Website Design – 10 Things to Consider When Planning Website

What are the most important things to consider when designing a website?

In today’s digital age, having a website is no longer optional; it’s a necessity. Research reveals that businesses without a website risk losing 70-80% of potential customers. Therefore, creating a well-designed and engaging website design is the crucial first step.

But how can you ensure that visitors to your site are captivated and stay engaged? The key lies in a website that is not only visually appealing but also highly functional and easy to navigate. If your website fails to meet these criteria, visitors will quickly bounce away and seek information or services elsewhere.

When it comes to building a website, there are numerous factors to consider. From the overall layout and design to carefully selecting the right fonts, colours, and optimising image use, every element plays a vital role in accurately representing your brand and captivating your audience.

Starting the process of creating a website for your business can be overwhelming. To help you get started, here are 10 essential website design considerations to keep in mind for your new venture.

Defining Goals and Objectives When Planning a Website Design

In the world of website design, proper planning sets the foundation for success. Without a clear roadmap and defined goals, your website may lack direction and fail to deliver the desired results. Here are key considerations when defining goals and objectives for your website design project:

  1. Identify Your Purpose: Determine the primary objective of your website. Is it to showcase products, generate leads, or provide valuable information to your audience? Clearly defining your purpose will guide the design process.
  2. Know Your Target Audience: Understand who your website design is targeting. Conduct market research to gain insights into their demographics, interests, and preferences. This knowledge will help you tailor the design and content to effectively engage your audience.
  3. Establish Measurable Goals: Set specific, measurable goals for your website. Examples include increasing conversion rates, boosting online sales, or improving user engagement. Clearly defined goals provide focus and help track the success of your design efforts.

Conducting Comprehensive Research

Thorough research is a critical step in the website design process. By understanding your industry, competitors, and target audience, you can make informed decisions that set your website apart. Consider the following research steps:

  1. Industry Analysis: Investigate trends, best practices, and emerging technologies within your industry. This knowledge will help you design a website that aligns with current standards and showcases your expertise.
  2. Competitor Analysis: Study your competitors’ websites to identify their strengths, weaknesses, and unique selling points. This analysis will inspire ideas for your own design while ensuring you differentiate yourself from the competition.
  3. User Research: Conduct surveys, interviews, or user testing sessions to gather valuable insights about your target audience’s preferences, expectations, and pain points. This user-centered approach will inform your design decisions and improve user satisfaction.

Creating a User-Centric Design

User experience (UX) is a critical factor in website design. A user-centric approach ensures your website is intuitive, visually appealing, and provides a seamless browsing experience. Consider the following aspects when creating a user-centric design:

  1. Information Architecture: Organize your website’s content in a logical and intuitive manner. Use clear navigation menus, headings, and subheadings to guide visitors and help them find information easily.
  2. Responsive Design: With the increasing use of mobile devices, it’s crucial to design your website to be mobile-friendly. Responsive design ensures your website adapts to different screen sizes and delivers a consistent experience across devices.
  3. Visual Design: Use visually appealing elements, such as high-quality images, engaging videos, and well-designed graphics, to capture users’ attention. A visually appealing website enhances user engagement and leaves a lasting impression.

Content Strategy and Planning

Great design alone isn’t enough to make your website successful. Compelling and relevant content is equally important. A well-planned content strategy ensures your website effectively communicates your message to your target audience. Consider the following when creating a content strategy:

  1. Keyword Research: Identify the keywords and phrases relevant to your industry and target audience. Use keyword research tools to discover popular search terms and incorporate them strategically into your content.
  2. Content Planning: Determine the type of content you’ll include on your website, such as blog posts, product descriptions, case studies, or videos. Create a content calendar to organise your content creation and publication schedule.
  3. SEO Optimization: Optimise your content for search engines by using relevant keywords, meta tags, and descriptive headings. This improves your website’s visibility in search engine results, driving organic traffic.

Visual Branding and Consistency

A visually cohesive website builds trust, conveys professionalism, and strengthens your brand identity. Consistency in visual branding ensures a seamless user experience. Consider the following when establishing visual branding:

  1. Logo and Colour Scheme: Design a distinctive logo that represents your brand. Select a colour scheme that aligns with your brand identity and use it consistently across your website.
  2. Typography: Choose fonts that are readable and visually pleasing. Maintain consistency in font styles and sizes throughout your website for a cohesive look.
  3. Imagery and Graphics: Select high-quality images and graphics that align with your brand style and message. Use them strategically to enhance your content and engage users.

Website Design Navigation and Structure

Easy navigation and a clear website structure are essential for visitors to find information quickly and efficiently. Consider the following when planning your website navigation and structure:

  1. Logical Hierarchy: Organise your website content in a logical hierarchy. Use a clear menu structure and ensure important information is easily accessible from any page.
  2. Intuitive User Interface: Design an intuitive user interface that guides visitors seamlessly through your website. Use breadcrumbs, search bars, and clickable buttons to enhance user experience.
  3. Call-to-Action Placement: Strategically place call-to-action buttons throughout your website to prompt visitors to take desired actions, such as making a purchase, subscribing to a newsletter, or contacting you.

Performance Optimisation

A fast-loading website is crucial for retaining visitors and improving user experience. Consider the following performance optimisation techniques:

  1. Website Speed: Optimise your website’s loading speed by compressing images, minifying code, and utilising caching techniques. This ensures visitors don’t get frustrated by long loading times.
  2. Mobile Optimisation: Ensure your website is mobile-friendly and loads quickly on mobile devices. Mobile optimization is critical, given the increasing number of users accessing websites from smartphones and tablets.
  3. Website Security: Implement robust security measures to protect your website and user data from potential threats. This includes using SSL certificates, regular software updates, and secure payment gateways for e-commerce websites.

