Let’s not mess about here, the greatest benefit from outsourcing your WordPress development (with us) is price. More to the point, the price your charge your client minus the price that we charge you (a nice big difference!). Our trade only pricing allows you to make a healthy mark up on what you charge your client, without the need to employ someone on a costly long term contract.

2. Expertise

This one is invaluable as WordPress expertise can save countless hours in development time. We have built numerous websites in WordPress, from complicated social communities to simple magazine style blogs. Why bang your head against a brick wall when we can do all the work for you at a fraction of the time?

3. High standard of work

Want to know that your outsourced work validates to the highest web standards, is built with the latest web technologies and works great in all major browsers, of course you do? That is included as standard on all of our outsourcing projects as we know how important it is to create quality WordPress websites.

4. Reduced cost of training

By reduced, we really mean that you have no costs for training. Pass all of your WordPress work over to us and we will produce work of the highest quality and ease of use that your client will be amazed. Our work is iterated so you can easily see what each part of the design is doing and we create custom menus and widgets that can be easily maintained using the excellent WordPress admin area.

5. Earn money whilst you’re not working

With effective WordPress outsourcing, you can make money without being in the office and certainly without the need to employ someone full time to do it for you. We can work late nights and weekends if required to get the work done that you need. Relax, put your feet up, we’ve got it covered.

Finally, an unofficial number 6! We work very closely with creative agencies and web design businesses to creative partnerships that are mutually beneficial to both parties. We have done it for them and we will do it for you too.

Want to know more?

WordPress Web Developers

As your website is your most important part of marketing material that your business can possess, it is vital that you optimise it for the best results. Knowing what is the best strategy for your website is of upmost importance and you must always keep your ultimate goals in site for when the website is designed and managed. Do you want to promote your business? Great. Do you want to turnover £1m in the next year through online sales? Great too. For both these goals and nearly every goal that you might have for your website, it is far more important to have an effective website than it is to simply have an efficient website.

So what is the difference between an efficient website and an effective website and how can this be applied to your website? Let’s start with a couple of short definitions:

If people love your website, find it easy to navigate, see great products but don’t buy from you then you have an efficient website. If however your site also looks good, users also find it easy to navigate, find the same great products but, and here is the clincher, they buy from you, then you have an effective website. An efficient website is not a bad thing; it’s just not going to help us to achieve our goals in the shortest amount of time possible which is something that an effective website will do every time. It’s no longer enough to simply have a website that you hope might attract customers. You now need to go out and make the most of these opportunities on the web for attracting new customers and knowing the difference between efficient and effective website strategies and then acting upon the information is what is important.

So how do you make your website effective?

There are a few critical steps that you can take to make sure that you have an effective website.

1.) Make it very clear what you are selling – make sure they know these are the best products or services that they can get.

2.) Let your site visitors know that they are getting good value for money – Value is a far more important factor than cost when it comes to a decision to buy something.

3.) Build up trust – Include testimonials, reviews or ratings on your site so people can see that you are an established business.

4.) Move them towards your buy now page using well placed calls to action – Use buy now buttons to make it easier for them to get to the important page on your website i.e. Your booking page or enquiry page.

.5) Make it really easy for them to buy from you by having a streamlined checkout process – You have done the hard work getting the site visitor this far, you don’t want to lose them at this stage due to bad checkout process.

6.) Reward them for their purchase – Even if it is just a thank you email, make sure that you reinforce why buying from your business is good for them. Repeat business is often very lucrative.

Of course these steps are for an e-commerce website but they can be easily be applied to any service that you are promoting on your website. Make sure you let people know what you are promoting and move them towards your sign up page or enquiry page, or whatever page is best for your business. That is an effective website and that is one that will dramatically increase your chances of online success.

Steps to take…

Review your website to see how it compares to the steps above. Are you doing everything that you can to make it easy for your customers to buy from you or use your services? If you think you are not or if you would like to optimise your website for the best results then click on the link below to get a quote from Holistic Designs.

WordPress Web Developers

We love WordPress at Holistic Designs and with good reason. WordPress is now the leading blogging platform and content management system with over 57,000,000 sites using it and 14.7 percent of the top million websites in the world also using it. Not bad for an open source project!!

