then be passed on to clients who can update, edit, and re-arrange website content without any input from technical teams in the future. Reasons why CMSs are popular include:

  • A CMS enables non-technical teams to manage and update their own websites without input from developers. This is cost-effective, efficient, and allows content teams to retain control of their own data.
  • A CMS keeps web design and content separate. If you want to redesign your website, you can do so without having to rewrite or re-enter all your existing content.
  • Many CMS packages include additional tools for marketing, SEO, and analytics that can help you track website traffic and improve visibility.

Content Management Systems are designed to be affordable, simple, secure, and ideal for use by businesses of all sizes. Different systems will have their own strengths and weaknesses, but almost any web project can be successfully completed using contemporary CMSs.

Get in touch

At Real Internet, we offer an affordable web design service in the South West UK. Our web design service combines our expertise and experience while allowing you to retain complete control over your website. To find out more about our services, get in touch today.

How to Write Content for Digital Marketing

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Much of your success in digital marketing will rely on a steady stream of web page updates, blogs, news items and social media posts; fresh, dynamic content that informs, educates, persuades and influences.

Here are a few tips on content to get you started. These form the basis of an effective content marketing strategy.

How to write content for digital marketing

1. Know your audience

Good content talks directly to your ideal customer. You need to drill down on your target audiences and their buying behaviours and preferences. What do they want to hear?

2. Reinforce your brand

Page visitors and social media browsers make their minds up about you in a split second. They won’t linger to read lots of flowery text or wade through endless scrolling images, so make your brand statements loud, clear and compelling. Tell them why they should buy from you, in a way they can appreciate instantly.

3. Look at your competitors

Evaluating your own content strategy against your main competitors should be a constant process. What are they saying and what imagery are they showing?

4. SEO matters!

Your content is the central pillar of Search Engine Optimisation. Keep track of what keywords and questions your customers use when searching for your products or services. Make sure to work those naturally into your copy, as ‘keyword stuffing’ detracts from your SEO and your credibility.

5. User experience (UX)

Carefully consider the best ways to improve the UX on your mobile responsive website and within your social media. For example, your text should be succinct and sum up your products and services in a clear way. Your images should be strong.

For eCommerce websites, pay particular attention to content and UX on payment pages. Make the process easy and reassuringly safe to use.

6. CTAs

Lastly, make your calls to action prominent and persuasive to encourage your customers to get in touch with you or make a purchase.

If you’re looking for web design services you can rely on, give us a call

How Long Does It Take to Design a Website?

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Creating a website from scratch can take days, weeks, or even months. With so many variables in the website development process, the time required varies from one project to another. While we cannot give you a definite answer of how long website creation takes, we will be sharing the four steps of website creation and will give you a rough estimate of how long it takes to design a website.

Planning process to design a website

Without proper planning, you will lose sight of your goals and end up creating a website that isn’t suitable for your business. Therefore, the first thing you should do when developing your website is gauge your needs and create a plan. Communicate your primary goals with your website developer and let them know the pages and functionality you want your site to have. The planning process for a standard website takes about one to two weeks.

Design process

Once you have a plan of action in place, it’s now time to start designing your website. At this stage, your web designer should give a mock-up of how your website will appear based on your requirements. If there are any changes that you want to be made, communicate them early before development begins. The design process can take anywhere between one to three weeks.

The development phase

In this next stage, your website developer takes all the information you’ve given them and turns it into a fully functional website. Your web designer should always keep you in the loop of the progress being made because you may wish to change a key part of your website once you see it in action. As expected, this stage takes longer to complete because changes take longer to make. In most cases, it takes at least one month to fully develop a standard website.

Final review

Before any website is officially finished, it must go through one final round of revisions. This is to ensure that it looks and works as you anticipated. If there are no major changes required, then this process should take no more than two weeks.

At Real Internet, we cover the entire web design process from initial design to build. If you are looking for a reliable website design company based in Gloucestershire, contact us today to speak to our team of experts.