Name: Influense Design
Price range: $$$

Monthly website design rental packages

Would you like to avoid a large lumpsum payout for a new website? Well, in this aspect I can help you keep control of your finances. With one of my website design rental packages on a fixed monthly fee, you can manage your monthly outgoings.

I now offer a choice of website rental packages starting at £60.00 a month, that’s £1.97 a day, less than a Flat White from Costa.

So for less than £2 a day, you can have a professionally designed, mobile-friendly website, designed with search engines and users in mind. All the website rental packages come with annual hosting, ongoing maintenance, regular back-ups, and content updates. Starting at just £60.00 per month for a 10-page Starter Website package, or £90.00 per month for the 20-page Premium Starter Website package and topping off at £150 per month for the Optimum Business Website package, a content managed website with a full blogging facility to help you promote your business online.

What do you get for the monthly fee?

Firstly, all my website rental packages are custom designed and built for each customer, and all include the following within the monthly fee:

Bespoke design and development
Minimum of 10 Pages
Mobile-friendly responsive design
Website Hosting
SSL certification
Regular backups & Maintenance
A minimum of 1 email address
Initial SEO title tags & description tags
Google index submission
Social network links
Content updates and amendments

Of course, you are not limited to the packages, if you have any specific requirements, upgrades, or inclusions, you can simply select one of the plans, and just pay a one-off fee for the extra inclusion.

Please take a look at some of my website design examples, and feel free to give me a call on 01323 419212, or complete this simple contact form

Believe it or not, A Website redesign can destroy your search engine rankings very easily.

Not all website designers are equal, badly planned and ill-conceived websites can do irreparable damage to your business. In short, a website redesign can destroy your search engine rankings (SERPS). If you value your business making a decision on your website development is not something you can take lightly.

I have seen the damage that can be caused first hand, websites effectively disappearing from search engines, huge drops in organic search traffic, the email and phone enquiries substantially dropping.

After years of building your website presence, it vanishes overnight! What should have been a great new website design, suddenly turns into a horrific business disaster, worse still, once your rankings have gone that’s it, the damage can be permanent.

Depending on how reliant your business is on website traffic, these fundamental mistakes can put an end to your business.

How to redesign a website properly

Almost all website redesigns involve restructuring the layout and content in order to improve the site usability, this means your page URLs will change, a changed URL will result in a Page Not Found (404) error, Google will at drop that page from its index since it is no longer a valid URL, your site then loses that credit for a link pointing to your site.

A larger site will often have many URLs that will change. Since Google weights inbound links heavily in its ranking algorithm, the URL changes can cause your rankings and search traffic to nosedive, this damage is often permanent.

Avoid losing Search Engine Ranking

Before you employ any website designer to redesign your website, make sure that firstly they have mentioned how they plan to preserve your current search engine rankings, if they don’t raise this issue with you, avoid them. A great looking website with no traffic is as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Considered SEO planning

A lot of businesses that have a website don’t think about SEO when redesigning their sites and more often don’t know how SEO works.

Just getting caught up in the excitement of redesigning their websites, changing valuable content from historical pages, which in turn leads to their SEO failing. Planning and discussing your SEO with your website developer is essential to preserving your current ranking.

Index your website (Yourself!)

Crawling your site enables you to know everything about it; from the structure of the Metadata and also the URLs. Save your list will need this to create redirects for these pages to the new page. I use XML-sitemaps.com for indexing sites.

Your Current Meta Data

Preserving your Google ranking during a website redesign.

Your website’s metadata as seen and used by Google.

My advice initially on a redesigned site would be to keep your current meta data (the title and snippet Google uses to describe your page.) To many changes to your site in one go will make it difficult to see if the site redesign has made and benefit to your website’s traffic or usage.

Meta Data Updating

This can be carried our gently over an extended period of time, don’t rush to revise everything, update one or two pages, and wait to see if it gave you the improvements in the search rankings you were expecting, remember you can also revert back if the result is not what you expected.

Above All Be Careful

As I mentioned at the beginning, not all website designers are equal, some have greater technical knowledge but lack design skills, some have better design skills but don’t understand how users interact with the site, some will seem expensive, others can appear very cheap, but regardless of quality or cost, a considerable amount of them will pay no attention to your current search engine ranking.

Who needs a website that can’t be found? Don’t let your business pay for someone else’s lack of knowledge.