Below are 6 great reasons why WordPress is amazing and why you should choose WordPress for your next website.

WordPress is easy to use

If you have ever used Microsoft Word then you will find using WordPress a doddle. It has a simple admin interface with all of the controls you need for writing blog posts and pages including bold and italic text. There is also a convenient navigation menu which allows you to customise your WordPress in any way you see fit and an easy to use system for installing plugins. This gives you the ability to easily make changes to your WordPress website without having to employ a website developer.

WordPress Plugins to do lots of cool stuff

One of the most exciting things about WordPress is the amount and quality of plugins that are available to enhance your website. These range from contact forms to Twitter feeds, image galleries to social community builders, it’s all there. Now you don’t need to manually add code to your website, you can simply add a plugin using the easy and simple admin area system and you’re ready to go. WordPress plugins are an amazing way to add extra functionality to your website and as most of them are free to use it is a real win, win situation.

WordPress is great for SEO

WordPress websites are beautifully coded (especially when we do them!) and typically rank high in the search engines. This comes from the W3C valid coding which is web coding to the highest standards and from good use of HTML tags. You can also install great plugins which will help with your on-page search engine optimisation such as page titles, page descriptions and search engine indexation which all help you to have a WordPress website that ranks high.

WordPress websites are Dynamic & Database Driven

Whilst static websites are ok, having a dynamic and database driven website is by far the best way to go. Having a database driven site gives you the ability to store useful information with your website and then publish it onto your site in a dynamic and changeable way. This gives you dynamic content that can be changed every day to make your website interesting such as blog posts and latest news articles. You can also store contact information about your WordPress website subscribers or anything else that you can easily store in a database.

WordPress is Secure

With each new update of WordPress, security is updated and made even more secure. Right now it is hard to say that any website is safe after the high profile hacking attacks recently but WordPress does a damn good job. As well as the secure basic installation, you can also install WordPress plugins to make sure that your WordPress website is even more secure.

WordPress is very Popular

Whilst I wouldn’t normally recommend doing something because it’s popular, when it comes to selecting a platform for your website it is without a doubt the best way to go. WordPress is an established platform that drives millions of websites as seen from the stats at the top of the page. It is also an open source project that is worked on by multiple WordPress developers rather than being the property of one enterprise and thus has a benefit of a very active and helpful support community.

In summary WordPress is an excellent choice for your next website, 57 million websites cant be wrong!

If you are interested in having an amazing WordPress website then contact the leading WordPress developers in Northampton (us!) by clicking on the link below.

WordPress Web Developers

Are you too busy to work on your website and don’t have enough hours in the day to improve your website? Or have you already thought about outsourcing your website to an expert?

There are many good reasons why you could outsource your website of which the most obvious benefit is that it saves you and your business time. Time is by far our most valuable commodity as even with all our modern time-saving machines & appliances, we still often don’t have the time we need to do everything we want.

So what are the real benefits of having your website maintenance outsourced to a skilled professional and how will you know what you can get your website manager to do? Below are 6 major benefits of outsourcing your website:

Regularly updated content

The search engines love it when you add value to your website through quality, regularly updated content. The question is, do you have enough time to add new blog posts or site pages on a regular basis. Most of us are too busy working on our business to actually spend the time to write blog posts that can typically be around 500 words long. Indeed websites that fail to update their content will often move down the search engine rankings as other sites, ones that have new content, move above them. New content added on a regular basis can have a massive impact on your search engine rankings and a good outsourcer can keep your site up to date using latest industry news that is rewritten to be unique or news from your business that you have briefly explained.

Social Media

Engaging in social media such as Facebook and Twitter is now a must for your business. Regular tweeting and Facebook updates give you a way of reaching out to potential customers that you normally would not be able to reach. Even though we can tweet and send Facebook updates via our mobile phones, it is still a time consuming chore. By outsourcing your website social media you can have regular tweets sent out and responded to and also Facebook page updates and management. The outsourcer can also help you to grow your Twitter followers and Facebook fans which has the obvious benefit of getting your information out to your target customers in a quick and easy way.

