Technical & Design

Why do most websites fail?

30th January 2015 by Alan Leave a Comment

fail, verb – “to not succeed in what you are trying to achieve or are expected to do”

You carefully selected the colours, you diligently created a brief for the designer and you carefully oversaw the site build. So why hasn’t your website achieved what you expected?

Have you got the right focus?

It’s only natural that you want an eye-catching website that looks good, and that’s why it can be all too easy to get wrapped up the creative process. But if you want to create a successful website, it’s fundamentally important to look beyond the colour, design and feel and focus on the strategy.

Your business is unique, so it’s crucial that any strategy definition is tailored to your specific needs. In fact, if you don’t have a strategic solution in place for your website, the cost in lost opportunities may be higher than you think. Choosing cost over value is rarely an effective way of growing a business.

Want to know how to set the right strategy? These 4-steps will guide you on the path to setting a successful website strategy.

STEP 1: IDENTIFY

What factors are vital to the continued success and growth of your business? It’s only by identifying these that you can begin to consider the purpose of your website.
What are your business drivers?
Organisations often overlook identifying and documenting their business drivers because they assume they are obvious. However, by taking an analytical approach, not only can you can add real clarity, but you can also work out any latent conflicts.

Value drivers are identified by looking at your business priorities, these then determine your business objectives. They might include:
• significant business growth,
• cost management, and
• market position.

What are your project goals?

Once you have identified your key business drivers, you can start to define the project goals and objectives.

STEP 2: REVIEW

What aspects of your business might impact the website strategy? Benchmarking the current situation is key.

What is your brand?

You need to look at your brand value and your brand proposition to fully understand how your business is currently presented to the market.

What are the constraints?

Your organisation’s current policies, situation and frameworks may put constraints upon the website’s strategy, and these will often need to be reflected in the website and content strategy. For example:

• Legal issues – Many businesses operate in specific regulatory and legal situations, so it’s important that you are up to speed on yours.

• Creative guidelines – From colour palettes to typography, and from tone of voice to photographic style, your organisation may already have pre-defined guidelines that it’s essential your website complies with.

What analytics are already in place?

A high-level review of your existing website analytics can very useful at the review stage. It will allow you to gain an understanding of both the current interaction with your website and also to create a benchmark for when you review the site again after implementation.

STEP 3: RESEARCH

Research is important. You might like the look of your website, but your favourable opinion is no guarantee of the website’s effectiveness within its target audience. That’s why it’s vital you gather the opinions of everyone associated with your website.

What do the stakeholders think?

With any project there are multiple stakeholders, from the business owners, through the management and then the end users. You can gather stakeholder input through interviews or through workshops. Workshops are particularly effective for larger numbers of stakeholders.

What do your users think?

If you already have an active website that you’re planning to redesign, it’s a great idea to find out how people currently use it. An in-depth analysis of the existing user analytics combined with user surveys could throw up some invaluable information for your strategy.

What do the experts think?

If your aim is to conduct effective and successful research, then it’s well worth seeking input and advice from experts in web marketing and web design.

What are your competitors doing?

A quick online search can offer rich pickings when it comes to finding out about your competitors’ online presence, so make sure you take the time to study them. There are more tools than search that can give a deeper insight, however the only thing they can’t tell you is how effective your competitors’ website strategies are for their business.

STEP 4: DEFINE

The final stage in creating your website strategy is to define some essential tenets that will add clarity to the process.

What is the customer journey?

How do your customers interact with you online? If you want to understand their digital behaviours, then you need to map their customer journeys, be it on Facebook, Twitter, review sites or your website.

What are the personas of your customers?

Who are the customers who visit your website? Make sure you clearly identify their personas so you can shape your website strategy around them. To do this properly, you need to go above and beyond simply identifying customer segments – you need to get down to the nitty gritty of who your potential audience is.

What is the governance of your website?

It’s a good idea to use this stage to establish exactly who is accountable for the governance and management of your website. The fact is that over time this digital asset will depreciate, so it’s crucial that you decide who has responsibility for maintaining the site’s ongoing value proposition.

What happens once your strategy is in the bag?

So, you’ve identified your business drivers, you’ve reviewed your current situation, you’ve researched what you need to do and you’ve defined your terms. What then? Well, that’s when you can move onto implementation, confident in the knowledge that everything you do is underpinned by a sound strategy. A strategy that’s guaranteed to set your website up for business success. And that’s when the fun really begins.