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When I design a new website I naturally get asked for website hosting, as the majority of my clients don’t want the hassle of sorting it themselves, as such I offer a range of managed website hosting plans.

I also provide maintenance and updating plans to help your business get more from its site…

Website Security Maintenance

I mostly design websites in WordPress (a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.)

All websites & CMS systems are potentially hackable, even WordPress, to help prevent this you should keep your website up-to-date.

I offer a monthly website maintenance plans, that will keep your WordPress site & plugins used up-to-date, Also taking an offline back-up of your files & Database. So should your website fall victim to a malicious attack, I can restore it without delay. Saving you time & money.

Website Content Updating Plan

Having a website developed doesn’t just stop when you launch it, you should be making the site work better for your business, this can be done by regularly updating your content, i.e. Blog/News etc. Also by monitoring the statistics, you can make improvements on SERPs (search engine ranking position), functionality & design.

I offer a range of website content updating plans to help you achieve more with your site.

Save on Monthly costs

Why not take a look through the web care plans available, & see how your business can save money on a bundle offer.

If you are interested in saving money & protecting your website please drop me a line.

Is your website developed in WordPress? and have you logged in to see the warning above, chances are you have, and like most users, you may be unsure what to do.

Firstly you DO NOT ignore this, as WordPress should be updated on a regular basis (along with any plugins used), updating your WordPress website may seem a daunting task, but it is essential to ensure it’s security & functionality.

Why update WordPress?

Security Issues – Updates contain new security features and close loopholes in the coding, preventing hackers from breaking your website by inserting malicious code. which can harm your website by affecting your search engine position (even being removed entirely) plus, your database and content may be corrupted leaving you with a lot of time, effort & maybe costs to replace this.
System Improvements – WordPress updates make the system easier to use and add new features, regular updates will allow you to take advantage of these immediately and save you having to learn all the new features at once.
Bug fixes – WordPress updates fix functionality issues on your site, so if something has stopped working an update may easily fix the issue.

Here is a visual guide on why you should update your WordPress site.

Not forgetting the Plug-ins!

Updating any functionality plugins used is just as important, old plugins can break your site – not being compatible with the latest WordPress, and, out of date plugins can cause security issues leaving your site vulnerable to attack.

Occasionally plugin updates can break your site, and require more expertise to rectify the problem & ensure their compatibility.

Why is Old WordPress vulnerable to attacks

When a new update is released a bug fix report is included, hackers can use this information to exploit the vulnerabilities of older versions & can target outdated websites. The easiest way to avoid possible attacks is to keep your website up-to-date.

What do I do now?

Firstly don’t panic, I offer a range of plans to help with WordPress security maintenance & updates, that include regular updates & offline back-ups, so if your website is attacked it can be restored to the last back with the minimum of downtime. Take a look a the plans here, and drop me an email if you have a question.

How much does a website cost, compared to your annual marketing spend on traditional advertising?

The following will hopefully illustrate that you could possibly be focussing more on your website, without increasing your advertising budget, in-fact you may be able to reduce it.

Advertising in a Local Newspaper

The cost will vary on the size of the advert & the period it runs for. The graphic above shows the average costs of advertising in a local paper, e.g. £1100.00 for a full-page ad, £750.00 for a half-page & £350.00 for a quarter-page advert.

Based on a single insertion excluding VAT and professional advert design & artwork prices.

The second part shows the costs of running that same ad for a year (12 insertions).

To advertise your business; once a week, in 1 publication, for 1 year could cost you £6760.00, for an advert the size of a credit card.

Does traditional advertising work?

Your local paper will impress upon you that they have a large circulation let’s say 20,000. With an even greater readership of 60,000, this is based on the number of people who will read that copy in a household.

But of that readership, how many are going to be your Target Market?

Excluding certain demographics (depending on your products or services, say; non-adults, retired persons, non-working), your exposure drops. Of those that are your target market discount a further portion; who don’t notice the ad, aren’t interested at that time, etc. You are now left with those who show a degree of interest – Attentiveness, of those there may only be a small number who take action.

So for all that cost, you may have their attention for a few seconds, once in a week, when they aren’t looking for your services.

Traditional advertising has its benefits, essentially keeping your business and its services visible. But, is there a more effective way to improve your local & national business advertising?

If you’re looking for a product or service do you pick up the local paper & scour the adverts?