New Features

As the World Wide Web evolves, so does the need for your website to evolve too. Whilst you might not want to hang on to include every little fad or new design type, there are new features evolving all the time that enable you to have a better and more optimised website. A good example of this is HTML5 and CSS3 which both offer new features for web designers to make your website faster and more accessible to all. By employing a website management specialist you can get the new features added to your site without the need for radical redesigns that can cost a lot of money. A good website management specialist will suggest things that you can do to improve your site without you having to keep up to date with all the latest trends yourself. More time saved…

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

As well as the new content, your search engine optimisation needs to regularly worked on in order to get you high up the rankings and also to keep you there. New inbound links need to be generated and on page search engine optimisation needs to be worked on consistently in order to get the best results. Whilst the basics of SEO can be quite easily understood, the more complex things require more skilled interventions. Having the resource of an SEO professional means that your site can always be up to date with the latest search engine information and you can achieve the highest rankings. Higher search engine rankings typically mean more site visitors and more site visitors mean more opportunity to sell your services and products.

Backups & Security

Do you wonder if your site is safe from hackers and spam? What would you do if your site was hacked or you lost valuable information from your website? Are you going to scream for your web designer or are you going to be feeling confident that your site has been backed up regularly? If you have someone managing your website you can arrange for regular backups to be completed as well as regular security scans. These are often things that you could forget to do yourself leaving yourself open to failure. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the confidence in your site that whatever happens, someone is there to fix the issue and get your website up and running as soon as possible?

Analytics

Understanding the visitors to your website and then optimizing your site according to their needs can have a significant impact on the amount of visitors that you have and also whether or not you can convert them into paying customers. Your website analytics, such as Google analytics, provide an invaluable insight into your website and the people who visit it. Again, do you have the time to go through Google Analytics and work out the best strategy when you can leave it to a skilled Google analytics expert who will pinpoint exactly what you need to do? Rather than just staring at some graphs yourself and trying to guess what is happening, employ someone who knows what to look for and who can save you valuable time.

So there you have it, 6 outstanding benefits of outsourcing your website management.

If you are interested in having your website managed by Holistic Designs then click on the link below and complete your details and we will get back to you.

WordPress Web Developers

Can you answer the question above about your website? Are you able to define and understand what you website visitors are supposed to do or do you just have a website because you ‘should’ have one? ‘Should’s’ do not work very well when it comes to enhancing and optimising your online business. Your website can be the most powerful piece of marketing material that you possess, if you use it in the right way?

Regardless if your site is an online brochure or a fully-fledged e-commerce website, you have to think about the end user and how they will use your site. Will they go onto your site looking for your contact details (please make sure these are prominently displayed if this is the case), or will they go on looking to buy something that you are selling. Either way you need to get your site visitors the information / sales item that they are looking for with the least amount of clicks and in a way that is appealing to your site visitor. Your ideal site visitor is someone who will use your business consistently over time and they will only do this if you treat them right first time and every time.

Ok, someone has arrived at your flower pot website having used the search term ‘Flower Pots’ in Google. Great, or is it? It is only great if you can convince the visitor that you are the flower pot company that they are looking for and that you offer the finest flower pots around at the best prices. Not so good if you fail to convince them and they go to your competitor’s website who secures a large order. So how do you go about turning your site visitors into customers?

The 3 step process is simple:

1) Get the user onto your site

Employ good search engine optimisation to rank consistently high for the keywords that you want to be found with. Ensure that your site is designed to load as quickly as possible so that the visitor does not have to wait over a few seconds for the site to load.

2) Give the site visitor clear instructions

Let your visitors know that you are reputable business and you can fulfil their needs. Make your design visually appealing and user friendly. Most importantly give your visitors clear and prominent call to action buttons to prompt them to trade with you, contact you etc. A call to action button is a well-positioned web button or prominent link that prompts the site visitor to click on it. An Example call to action button is below:

3) Convert the sale

This is where the hard work from the first 2 stages comes to fruition and you can convert the website visitor into a fully-fledged customer. The call to action button has led the visitor successfully to your sales page and then what? Well of course, you make sure that this page is optimised to convert the sale. You may have another well positioned call to action button that the user can see to complete the sale or another prompt to the user that you are the right business for them to trade with. Bingo, sale completed, happy customer.