Integrating Social Media in your Website Design

Social media integration allows you to leverage the power of social platforms to extend your website’s reach and engage with your audience. Consider the following when integrating social media:

  1. Social Sharing Buttons: Include social sharing buttons on your website’s content to encourage visitors to share it on their social media profiles. This increases brand exposure and drives organic traffic.
  2. Social Media Widgets: Embed social media feeds or widgets on your website to display real-time social media content and encourage users to follow or engage with your social profiles.
  3. Social Login: Offer visitors the option to log in or sign up using their social media accounts. This simplifies the registration process and enhances user convenience.

SEO Optimisation

Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for increasing your website’s visibility in search engine results and driving organic traffic. Consider the following SEO optimisation techniques:

  1. Keyword Optimisation: Research and incorporate relevant keywords into your website’s content, meta tags, headings, and URLs. This helps search engines understand the context of your pages.
  2. Meta Tags: Optimise your meta tags, including the title tag and meta description, with concise, keyword-rich descriptions that accurately represent your page content.
  3. URL Structure: Create descriptive, keyword-rich URLs that are easy for both users and search engines to understand. Avoid lengthy and generic URLs.

Website Analytics and Tracking

Tracking and analyzing your website’s performance is crucial for making informed decisions and optimizing its effectiveness. Consider the following when setting up website analytics and tracking:

  1. Google Analytics: Install Google Analytics to track key metrics such as website traffic, user behaviour, and conversion rates. This data provides valuable insights into your website’s performance.
  2. Conversion Tracking: Set up conversion tracking to measure specific actions on your website, such as form submissions, purchases, or newsletter sign-ups. This helps you understand the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
  3. A/B Testing: Conduct A/B tests to compare different design elements, layouts, or calls-to-action. This allows you to optimise your website based on data-driven insights and improve its performance over time.

By considering these 10 important aspects when planning your website design, you can ensure a successful project that aligns with your goals, engages your target audience, and drives tangible results. Remember, proper planning and attention to detail are key to creating a website that stands out in today’s competitive digital landscape.

kc web design can help create a unique bespoke design for your website but if you’re going it alone and using this advice to create your own website design then you could try using a website builder such as Strikingly.

Paymentsense for e-commerce website design

Over the last 15 years e-commerce has changed a lot. In that time we’ve built many, many different types of e-commerce website design – from huge bespoke shops integrated into warehouse systems to the modern day Woocommerce stores. Even though e-commerce has changed one thing seems to have stayed staic – the payment providers.

The two main payment providers in the UK – excluding Paypal – have been Worldpay and Sagepay (previously Protx) and most of the e-commerce website design projects we’ve undertaken have used one of these payment providers. My personal preference is Sagepay but they’re both very similar, and they both charge a lot of money for the privilage of using their systems to deal with card payments.

E-commerce website design with Paymentsense

Paymentsense are a new kind of payment provider. They offer the same services as the other leading players in the market but with a big difference – they charge far less! For small businesses starting out on line the costs of taking payments has always been an issue which is why many businesses stick with Paypal (although even they aren’t cheap these days!) and don’t go near ‘proper’ payment gateways. Paymentsense make it easier for new businesses to dip into e-commerce without spending a fortune and their payment systems are very, very good. While some of the leading payment providers are still not supplying responsive payment pages that work on mobiles, Paymentsenses’ pages all work well on mobiles. They also supply card readers if you have a physical shop, have great support and can save you a huge amount of money on transaction fees alone.

Having recently worked with a customer changing from Sagepay to Paymentsense on a e-commerce website design project I can honestly say the integration was easy and support fantastic. When I had an issue with the way country codes were being dealt with by Paymentsense they were open to feedback and quick to make changes. Exactly what you need as a developer! And my client should be saving over £1000 per year in transaction fees.

If you’re interested in saving money on e-commerce website design and swapping over to a modern payment gateway then get in touch. It doesn’t take much to swap your website over or change payment providers and you could be saving yourself a lot of money at the same time and providing your customers with a better expereince.

A web designers life – Long hours, desks and health issues

Owning and running a small web design studio can be very hard work at times. I often work very long hours, sitting at my desk for long periods of time absorbed in designs or working on complicated UI problems or bug fixing code. I’ve also been a website designer for far too many years now and although I have the perfect studio in a wonderful location I still lead a very work focused life. Unfortunately, this has taken its toll over the years and back problems have become a regular occurrence.

We’ve been in the current kc web design studio for over 7 years now so it felt like time for a revamp and refit. As part of the studio redesign I looked into sit/stand desks as a way of fighting the constant desk bound nature of working on computer screens. There’s a huge amount of information on the negative health effects of sitting down at work for too long. It seems like sitting is the new smoking!

There are a number of sit/stand desks on the UK market and all of them seems to be at quite a high price of normally over £1000. Fortunately, IKEA have just entered this marketplace with a sit/stand for below £500 that is very, very good.

The IKEA Bekant sit/stand desk can be bought in a number of different configurations and the one we went for was the black corner version. The desk height is adjusted by a small keypad and motors built into the legs of the desk move the desk up and down to your required height. The motors are smooth and quiet and easily move the desk height even with 2 monitors and an array of drives and desk accessories. It looks just like any other desk and you’d never really know to look at it that it moved. Some of the other sit/stand desks look monstrous with motors and leads everywhere. The IKEA desk is simple and elegant and the style fits with other furniture that IKEA supply so we could kit out the whole studio in matching kit.