Although each implementation is different, all projects tend to follow a similar process made up of the following stages:

planning,
design (both content and functionality)
build (both content and functionality)
testing
accepting
implementing.

succeed, verb – “to thrive, prosper or grow; to accomplish what is intended.”

Colour + Psychology = Creative Message with Impact

9th January 2015 by Alan 3 Comments

Why is Facebook blue? (*find out at the bottom of the post…)

Colour is a fabulous thing. It can inspire, encourage and grab attention.

Or, it can tire the eye, swallow a message and create entirely the wrong impression.

With something so powerful, it is important that when it comes to your brand, content, blog, website design and all manner of marketing materials, the colour or colours you use are spot on.

Colour is the visual cue that makes your audience see what you want them to see; it evokes a feeling (have you been to panto this year? Have you ever noticed when the baddie comes on, the lights change the red…? “Or no it doesn’t!”, “Oh, yes it does!”)

Colour also makes something more readable (that says readable) and it can change your message. Get it wrong and your call to action can disappear without a trace and in the blink of an eye.

Measuring impact

But colour is a sticky wicket when it comes to design and getting your message seen. Like many other aspects of life, how we view or interpret the emotional value of a colour varies from person to person. In other words, it makes the reaction of the larger audience to your chosen colour schemes difficult to predict.

So why bother? Colour gives not only a visual appeal, making things look pretty, it also attracts your target audience. How males and females view certain colour combination varies and so, if you know your audience and who you appeal to, then you can make your brand more visually appealing.

There are some generalised understandings of what certain colours mean to some people and which colour provoke a positive or negative response.

There are various surveys that look at what people associated with certain colours and so if you are looking to update your website, modernise your logo and revolutionise your brand you may want to bear the following in mind…

Trust – if this the main emotion you want inspire in potential customers, then opt for blue (a third of the people surveyed said this was the main colour of trust), followed by white and then green
Security – as in is this company or brand trustworthy rather than a security firm, a quarter of those surveyed once again, opted for blue as the colour most linked to this emotion.
Speed – a whopping 76% of people said red was the colour that highlighted speed (know a famous parcel carrier, with red on yellow…)
Value for money – a quarter of those surveyed opted for orange as being the colour that represented value for money, follow by yellow (a close run thing between these two colours) and then brown
High quality – black was the overwhelming winner, with nearly half those asked opting for this colour
High tech – black was the top choice again, but then there was a tie between blue and grey, but there was a small % difference only between these colours
Reliability – blue came out on top again
Courage – a third of people opted for purple, with slightly less opting for red and then blue
Fear – red stormed into first place, followed by black interestingly enough…
Fun – orange came out top with just under a third surveyed opting for this as the main colour representing fun, followed very closely by yellow and then purple

And so it seems that blue is the preferred colour in many cases, representing all kinds of emotions. The lesson from this? The colour surrounding your content can make a real difference!

Gender differences

And now we head into the thorny issue of men and women seeing or being influenced differently by colour – but, before you think we mean everything should be pink and blue, this is not what the psychology of colour is all about. There are some interesting lessons for those of us working within the field of web design and the like…

Blue is a coloured favoured by both men and women, although men seem to like it better
Men don’t like brown too much, apparently and women not liking orange too much
Interestingly, colours that we don’t like, we tend to think of as ‘cheap’
Men are more tolerant of achromatic colours – this means, literally, without colour which basically means grey or black…
Overall, both men and women preferred cool colours
And, as people get older, they dislike yellow and orange…

According to a variety of scientific study, women ‘see’ more colours than men in that they note subtle colour changes, tones and shades than men to. To men, it is either pink or red, with women, they will see a variance in shade so it could be baby pink or fuchsia.

But, what lessons does this information hold for you?

Hopefully, at this stage in the game, you have a fair idea of who your customers are. If you are selling to the older generation, you need to perhaps limit the use of golden yellows and orange but, if your main customer group is female, be aware that they are more aware of shades and tones of colours. And, if you heading for the top end of the luxury market, choosing understated, classic and elegant colours rather than raucous, ‘cheap’ ones will tell your story better.

But there is a bigger lesson to learn that just choosing the colour combination that attracts your customer group – people make a judgement on the content of a website within 90 seconds.