A good indicator of your effectiveness of your 3 step process above is from the bounce rate of your website in Google Analytics. If you haven’t got Google Analytics installed already then I highly recommend it (get in touch now if you need help with this as we are Google Analytics experts). A low bounce rate indicates that the site visitors are finding the information they want on your website and are staying on your site, fantastic. A high bounce rate on the other hand indicates that visitors are clicking onto your website and are then clicking off without visiting your site further, not so good.

Conclusion

You must optimise your site to move your website visitors through the 3 steps if you want to achieve the maximum amount out of your website. Employ a good web developer who understands the 3 important steps and delivers a site that is designed to optimise your business, rather than one that is just sitting there on the web doing very little.

Holistic Designs are experts in getting your website visitors to convert into customers. From advanced search engine optimisation to knowing exactly where to drive your website visitors, we are the website optimisation experts for your business. To find out how we can optimise your website for the maximum impact click on the link below now.

WordPress Web Developers

The days of having a traditional website targeted only at desktop users have now firmly gone and these days you must have a version of your site optimised for mobile web devices. Whether its for smartphones such as the iPhone and Android based systems, or for the explosion in tablet devices such as the iPad, your site needs to be optimised for these mobile devices. You need to give your site visitors the optimal experience as web users now have all the choice, give them a bad user experience and they may not come back.

Below are the 7 reasons why you need a Mobile Ready Website…

1) By 2014 there will be more people using mobile web devices than traditional desktops

The shift in users accessing websites using their handheld mobile devices has been dramatic in the last few years and it is strongly estimated that mobile web usage will overtake traditional desktop use by 2014. This means more and more people are going to be searching for your business using their mobile phone or tablet. Is your site ready for this or are you just serving up your normal webpage which has not been optimised for the mobile web?

2) Your competitors might not have done it yet

Awareness of the mobile web is not yet in the mainstream so your competitors may not have had the chance to optimise their website for the mobile web. Now is the time to get your site mobile ready so that when people search for you on their mobile devices, the information they are looking for is immediately available. It is a great way of being ahead of the game and displaying how your business is technologically advanced.

3) It is a cost effective way of more people accessing your website

A mobile version of your site will cost a lot less than a full version of your site as it is a view optimised for mobile web browsers. (Shameless plug time!) Holistic Designs can offer you a great deal on a mobile web optimised web design that will work great on Smartphones as well as Tablets. Get in touch to find out more (end of shameless plug!)

4) Speed matters!

One of the biggest advantages of a mobile web design is that the page served to the user is a lot faster than a normal web page. Whilst most desktop web users have broadband internet, mobile web users only currently have 3G which can be considerably slower at displaying webpages. A mobile web optimised version of your site is aimed at devices with smaller screens and so will have all of the unnecessary code stripped out so that the user gets the information they are looking for considerably quicker. Why ask your potential clients to wait when they get the information they need served straight away with an optimised mobile web theme?

5) Users can bookmark your mobile website onto their mobile device home page

A nice part of having a mobile ready website is that you can program it to have icons so that if the user saves the site to their home pages on their smartphones / tablets, your icon is used, very much like an app icon. This easy step helps to keep brand awareness high for your business whilst giving your users a quick bookmark to access your website. The benefits of this is that when the user wants access to your site they don’t need to go through their web browser, just one click is needed on their homepage icon and away they go, simple & easy.

6) Small screen sizes mean a different set of web design challenges

Designing for mobile devices means that you have to take into account that the screen size is considerably smaller than a traditional monitor and also most smartphones and tablets are now touch screen. So what does this mean to you? Small screens means you can get a lot less on the screen without making the user zoom in. Touch screens means that you have to give consideration to how people will use your site using a touchpad. Make it easier for your mobile web user by having more focused information and an easier navigation system with a mobile web theme.

7) Big brands are providing mobile web versions of their websites

The big brands such as Facebook, Google & the BBC, to mention a few of nearly all major brands, all have mobile versions of their web pages which they display to users who connect on their mobile smartphones and tablets. They understand the importance of having their information displayed quickly and easily to maximum amount of people is the most important part of their business. If they are all embracing the mobile revolution then you should apply this to your business as well.