Everyday life with a sit/stand desk

There are lots of articles out there that talk about the health benefits of sitting down less so I won’t go into that here. I’ve been using the new desk now for about a month and it has completely changed the way I work and my lifestyle in the studio. I rarely sit for longer than a few hours a day now, the rest of the time I’m stood with the desk at chest height. It takes a little brain adjustment and a few days to get used to things but standing now feels much more normal. Sitting down for only a few hours now feels wrong, static and lethargic. Standing at a desk keeps you energised and moving around, your body posture is better and there’s no stress on your back. I’m sure standing all day would eventual have a negative impact on knees or other areas so getting a good balance is key. I tend to sit for a few hours in the morning then stand for the rest of the day, especially in the afternoons when you can have a bit of a lull, and then back to sitting in the evenings when things are quieter in the studio. I’m now a complete convert to standing at work and after a month or so I’m already feeling the health benefits and my back is causing far less problems than it did before. I’d recommend trying a standing desk to anyone that works long hours in the web design world or any office environment where you tend to sit for long hours at a desk.

Project management for freelance web designers

A few weeks ago I saw a tweet by Paul Boag that mentioned a new project management tool for freelance web designers. I’ve been on the lookout for a simple project management tool for some of the web design projects I work on – some directly for clients but others where I work with a group of remote workers. I’m always a sucker for a new bit of software to play with so I had a look at the Kirby Project Hub. The website looked great but I couldn’t see a way to download or signup for anything and it turned out the product was still in development. I contacted the developer, a lovely guy called Gunther Groenewege over in Paris, and he sent me a preview version to try out.

The Kirby Project Hub project management tool for freelance web designers looked great and seemed to work very well for a single client structure where you could add notes to the project and keep your client up-to-date. It didn’t seem to work as well for a small team as you couldn’t log in and see multiple projects. After a few emails back and forth to Gunther we’d worked out a way of having better admin views in the front end so that an admin could see all projects. Bingo! It now worked perfectly for a small team.

A few days later and a few more bug fixes and Gunther launched the Kirby Project Hub project management tool for freelance web designers to the public, and it looks great.

 

For a simple tool to keep in contact with clients and let them know whats happening with a project it works very well. It looks very clean and simple and is easy to customise for your company brand and colours. It uses the Kirby content management system and is essentially a theme for Kirby so you need to make sure you buy a license for Kirby. I’d never come across Kirby before but it looks very interesting. It’s a flat file based content management system that seems very easy to use and might be worth using for clients that only need a basic CMS and not the full power of something like WordPress. The Kirby Project Hub also looks great on mobiles!

You can get more info and download the Kirby Project Hub from the new website.

Responsive website design and Google rankings

Is your website design responsive? Does your website work well on mobile devices? No? Then you need to seriously consider making sure your website is mobile friendly otherwise it could have an effect on your search rankings. Google have announced that from 21st April all sites will be tested under a new responsive algorithm to see if they perform well on mobile devices. Sites that are responsive and do perform well will get a little rankings boost.

According to the Google Webmaster blog…

“Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”

In an age where Google deem mobile sites to be important enough to rank them differently and the percentage of mobile browsers is creeping over 50% in some sectors it’s time to make sure your website works well on all mobile devices.

What is responsive website design

Responsive website design means creating a website that adapts it’s layout to different screen sizes. With the large number of mobile devices in users hands it isn’t enough to just create a single mobile phone version of your website any more, it has to work well on all sorts of different devices. In some cases your website might be being viewed on 60 inch TV screens right down to small smartphones and it needs to look good and work well on those devices and everything in between. Responsive website design is a set of tools and design methodologies that help us create and build websites that adapt and scale to any screen size providing the best user experience possible on any mobile device.

We’re experts in responsive website design

At kc web design we’re experts in responsive website design and can redesign and build your website to make it mobile friendly. Give us a call today on 0845 3631162.

Lead Forensics – Don’t rely on SEO alone

Google has great tools for search engine listing, analytics to help see what people do on your website all sorts of ways to bring in leads via pay per click ads. But what if potential new clients were coming to your website and not using your nice new contact form or picking up the phone to call you?

A lot of hard work goes into creating a good website design and making sure that website appears in Google for the right key words and phrases so that the right kind of customer comes to the website. Some will make contact but others may not. There can be any number of reasons for users not making the leap and engaging with that crucial call to action – they may have just been browsing and collecting names for later, they may have run out of time or just didn’t get the right feeling – whatever the circumstances, it means one more potential new client has slipped away.

When building and designing websites there are lots of ways to make sure users engage with the website in the right way and interact with call to action points leading them through the website into contact pages or buying processes. But what if the users that didn’t make contact for whatever reason could be found and contacted?

Lead Forensics is a tool that can be added to a website that gives you that missing piece of information that you don’t get from any other analytics tool – it tells you exactly which companies have been looking at your website and gives you their contact details so you can contact them. It seems like such an obvious simple piece of information to have but the power of knowing who has been on your website and having the details to contact them is very valuable.  Now, this isn’t going to suit everyone, for instance it won’t really work for consumer based websites, but it would work very well for business to business organisations that are looking to work with other companies.

KC web design are registered supplies for Lead Forensics and can set up a demo of the software on your very own site for a week so you can see the value in knowing exactly who is visiting your website. Give us a call and set up a demo today and tap into an amazing source of new business leads.