Time that now…

(90 seconds later)

…and see how quick people will decide if they will buy from you… or not. Within that 90 seconds is a small proportion that customers will take notice of colour. Is the ‘buy now’ box standing out (take a trawl round the website and note how many buy now buttons emulate PayPal colours – blue on yellow)? Research also shows that 85% of customers will take more notice for a colour advert that a black, white and grey one.

Colour is the visual aid that help customers identify your brand too so choose carefully and wisely – and stick with the colour scheme.

The answer: Mark Zuckerberg is red-green colour blind and he finds blue the richest colour he can see. Facebook has stayed with the blue colour since its early conception…

Adding to your website strategy: QR Codes

18th December 2014 by Alan Leave a Comment

A New Year Technological Challenge!

Online, local businesses are the back bone of the country but, stand still in the online world and you risk being left behind.

As a forward thinking business, you need to be constantly looking and assessing which of the latest technological innovations are right for you and your business.

We talked recently about creating to a live strategy for your website; design and launch are just two of the factors in creating a successful, online presence. Your website, as you recall, is a living breathing thing that must be nurtured in order to carry on expanding and thriving so that your business can too.

And one way of doing this is to link your offline and online presence. But, sometimes we need a handy tool to be able to do this.

QR codes are not necessarily that new anymore, BUT if you haven’t taken a serious look at them and what they could offer your business, then now is the time.

WHY?

We have talked in numerous previous posts about immediacy and the need consumers have about gaining instant access or gratification for whatever they are searching for. QR codes are a way of satisfying this immediacy.

Like a barcode… but different

Barcodes are everywhere, from the packet of biscuits we have bought to accompany our morning coffee here at the Locally office to the pods we use in a well-known coffee machine. Essentially, both barcodes and QR codes are the same thing, but the difference between the two is the amount of information that they can hold; barcodes are linear, can hold up to 20 numerical digits but QR codes are two dimensional and can hold thousands of pieces of information.

And QR codes can also be linked to your website, as well as a whole host of other digital connections. All your consumer needs is a QR code reading program on their mobile – android and iPhones – all of which are available free through various app stores.

And they came from where…?

Developed in Japan over 10 years ago, the original creators, a subsidiary of Toyota, have not exercised their right to being the only company to use the patented technology, encouraging its use across the world.

As a result, there is a huge range of example of QR codes being used by businesses, community groups, schools, colleges and anyone else you can think of!

QR code is a quick response code and, once read by a smart phone, will install take your customer where they want to be; you can ‘load’ the code with whatever you want from accessing 25% off their order or free delivery or… the examples are almost infinite so let us group the type of applications you can use them for…

Sharing – there is no limit to how much you can share with these QR codes. For example, if you have an instruction manual for how your product works, convert it into a PDF and give it a QR code; this way, customers can always access or download their own copy. It saves paper and makes navigating to the section or pages they want, much easier too.
Community – customers are social beings and we all like to feel connected to a product or business. Again, we have talked about responding to enquiries through social media platforms etc. QR codes can enhance this liking and sharing feature that businesses and customers love; link a QR code to your Facebook page or to a noticeboard/comment area on your website.
Calls to action – essential in any marketing strategy, but also something that can be used throughout your community. Once you have connected with people, why not offer them special offers to reward their interaction, feedback and loyalty. Again, QR codes can carry this type of information.

From rhetoric to practical applications

However, QR codes sound all well and dandy but, what are the practical applications for your business?

We have talked about linking your offline and online marketing strategies in a recent post and this is a perfect idea of bridging the gap between the two:

Where

Back/front/both side of your business card
Brochures, flyers, leaflets or whichever printed media works well for your business
Posters, outdoor banners, roller banners
Tags and packaging on your products
Letterheads, compliments slips and other stationery
Menus
Invoices and receipts
Any other printed media you can think of!

What

Manuals or instructions
Ordering additional or replacements parts etc.
Booking services online (takes you to calendar or contact form)
Directions to your business
Coupons, vouchers or money off code
Free downloads!
Feedback forms, comment sheets etc.
Anything on your website or social media presence

Maximise impact of QR codes

Tell people what they are and encourage them to use
Link with your marketing strategy, both on and offline
Allay fears that they are complicated – their simplicity is their power!
Experiment with size, location as well as colour of QR codes
You can create a QR code ‘treasure hunt’ all across your range!
EXPERIMENT!

Are they here to stay?

They have been around some time and are a tried and tested technology. However, many smaller businesses associate them with larger, multinational companies and think that the technology is out of their league – never have you been so wrong!