“No, I would use Google”, is the answer I would expect from the majority.

Website benefits vs Traditional Advertising

Your website design should be structured to take advantage of;

its location for local business leads
search engine position on organic search results, or via the sponsored links,
actively & efficiently marketing your products and services.

With a content-managed website you can dynamically create targeted campaigns for specific services, create custom content & promotions, release press updates & product information, instantly now, can you do that with traditional advertising?

Also, your website is not set in stone, it can evolve with your business, actively targeting new customers, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You can also monitor how effective it is, and make decisions based on that information.

So, the original question was how much does a website cost compared to traditional advertising? but, maybe it should be can my business afford to spend big on traditional advertising methods and overlook website investment. Which, is one of the more powerful tools you have for marketing your business?

So if you are looking to make more of your marketing budget and improve your business web site? Give me a call on 01323 419212 or drop me a line.

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So you have a new business website that has been professionally designed & quite rightly you are very proud of it.

Now I’ll ask you one question that you probably won’t be able to answer…

Is your website utilising its Title Tags & Meta Descriptions effectively?

Often overlooked by clients & designers alike, Title Tags & Meta Descriptions are some of the most important pieces of code used on your pages.

These determine what Google shows users searching for your services.

Title and Description Tags as shown in Google search results

The image above shows how title tags (in blue) & meta descriptions (rich snippet of text) appear in Google. This tells Google & users what the page is about and can help persuade a user to click your link.

Both title & description tags should contain relevant information about the page content & contain target keywords.

Title Tags importance to Search Engines

Often regarded as one of the most important aspects of your page in search results:

It has the most SEO power of any tag on the page for establishing keyword relevance
Its contents are the source for the blue-link text shown in the search engine results pages (SERPs)
It’s the best place to get a concise description of the content on the page (well, that’s the theory)

(Although Google may adapt both for a more relevant snippet from the page if it views is more suitable).

How can I check my website?

Now without confusing you too much with technical details, checking how Google sees your website is pretty easy.

Go to Google & do a search for this: site:www.yourdomain.co.uk

not forgetting to replace “yourdomain.co.uk” with your actual domain name.

This will give you the list of all your website’s pages as seen by Google.

Why does email marketing present such a benefit over other more traditional forms of marketing?

Why does it drive better returns on investment and customer engagement metrics than other marketing techniques?

Why would you invest the time and resources to develop an email marketing program at all?

These top 10 email marketing benefits include:

Reduced Time & Effort
Real-Time Marketing Messages
Personalised Messages
Easily Segment User & Customer Database Information
Greater Frequency of Communications
Test Marketing Messages
Information Spreading
Reduce Overhead Costs
Exponentially Better Ability to Track Sales and User Engagement
Save the Planet with Email Marketing!

Read the full article to see in greater details the top ten email marketing benefits to your business compared to other forms of marketing.

Ans if you are looking for a simple to use, yet feature-rich professional-looking email system take a look at what I use, then drop me a line or call for a chat on 01323 419212.

Search engine friendly websites – if you are looking to have a new website designed for your business, you will undoubtedly want that website to be Search Engine Friendly.

So when designing a website you must focus on how you arrange your web content. The words, images and multimedia files, Here are six basic rules of web design to help make your website search engine friendly:

1. Websites should be easy to read

Everything on your site should be clear & easy to read & easy to understand. If not, people will not make the effort.

2. Sites should be easy to navigate

People will often not arrive via your home page (that is if your content is any good). So when they arrive it must be easy for them to find what they are looking for.

3. Content should be easy to find

Your website should be easy to find in search engines, directories or on industry-related sites. People want to go directly to the information they searched for. If they do not land on the right page, they will NOT be inclined to search for it.

4. Websites must have a consistent layout design

This applies to the design of the website and the content. Users need to feel comfortable and confident when using your website.

5. Pages should be quick to load

Your website should be cleanly coded to help with loading speed, and should not contain elements that have a detrimental effect on this.
Firstly because users don’t like to wait, but more importantly neither does Google.

6. All pages should have your contact details

Your website should display prominently your contact information, above the fold, (this is the area first seen without scrolling).

All the above points will certainly help in making a search engine friendly website for your business.

Search engine friendly website design

If you are looking to have a search engine friendly website designed and built why not drop me a line, or call 01323 419212 and I will be happy to discuss your web design project with you.