Building a successful intranet website

Intranets can be a complicated beast. Multiple departments fighting for importance can cause important tasks and information to be spread all over the content structure. When designing a successful intranet website design there are a few rules and recommendations that will help build a user tool for the user rather than a departmentalised catalogue.

Workshops and research – If possible undertake internal workshops and research to try and understand what you user need. What do they use the intranet for? What daily tasks on the intranet help with their day to day jobs? Why do they not use the current intranet? Most research and workshops with users and staff highlight needs for workplace solutions – task that help in daily jobs. Giving these high frequency tasks a greater priority in the navigation hierarchy will help the user find links quickly and easily. Taking a task based approach rather than something that mimics the organisational structure means more logical groupings that will transcend any organisational changes within departments at a later stage. This type of structure is also easier for the user as they’ll be going to the intranet with a specific goal or task in mind.

Navigation – Intranets can be full of information and so finding something quickly is very important. Using large menus can facilitate large numbers of sub page links in a format thats easy to scan through. Using large mega menus can also help by giving space to add descriptions below links to make it clear what info pages contain. Sub pages can also benefit from being in multiple top level categories, making them easy to find especially when a site goes through significant structural changes, as it would still allow users to find content that has moved.

Frequently used tools/Quick links – Intranets a full of tasks and so having an easy way to access the most used or common tasks is a real benefit. A quick links navigation feature could show more user focused tasks and/or frequently accessed pages such as Update my profile, My emails, etc.

Large footer area – A large footer area can be a good place to list lots of key page links in a format thats slightly different and easier to scan than a top level drop down style navigation. Footers can also hold key contact information, forms and other ways of getting in touch with staff.

Improved wayfinding – Many intranets have no clear way-finding mechanisms or breadcrumbs so once you’re on deep pages its hard to know where you are and how to navigate back. Intranets should have good breadcrumb trails and navigation highlighting to help with way-finding as the depth of information and site structure can be quite complicated.

Home page widgets – A good way of engaging with users is to show them what other users are doing. The homepage may benefit from content areas showing Popular Pages, Most Viewed Articles, etc so that important and widely used pages in the site automatically bubble up to the top level and are easily accessible from the home page. As well as news & events content areas the homepage may also benefit from other areas such as a small directory listing of some of the more common pages and tasks (with descriptions), an area showing news from a specific department based on the logged in users profile, noticeboards, etc.

With a simple task based approach, making sure key content is easily accessible and giving users a clear content hierarchy and flow an intranet can be designed to fulfil most organisations goals.

At kc web design kent we can help redesign your intranet using these simple rules. Get in touch today to discuss your intranet project.

Googles new No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA

Googles new No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA could change the way we think about form security. Most web designers don’t like captcha security but they are a necessary evil these days. With the huge amounts of form spam we get some kind of auto form submission and bot security is needed on almost every form we create. Personally, I prefer to use simple captchas that don’t get in the way of the user such as asking a simple question but even these aren’t fall proof and sooner or later the bots beat them and spam gets through.

The most common captchas used by web designers seem to be of the ‘read and image and enter the text’ variety but even these can be tricky for users to use. Sometimes the text isn’t readable or the text entered wrong which all go to making a less than ideal user experience.

There have been other options for web designers to use as form security but none of them are ideal and they are all just work arounds and hacks to try and beat the bots more than help the user experience and create an easy form submission process.

Googles new reCAPTCHA services hopes to change all that with its ‘I’m not a robot’ checkbox.

Entering text in a box after trying to read a small image or do a maths question is less than ideal and asks the user to do a lot but with a simple click the new Google reCAPTCHA service can tell if you’re a bot or a human. But how does it do this with a simple click? Google uses a combination of factors to check what is happening on the page before the checkbox is clicked and it uses what happens with your mouse to see if you’re a real human navigating round a web page normally or a bot going straight for the submit button. Most of time this seems to work very well but on those occasions where Google can’t quite tell if you’re human it will show the standard text image that you need to read and enter text for.

In the world of form security this is a huge change and will make filling out forms a lot nicer for the end user. Googles service is also very easy to integrate for web designers and comes with a good API and works with all sorts of different coding languages.

To fully test out how good it is I’ll be adding it to the kc web design kent website over the next few days and using it on client sites. A few WordPress plugins are starting to appear now which will make it very easy to integrate on WordPress sites.

Its not often I say this but well done Google!

A web designers eyes are his tools

I’ve been a web designer at kc web design kent for a long time. Before that I was a print designer. Before that I did a design post grad. Before that I did a photographer degree. Before that I used to design and make stained glass windows. Before that I used to sit in my bedroom and just draw. For as long as I can remember I’ve been creative and artistic and used my eyes as part of my job every single day. It’s something I’ve really taken for granted over the years as I’ve always had 20/20 vision. Until now.

I first started noticing a change when I felt like I was holding my iPhone a little further away than normal and when it was close I was having a little trouble focusing properly. I didn’t think too much of it but over the past year my hand has been getting further and further away and reading books has become a little harder up close. It’s a very strange feeling. Where once everything was crisp and sharp things are now a little blurred and I could feel my eyes trying to do something they couldn’t quite manage. I was also getting tired working on screens and iPads all day at kc web design kent. For someone that’s spent their whole life based in the visual arts I felt this change a little unnerving. So, it was off for an eye test.

“You’ve reached that age…” the optician said. “Ah!” I said. Apparently once you get past 40 your eyes start to deteriorate and close up focusing is the first thing to be effected hence lots of people need reading glasses. Me included. I wasn’t that impressed with the range of glasses in the shop for the price I wanted to pay so I decided to look online. There are a LOT of glasses companies online now and they have pushed the price of prescription glasses down in the high street but the online retailers are still significantly cheaper. The range of glasses suppliers online is pretty good but the range in quality of these sites leaves a little to be desired.