And so, your technological challenge for New Year 2015 is to tell us how you would use QR codes for your business!

Is your website finished?

15th December 2014 by Alan Leave a Comment

Here at Locally, we work with all kinds, types and sizes of businesses, from fledgling start-ups beginning their journey and medium to large enterprises, on the cusp of global ‘domination’. They all have several things in common…

They all started as an idea. Then this idea took shape with help, hard work and sheer determination, this initial idea took shape. Some may have had more of a stilted start, fractured and stressed whilst other businesses flourished.

But, in the mix there is something else that underpins their success – and that is their online presence. More specifically, their websites.

Do you have a website?

The likelihood is that you do and this is great news.

Do you a presence of social media platforms, appropriate to your business?

The likelihood is yes, and this is great news too.

Do you treat your online presence as a fluid, living, breathing thing; a thing to be nurtured and coddled, a thing to be developed and advanced over weeks, months and years.

What?!

This is a common misconception about websites. We think of website development as a tick box exercise. You may pay a company to develop the design; you may spend a large slice on getting a copywriter to create the words and then someone, somewhere flicks the magic button and your website goes live.

And then, because life and business is busy, we tend to sit back and think that ‘we have a website so that’s done’. And move on to the next item.

If only website life was so easy. But it isn’t. The truth of the matter is your website may not be working as hard for you and your business as what you think or as what you need.

The time has come to grasp this thorny issue. So the next time you see a company advertising website design for “only £99” you know that this is simply too good to be true… and here’s why:

It is a cheap commodity and online ‘do-it-yourself ‘packages cut the mustard

The answer is, they don’t. If you are serious about your business and serious about your online presence, then these kind of cheap, all-in-one packages do not cut the mustard, at all.

You only need to look at the hundreds variables used by search engines to rank websites to understand that there is a common theme. These packages are usually offered over a short period of time. Buying a website domain for 1 or 2 years instantly sees you drop several of these ranking variables. Not owning a website domain, and not optimising it in a professional way sends the wrong kind of message to search engines; it is not giving off a professional, ‘people can trust us vibe’.

Take a look at some of the highest ranking websites and you will note from poking around the sitemap and other ever-so-slightly hidden information that they are all created, designed and hosted by professional web design and hosting companies, specifically for the company – and are NOT off-the-shelf short term packages.

Once you have your website, you have to STILL work with it

And this is an important point that the vast majority of companies miss when it comes to their website. And we understand why.

Any business needs to spend the vast majority of its time doing the things that make it money. This is the stuff that pays you, your employees and allows you to carry on growing. Why would you spend hours faffing with blogs, updating social media and developing your website when you have an order book that is bulging? You have customers waiting…

And this in itself kind of says that your business is doing well. So why do you need to be developing and working on your website?

Times change. Consumer tastes change. What is a great product now will be developed and enhanced by someone else. Unless you keep up, stay in pace or even ahead of the game, then your business will start to fall behind.

Your website needs to be maintained. But, smaller companies may not have the staff power to monitor the website on a 24 hours basis and, for many, this may not be necessary if the website is not processing large volumes of traffic.

High end website designers and developers like Locally can do all this for you, spotting glitches as they happen and instantly repairing them. You, on the other hand, can focus on the things that make you money because consumer orders will be processed via your website.

You CANNOT do EVERYTHING…

… but when businesses are created, we have to. But as soon as the purse strings allow, you need to hand over this responsibility of building, designing and maintaining your robust business website to a professional company.

You are still in the driving seat; it is, after all, your website and your business. You create and enhance your products and services… and then these need adding to your website. You need the content optimising so search engine ‘see’ it, so potential customers see it, they order it… you get the picture!

But they can only find your website in the crowded world of the web if it stands out from the thousands of other online competitors. They will only order from you if they like the look and feel of your website.

Who maintains your website?

The Landing Page – is it ‘fit for purpose’?

28th November 2014 by Alan Leave a Comment

We love posts and articles that make life a little easier especially when it comes to making sure our website is working as hard as possible for us – after all, we have invested time, money and oodles of creativity in it.

You probably feel this same sense of pride in your website but, we need to talk. It seems that landing pages – the page that attracts and converts visitors to customers – are not quite doing the job they should be doing.

The problem with creativity is that sometimes, we are just too close to it to really see what we are creating.