So there you go, 7 reasons for having a mobile ready version of your website. We would love to know what you think so leave a comment below and Like, Tweet or +1 this article if you like it.

WordPress Web Developers

The new community uses BuddyPress, the leading social network building tool for WordPress and compliments the work developing the 100 Percent People website

Visit the site now and get involved in the conversation at 100 Percent People

WordPress Web Developers

We hope you all have a succesful and prosperous 2011

WordPress Web Developers

Firstly let’s look at two differing physiologies to compare the state of mind associated with each one. For example, if I told you that there was a depressed person around the corner it would be very easy to describe their body position. They would have slumped shoulders, their head would be down and overall they would not be in a good position to feel positive. Compare this now to someone like Alan Sugar who holds a strong empowered physiology, shoulders back, head up. This is the physiology of a confident person who will take charge of situations and get things done right now.

So what physiology do you take up on a consistent basis? Are you slouched over your computer leaning on your elbow or are you sitting up straight with your head up ready to tackle the challenge that is in front of you? Of course this might not be something that you are consciously aware of at the moment so just take a moment now to see how you are sitting. Notice the position of your shoulders and head, feel if there is any unnecessary pressure or tension anywhere in your body and generally get an understanding of how you are positioning your body.

What I want you to do now is take up a more positive physiology by doing all or some of the following and then seeing how you feel about tackling the important tasks ahead of you. Really feel the difference between how you were feeling and how you feel after adopting a new empowered body position.

• Shoulders back
• Back straight
• Head up
• Arms relaxed
• Legs relaxed
• Take 3 slow deep breaths

So how did you feel? Did you notice any difference in how you were able to focus fully on the task and get more done when you were in a powerful physiology? This is such a simple thing that you can do on a daily basis to maximise how you feel and to get you in an empowered state. See how you get on with this new physiology and leave a comment to let me know.

WordPress Web Developers

Coda

Having been a hand coder all my web design life and never being a fan of Dreamweaver, Coda came along and just rocked my world. Awesome tool that lets you view all of your sites in a cool way, is an fantastic HTML editor, CSS Editor and lets you view your changes within a web page in the program. That is just the main bits as it can do so much more and makes coding not only easy but also a lot of fun. Love it…!

Link to website…

Transmit

Even with the great file transfer in Coda, sometimes it’s just easier to use Transmit. For me, as an FTP client, it is unparalleled and as it’s made by Panic, who also make Coda so you know that not only will it work fantastic but it will also look blooming great too!!

Link to website…

Things

I Love Things! Maybe it’s because I need it to keep myself organised, maybe it’s because it syncs beautifully with my Things app on my iPhone or maybe I love it because it looks so damn good!!!! In my opinion the best organiser out there, give it a try now…

Link to website…

Fireworks

I’ve always preferred Fireworks over Photoshop for the images I use on the web. Makes it very easy to create great web buttons, cool image effects and also gives a good rate of image compression, ideal for web images! I also plan all of my web designs using Fireworks so that I can give my clients a view of the web design before I start coding it. This allows me to be creative and to make changes to the web design before the client signs off the final plan.

Link to website…

Firefox

Now whilst I use Safari for my web browsing, it is still a must to have Firefox running at the same time. Great add-ins such as the SEOBook Rank Checker and the Firebug tool are essential for checking how a site is performing. Add to this tools that allow you to view the keyword density and speed that a site loads using Yslow and you can see why it is an essential browser for a web designer. Now that Safari is open to add-ins then maybe in the future some of these will find their way onto Safari as well.

Link to website…

Skitch

What a simple and great tool! I am always cutting bits of websites and highlighting the areas of importance to show to people. Allows you to take a screen print and then draw on it, now that has to be fun doesn’t it? You can then drag the picture quickly into an email or another program such as Fireworks with ease.

Link to website…

iTunes

For me, it is so important to have good music on to do great web designs and so what else to use than good old iTunes. Now I know that it can sometimes be a little frustrating to use and now has a pretty poor new dock icon, but it is still the best place to play music on my Mac.

Link to website…

I would love to know what tools other web designers use, please feel free to leave a comment…

WordPress Web Developers