Out of all the online retailers I researched Glasses Direct seemed to be the most professional and they did a ‘try at home’ service. The display of the glasses on the site was very good and the information we laid out. You could tell that a lot time and effort had gone in to making a great site and making sure the user felt comfortable and knowledgable all the way through the process. The home trial was great. The glasses were great and the right price range. And the buying process was superb – email updates all along the way, 2 pairs of glasses each sent as soon as they were complete, great packaging and presentation. As a user (and a web designer) I have to say Glasses Direct did it all right.

Now all I need to do is to get used to needing glasses when I’m reading, remembering where I’ve put them and taking them with me when I leave the house. I’m sure I’ll get used to it over time but at the moment it feels very strange needing external hardware to do something I’ve done all my life without a single thought.

Typography design in sci-fi films

I love sci-fi. Films, books, TV shows in fact anything with space ships, aliens or futuristic concepts normally grabs my attention. Being a web designer I also love typography. Typography in sci-fi films and books can be a wondrous thing and on the wall of the office here at kc web design we have some beautiful examples of 1960’s sic-fi book cover design in some fantastic Isaac Asimov New English Library publications. I could bore you for hours about my favourite sic-fi films or book (currently the Void trilogy) and about how 1960’s writers such as Philip K Dick used sci-fi as a means of social commentary but thankfully I don’t have to because someone else far more knowledgable and interesting than I has written a series of articles.

The wonderful Dave Addey, Senior Writer at Apple and curator of typesetinthefuture.com has written a series of articles on typography in sci-fi films. These aren’t just general articles about typography and the fonts used or the designs created for the films, they go into such minute detail you wonder how long Dave actually spent researching and collating all the screen shots and info. They do make for a fascinating read, especially if you know the films – which everybody should by now as Dave has written about Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Moon – and the detail is just mind blowing.

If you love your sci-fi and even just a little bit about design or typography head over to Typeset In The Future and read the articles now…

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

Moon

Alien

Web design consultancy, website builds & cheap web design

The 3 main job types we get asked about a lot at kc web design ltd are web design consultancy, website design and builds on content management systems such as WordPress and Expression Engine and cheap web design. We work on projects in all of these areas and they all have their own unique processes and pricing.

Web design consultancy

Web design consultancy usually involves high level research and design and less coding than other types of projects. We do a lot of web design consultancy work for well known brands, such as Fujitsu, that requires a lot of research, planning, wire-framing and UI design. Working closely with business owners within Fujitsu we redesign large sections of the UK website to improve user flow, call-to-action engagement and navigation as well as making the design more engaging and unique for specific sections of the site. We’re currently involved in a project to make the careers section more engaging and less masculine feeling by introducing different design elements to make the overall feel of the page more enticing to female job applicants. kc web design ltd have also made huge improvements to the Fujitsu UK contact process which has improved communication to the correct departments by over 70%.

For prices of our web design consultancy please contact us.

Website design and builds on content management systems

A lot of the projects we work on are basic web design and build projects. These normally consist of a period of research and planning then a design stage followed by coding and building the website. These days we usually build our websites utilising content management systems such as WordPress and Expression Engine unless the client specifically doesn’t need access to change content. But thats very rare these days.

Most of these sites are for small to medium size businesses although we do build large corporate sites using Expression Engine (for example the Geocel website) as it’s a very good scalable CMS that works well for large complex sites.

We also now build most of our commerce solutions using WordPress and the brilliant Woocommerce plugin. E-commerce websites are a little more complex than basic brochure type sites and so the costs are higher and development times longer.

If you would like a website built on WordPress or Expression engine or need an e-commerce website please contact us for pricing.

Cheap web design

At kc web design ltd we get asked a lot about cheap web design. Although we no longer do cheap web design we do try and support local businesses that want to get started with a website but we also know that in this world you get what you pay for. We’d had a huge amount of people come to us over the years asking us to pick up cheap web design projects that have gone bad for one reason or another. There are a lot of cheap web design providers out there offering very poor services.

In light of this we decided to build a self-build system for people that want cheap web design but also want it to be professional, modern and supported by professional web designers with over 15 years experience in the web design industry. So, we built an online website builder for small businesses called kc-weblite that’s cost effective (only £10 per month including hosting and support), very easy to use, comes with professional web design support and allows you to get a modern, responsive website up and running within a few hours.

 

WordPress social networks auto-poster

Like all good web design companies, sometimes at kc web design we slip a little on our SEO strategy while we’re head down in projects. It happens. While I had some time this week I decided to go through our social media strategy and realised that posts we’d written on the kc web design Kent website hadn’t been auto posting to our social networks. Over the years I’d used a number of different WordPress plugins to auto-post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc but all of them were no longer working. One of the major reasons for these plains not working any more were updates to the social media API’s and out of date plugins. So, the search was on again for a social networks auto-poster plugin that would do it all properly.

The NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster plugin came highly recommended on one of the WordPress forums so I gave it a try. As a WordPress plugin it works very well, is easy to install and has very good documentation which comes in very, very handy when you try and set up each social network. And boy does that take some time! Long gone are the days of entering your username and password and clicking a button to allow access to your account. These days its all about creating apps and widgets and tokens and secret codes and handshakes and tweaking a million different security settings. It took me the good part of a morning to set up and test 4 different social networks and get them working properly so that I could auto-post from WordPress. Not a quick easy job. And some – yes you Google+ – still don’t allow an easy way to auto post (although there is an extra plugin for NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster that is supposed to help with this but I haven’t tried it yet).