Sounds double-dutch BUT, it means we can’t see the wood for the trees; it is a bit like proof-reading your own article and then re-reading it on the web, months later and realising that you have made huge grammatical gaff in the second paragraph. What will people think?

But before you take the next plane to obscurity, this is a simple error to fix… You need a fresh pair of eyes to take a look at your creative creation. Whether this is reading your article or taking a look at your website for errors and faux paus, you need a pair of eyes that are kind, yet objective…

Know anyone?

It can be difficult, we know and so, out there in Internet Land, is the answer – and we have found it!

You can now assess your landing page using the alphabet (and various other hints and tips!)

The Landing Page – what is it and what should it ‘look’ like?

We are not necessarily talking design when we talk about ‘looks’, but about the content contained here-in the landing page.

This is the page that any prospective customers see when they visit your website and needs, according to a variety of web design experts to contain the following:

Your business’s unique selling point or proposition (also known as USP)

And so, your landing page needs to have a headline, a supporting headline (or tagline), a statement that reinforces what it is you do/offer/sell and a ‘closing argument’.

an appropriate graphic or short video that is directly linked to what you do/offer/sell
recommendations – showing customers how other people have benefitted from what you do/offer/sell
and finally, a call to action – in other words, what customers need to do in order to access what you do/off/sell, such as
- “call us NOW and get 10% off!”,
- “it couldn’t be simpler to order from ABC: fill in the online booking form and return TODAY”

Take a look at – ‘spa LONDON’ https://www.spa-london.org/swisscottage – their landing page tells you it is affordable luxury in the prefect environment, and restores your body and mind. It also tells you to ‘book NOW’!

Hush Hair, Birmingham https://hushhair.com/main/ tells you they are a premier salon, there is 25% off for new clients with selected stylists and that they used on the best styling and dye products (well-known and trusted brands listed), and they are independent, employing only the best hairdressers. Their phone number is prominent, as is their opening times.

The good, the bad and the not-so-good looking ones… we have all come across them, landing pages that tell us nothing, give us the wrong feeling, hence we navigate away to another competitor.

And so, here we look at the best bits of the Landing Page alphabet…

E is for engagement – your landing page needs to be creative, sparking an interest and an intrigue in what it is you do. Does you landing page do that? Could the content do with a re-vamp?

J if for justification – if you making claims on your landing page (and anywhere else on your website), then you need to have the facts to prove it; if you say you are the ‘best at…’ who says? Did you win an award? Beware false claims so try something generic like, ‘one of the leading massage at work companies in…’ etc.

M is for mistakes – check, check and check again for errors. And then get someone else to check. As we pointed out at the start, when you have written or created something yourself, you can become so embroiled in the content, that you cannot ‘see’ the most obvious and glaring of mistakes.

P is for performance – how many times – be honest! – have you logged on to a website only to find that waiting X number of seconds is far too long. Fingers drumming impatiently on the desk will not speed it up and, with a harrumph and sigh, you navigate away. Your landing page needs to load, and load quickly.

Y is for ‘you’ – because you – the writer, author, creator, business owner etc. – are the soul of the whole project but take care with how much you share. When we ring this note of caution, we suggest that you take care with the tone of your landing page. ‘Appropriate’ should be bamboozled across the whole website, not just your landing page…

Established and new websites need to ensure that their landing pages are working as hard as possible, converting browsing customers into paying ones. For the full landing page alphabet, check it out at Copyblogger.

What website design will look like in 2015

23rd November 2014 by Alan Leave a Comment

We have recently re-designed our website and we are loving the final result – what do you think?

We have stayed true to our brand, using blue as the main colour and a delightful earthy orange for the buttons and highlighted text etc. We have also improved accessibility too, with ‘our blog’ having a button at the top of the page, along with ‘service’ and ‘portfolio’, as well as that all important button ‘get a quote’.

Following the usability checklist, all the important information we want customers to have is at the top of the page and there is no need to scroll horizontally either!

Why re-design your website?

For many companies and businesses, it seems like only yesterday that they laboured for hours with their hardworking web design company over the placement of buttons and re-wrote the content several times. The website was tested, then launched and, in all honesty, with superb search engine optimisation it is doing what you want it to do.

F-a-b-u-l-o-u-s (sit back, savour the moment).

But, as you know, the landscape of the Internet is a crowded place. It is full of businesses that are in direct competition with yours. Websites need to be working hard all of the time and it may be that if you have not updated/re-designed/re-modelled/call-it-what-you-will in recent years, then it could start to miss a trick.