Is it worth auto-posting your WordPress news to social networks?

Yes. It gives your articles chance to get noticed in areas that they normally wouldn’t. If you have a good following on the social networks then its easy for users to repost and pass on those articles. If you use good Twitter hash tags then your articles are more likely to get picked up when users search for those hashtags. And Google likes it because all those back links from social networks give your site authority.

It might take a while to set up and it does take a bit of management but it is worth the extra effort in the long term.

If you have a WordPress website and want to utilise the power of a social networks auto-poster then give kc web design a call and we can help set things up for you.

Geek Mental Help Week – It’s the little things

Starting on October 27th 2014, Geek mental help week is a week-long series of articles, blog posts, conversations, podcasts and events across the web about mental health issues, how to help people who suffer, and those who care for us.

Mental health issues are all around us. At kc web design we recently redesigned the St Andrews Healthcare website and we were truly humbled by the work that goes on there helping people with all kinds of serious mental health issues. But it’s also the little things that have an impact as well.

I don’t have a major mental health issue but I do have family members that do and I see the very real impact that has on them and the people around them. Mental health is a serious issue. But sometimes the little things, the stresses and strains of working life, of dealing with families, can have a massive impact on all of us. Many of us in the web design industry are freelancers, working long hours to carve out a living in a very competitive world. On the best days the work is fulfilling, the hours good, the money rewarding and the job satisfaction second to none. But on those hard days where you’re worried about the next job coming in, fighting with a bit of code that just won’t work, dealing with a hacked website or a server that’s broken on top of everyday life and families it can feel like you’re alone fighting against the impending greyness. It might not be full blown depression but when the hard days bite the warning signs start – lethargy, insular moods, dependance on alcohol to lighten the load, lack of motivation to tackle important problems and anger for not dealing with things better. It’s easy to get into this cycle but hard to pull yourself out. I’m not the only one though. There are others going through the same experiences.

Web designers are a giving bunch of people. I don’t think there’s another industry that gives so much. All the conferences and events and communities are testament to that. Geek Mental Help Week is an opportunity to give back to the community again and help others. After reading through some of the articles on the Geek Mental Help Week website I’m humbled by the way people talk so openly about themselves and their experiences. That’s what makes this industry so amazing and that’s how we can all help each other get through these hard times. Please, please, please head over to Geek Mental Help Week and read some of the posts, it’ll make you think differently about mental health in the web design industry and that’s a great starting point to tackle these issues. And if you can be a part of what’s happening this week and help others then do that to. Helping each other makes the world around us a little bit better for everybody. We should all do what we can to embrace that.

Speedy Expo website design

kc web design kent have recently launched a new website for Speedy Expo, a conference for Speedy customers and partners in the UK, in partnership with marketing company QRBT and Speedy Hire – a leading provider of tools and equipment for hire and sale to the construction industry.

The Speedy Expo runs every year and is a 2 day event in October 2015 at the Telford International Centre organised by QRBT and Speedy Hire to bring together Speedy partners and customers. The show includes partner stands from the likes of JCB, Makita and other industry leading brands, demonstrations, speakers, meeting areas and an awards dinner with entertainment presented by Pollyanna Woodward.

kc web design Kent designed and built the new website on WordPress to make it easy for QRBT to update the content regularly and add new partner logos and news items. The website design was created to funnel exhibitors and visitors into booking sections and provide detailed information on the event programme. The website design is responsive and works on all mobile devices. Over time, as the event grows and more exhibitors come on board, the website will be populated with partner logos and more information.

kc web design Kent provide full website design services for small, medium and large companies using industry standard content management systems such as WordPress and Expression Engine. kc web design work with leading brands, such as Fujitsu, on all types of website design projects. kc web design are specialists in website design, user interface (UI) design and website development.

 

Apple Watch and iPhone 6

It’s that time of year again. The BIG Apple announcement. And what a big one it was this year! Everyone suspected Apple would launch the iWatch (note they’ve now dropped the ‘i’) but not many predicted it would be such a hit.

As a web designer and developer here at kc web design kent I have a keen interest in Apple announcements (will I need another device to test on!) and a new product is always exciting, especially when we’ve gone a few years without a new innovative product hitting the streets. Apple have a knack for watching emerging markets, waiting a while and then launching a product into the market place that completely steals the show…and the Apple Watch is no exception. Even if you don’t really think you need one it still has that aura of something you just have to have. It looks great as a watch to start with plus add in all that functionality and you have something that a lot of people will use as well as just want.

It’ll be interesting to see how many Apple sell next year but I suspect it’ll be a big hit. Will I get one? I’d like one but the price is high and I’m always too close to a phone and computer to make the extra features worth the extra price. They do look great though and I haven’t had a decent watch for years…

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus

OK, hands up, I’m still on an iPhone 4s! I’m just not into upgrading every time Apple release a new phone even though I use them for testing website designs and web apps. With all the different iPhone screen sizes and resolutions out there now you do need a few devices for testing responsive web design on – the Xcode phone simulator comes in handy for that – and now we have two new screen sizes again! The iPhone 6 and the even bigger iPhone 6 plus. Once the rush has calmed down I will be getting an iPhone 6 but I don’t see the need for the extra large 6 plus. I know there’s a trend in big phones – which will eventually meet with the trend for small tablets – but for me a phone needs to fit easily in my pocket. If I need something bigger I have the iPad Air or the Nexus 7. A phone should be easy to carry around and not get in the way and I think the 6 plus will be just that bit too big to be comfortable.

From a looks point of view I actually like the fact the iPhone 6 has gone back to the beveled edge. I was never a big fan of the straight edged 4 and 5, they never felt very comfortable in your hand. The camera on the iPhone just gets better and better with each release and I never really use my Lumix any more these days as the iPhone camera is so good. The update on the iPhone 6 will make the camera even better. Other than the speed increase, extra sensors and new apps such as Apple Pay (that we can’t use in the UK yet) the new iPhone 6 is a pretty standard next version. It will seem like a huge leap forward from the 4s though, which I’ll keep for testing web design projects in our device lab at kc web design kent! And lets hope BookBook do a case for it.

Mailbox Beta for Mac OSX

I always have a bit of a soft spot for new software and apps. I love trying out new apps, especially at beta stage when they’re all new and shinny and slightly broken! I’m also always on the hunt to find an app that makes email less painful. At kc web design Kent we use Postbox for our email – it’s full of features, works great with multiple accounts and is easy to use but, it still looks like a traditional email client.

Email needs to change

Email has been around for a long time and in that time it hasn’t really changed much. You get an email, deal with it or delete it or file it. For most of us this has been enough but we get so many emails these days it’s become harder to manage and we seem to be constantly replying to and reading emails every few minutes. A few apps have come along to try and change the way we deal with email and Mailbox for iOS was one of the more successful ones. The iOS app is lovely and the way it works on the iPhone with the swipes is very nice. Earlier this year Mailbox said it was working on a Mac desktop version and a few weeks ago I got sent a beta coin (check out the very cool way you have to drag and drop the coin on to the can to start the beta app!).

Mailbox on the Mac looks as lovely as it does on iOS, it’s very minimal with nothing getting in the way of reading and archiving emails. It doesn’t seem to deal with multiple accounts very well at this stage but hopefully that will be resolved and it only works with iCloud or Gmail accounts. The interface is very simple and clear and the way it deals with emails is the same as the iOS version with options to  archive emails to a date or a list. These options also work with mouse or trackpad gestures so a simple swipe left or right on a magic mouse will evoke the archive menus which is a very quick and satisfying way to quickly deal with emails.

All in all I really like the feel of Mailbox. I have lots of email accounts so I need a good way to manage all of those from one place so we’ll have to see how the Mailbox team improve that side of the app. I think the big thing for me is that the app still feels like just a way to archive emails into different folders which is something I do in Postbox anyway. Admittedly Mailbox does do this very, very well though. I still think there’s a better way to deal with emails, something that treats them more like conversations or groups of conversations and not just single messages to be moved around. Maybe there’s another email app out there….

Web design bliss – Skyfonts and Google Fonts

Google fonts get used a lot on the web. Even though I have a Typkit account here at kc web design I still find myself using Google Fonts for certain web design projects. Their list of good web design fonts is always growing but here in lies the problem. Many times in the past, while working on flat graphic mockups of web design projects, I’ve needed to use a Google Font in a web design and the only way to do this was to download the whole library and install them into your font management software. When I was a print designer we had huge font libraries managed by huge bits of software but designing for the web is different and we don’t tend to use so many fonts. Well, we didn’t until better font usage and external font subscription services became so popular. Now we can have pretty much any font we want on a web page design.

The other day I found a website using a nice looking font so using my font checking tool (Fount – very, very useful!) I saw that it was Muli, a new font from Google Fonts. Normally I would have to go to Google, find the font, download the zip file, open my font manager, install the font, go back to photoshop and use it. Not a huge amount of work, but enough of a hassle when working on a design and trying different fonts.

A while ago I remembered hearing about Skyfonts but at the time it wasn’t released to the public…it is now though! And what a wonderful little app it is!

A quick download and the app is installed and sits in your menu bar. All you have to do is click on a service – there are a few to choose from: Google Fonts, Fonts.com, my fonts and Monotype (It’s made by Monotype!) – choose ‘find Google Fonts on Font.com’ and away you go to a website where you select the font you need. You then click ‘Add to Skyfonts’ and magically the font appears in your fonts menu on whatever apps you have open as if you’d just spent the last 15 minutes downloading font files and messing around with font managers.

Its super easy, very clever and saves a lot of messing around! Anything that makes using fonts easier is a big plus in my book!

Javascript/jquery drag, drop and resize

For a while now I’ve had a little side project bubbling around here at kc web design. I love weather. I love weather apps. So I’ve been creating my own weather app with some pretty unique features (all top secret!). I’ve had a number of proof-of-concept builds lying around that have utilised the Jquery UI script to deal with dragging, dropping and resizing but we’ve hacked it around so much to get it to do what we needed that its become a little unworkable. We did contemplate writing our own drag, drop & resize script but for a working prrof-of-concept the investment was a little high.

After hitting a nice patch of quiet time at kc web design kent I decided to revisit the old concepts and re-evaluate where we’d got to. The conclusion was that Jquery UI was to large and buggy to work for the job we needed and so I decided to go back to the drawing board. Making the decision to dismiss weeks of previous work is a hard one to make but when something just isn’t working you have to be bold. Hopefully the rethink and new direction will make the final product a lot better and it will actually save time in the long run.

After a lot of time Googling around it became apparent that there aren’t many light weight drag/drop/resize libraries around that would be suitable for what we needed and I was about to give up and start writing one of my own when I randomly came across interactJS.

InteractJS – Drag and drop, resizing and multi-touch gestures with inertia and snapping for modern browsers (and also IE8+)

It sounded perfect, was very light and had a few nice extras included…but would it work for our very specific needs? We’re not scared of a bit of hacking around and experimenting here at kc web design so we quickly got together some rough designs and through in some test code and it worked…but then it didn’t…and it wasn’t doing what we thought it might do. So with a little help from the developer we got a bit further, then added our bespoke functions and extra bits and eventually we had a working prototype again that was far, far better than the original that we’d scraped.

So the moral of this story is – never be scared to throw things away and start again from scratch. Never be so precious of your work that you cannot or will not see its failings. Learning when to erase and undo will help you move forward quicker.

And also have a look at interact.js. It is a very good drag/drop/resize script.

 

UK broadband failing small rural web design kent businesses

UK rural small businesses are being held back by lack of fast broadband says a new report by The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). As a web design Kent company based in rural England we’re a bit limited on our broadband options. BT being the main option with a few others but they all have to use the same BT gear at the exchange so each offering is limited to the speed at the exchange. In a way we’re luckier than most as the exchange nearest to us was upgraded a few years ago so we have relatively good speeds of around 6mb.

Small web design companies like kc web design kent rely on fast internet connections to do there jobs. Most of the time its only uploading and downloading small web files but when it comes to things like off-site online backups or downloading large files (don’t get me started on why a BT business broadband home hub had a download cap of 5gb!) a 6mb connection just isn’t enough.

If small businesses are to thrive and prosper and contribute to a growing economy, they need universal access to what is now considered the fourth utility…

Faster broadband seems to be the norm in other countries, especially in large cities, but rural broadband is still being rolled out in some remote parts of the UK. With even just a small increase from 6mb to 20mb the difference it would make on what we can do here at kc web design kent would be huge. Online backups would take a fraction of the time. Downloading large files would be almost instant. Using Dropbox with large files would be a lot easier to manage. Our business would thrive.

So come on rural small businesses, lets hassle BT and get something done…

You can vote for better broadband with your local council. For any small web design kent businesses you can go to the KCC website here.

Or you can tell BT you want superfast fibre broadband.

 

Rushracer Facebook App

kc web design kent were asked by a leading major travel brand to help create a Facebook App competition for the up-coming launch of the new Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13) film – RUSH.

The Rushracer Facebook app was design by the in-house design team at this leading travel brand and built and coded by kc web design kent. The Facebook app was built using the Facebook app API and features some advanced SVG animations to show the stage of the competition round an F! race track. Users can vote on which team they want to win – Team Hunt or Team Lauda – and prizes are won at different stages of the game. All the standard social media mechanisms where used to promote the game through Facebook and Twitter and the competition will run throughout September.

kc web design kent worked very closely with the in-house design team and have created a compelling app targeted at a specific age range. For more information about the Facebook app and the new RUSH film please visit the app.

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ThermaSolutions web app design

kc web design kent are proud to announce the launch of a large web app design project for ThermaSolutions. Back in early 2012 kc web design kent were contacted by ThermaSolutions and asked to produce an iOS app for the building and construction industry. After many months of hard work on the iOS app the project was shelved due to various reasons but kc web design kent worked hard with ThermaSolutions to bring something to market that far exceeded the original project scope. ThermaSolutions continued to evolve over the coming months and has now been launched as a web app subscription service.

kc web design kent designed, built and crafted the web app and the new website is now live. The ThermaSolutions web app was built using Expression Engine with the Membrr subscription module to handle the payments and subscriptions. The web app design is fully responsive to enable it to work on all mobile devices as well as desktop browsers and utilises advanced HTML5 and Javascript technology to allow the web apps to work in offline situations for construction staff out in the field with little or no connectivity. All parts of the web app work independently as stand alone apps that can be saved to the iOS device home screen and work like normal iOS apps. This enables the user to have access to a remote web app thats stores their reports but still be able to use the reporting tools and calculators when offline.

An advanced subscription system and seamless payments were integrated into the web app to provide easy access and signup flows for the user. Over the next few weeks kc web design kent will also be producing a hybrid iOS app that will allow users to download selected parts of the web app directly from the Apple app store.

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Web apps that work offline

At kc web design Kent we create a lot of web apps – some for ourselves and some for clients. Most web apps are made to work online but sometimes, we need to create a web app that works offline, say on a mobile device when a connection is lost. How can a web app work with no internet connection you may ask. Well, there are a few things you can do to make sure your web app works with no connection. On a current web app project at kc web design kent we did just that.

Firstly, make sure that your web app really needs to work offline. There’s no need to work towards an offline web app if you don’t need to. If you do need it to work offline then make sure you know that before you start as this decision will dictate the code base you use. For an offline app you’ll really want to code things in a client side language such as Jquery with a minimal amount of PHP or server side coding. If you do need some PHP to communicate with a server then wrap it in Ajax calls so that you can check for a connection before you do any communicating with the server. There are a few scripts out there that help with this and we’ve used a very good one from Tom Riley.

Using Jquery or other client side languages means you can get all the main bulk of the app coded and working without any server interaction. For the few things that may need a server connection you can check for that connection and then alert the user that those features won’t be available until a connection is available again. Another way to make apps work offline is to utilise HTML5 local storage and save all form fields and data locally in the browser until a connection is available again. We’ve played around a lot with local storage at kc web design kent on a recent web app design project and be warned, it doesn’t always behave as you might think.

There are also other methods of making sure that your web app works offline and we’ll go into more detail on those in another post.

If you have a web app project then give kc web design kent a call. We’re experts in all types of web apps, iPhone apps and business websites.