Cast your mind back…

Do you remember, back in the 1990s, every website had a dancing Santa and flashy graphics that were revolutionary and hip? But, attitudes changed and as graphics and photographs improved, these flashy bits started to look dated.

Now, as we march ever closer to 2015, you would never in a million years have a website header with a jerky, ‘flash’ driven graphic with Santa and his trusty reindeers flying across the sky again, and again, and again and…

It would simply not do. It would be cheap and so far from on-trend that you have nearly fallen off the website design in terms of ‘what is hot and what is not’ scale.

But why?

Website design is a ‘critical component in effective marketing and lead generation’ which, put simply means, it is your online shop window to the world. It should be enticing and welcoming, not off-putting and cheesy.

Herein lurks a danger.

We assume that when we read the various articles and studies on how a website should look – or the ’10 things to avoid with your website’ – that because we exhibit none of these guffaws and online faux pas that our website is still doing its job.

It may not be. It may still look and feel a little dated, a little clunky. Is this the image you want to portray?

Website design trends for 2015

Nope. We thought not and so the clever people at Locally spends hours scouring the web and gazing once again in to our crystal ball and we came up with these trends for website for 2015…

Trend 1: Minimalist design

Whereas once everything was flashy and pizzazz-y and ‘fun, fun, fun!’, it now seems the world of website design has matured into a clean, demure and minimalist design approach. Gone is clutter and in comes clarity and purpose. Concise and deliciously simple, adding dashes of colour (that link to your brand and logo etc.) is all that it takes to pull your website right on trend.

Locally thinks…

Whitespace is going to become important in design. This is a design concept that has spaces on the page that are not filled with text, graphics or images etc. The use of whitespace is a clever way of ensuring that the eye has somewhere to ‘res’t on a page, without being bombarded by information. We think of it as allowing the website design to breathe…

Trend 2: Visual engagement

Especially video, it would seem. Consumers and visitors to your website are demanding more and more information and although a lovely bit of copy-write is fabulous, when it starts to run into thousands of words on your homepage, it can become off-putting. Step forward the power of video!

A two to three minute video can introduce more concepts and thoughts about your business and service than 3,000 words of text ever could. This video revolution is going to gather pace so take some time during 2015 to stay on-trend with some well-deigned, scripted and filmed ‘shorts’.

Locally thinks…

Producing video isn’t for everyone and so we think that taking a look at online presentation platforms such as Slide Share is also a valuable option for many companies. Easy to set up and well-within the reach of most proficient IT users, this platform is a great way of getting information across in a fun and entertaining way, but keep the words to a minimum.

Trend 3: the ‘card’ layout

Spend half an hour zooming around the web hitting on a variety of websites, from business-to-business websites and business-to-customer websites and you cannot fail to notice the rather fetching design of a card layout. Possibly taking inspiration form platforms such as Pinterest, this layout is a great way of ordering information into groups and sub-groups. Delivering information in small bites rather than one big colossal main course seems to be the order of the day.

Locally thinks…

We think this card layout is great for some businesses, but not all. However, as a re-design option it really is bringing your website right into the 2015 and could give you a great head start on competitors. It will also ‘force’ you in to a re-think as to how your information is ordered too. We like it!

Trend 4: Responsive

We have just blogged on this with our take on the need for your website to be mobile ready and it seem that the rest of the world agrees with Locally. Not sure how all this is done? It is not complicated or budget-bustin’ and is something that we can do quickly and easily.

Locally thinks…

Responsive website with regards to smartphones, tablets, both android and Apple will actually be more mandatory than an option by the end of 2015…

Trend 5: Parallax scrolling

We’ll forgive you if you haven’t heard of this although you will have come across it, without realising. It is the hottest website design trend and will get hotter in 2015 (or so we think!). It gives the visitor to your website a smooth, pleasing experience as they navigate content; check out The Royal British Legion website and you will see what we mean…

Locally thinks…

This is a refined version of those flashy headers from decades ago and that over-doing it can create the same effect; make sure it works with your brand before you invest a decent portion of your website budget in it.

However, we love the fact that it is customer-centred and that it makes navigating a website delightful and smooth…

Being a little passé in website design can mean visitors get the wrong idea. Why not make a website re-design a goal for 2015?

PS Take a look at your fonts too. Using Arial or Times New Roman for example? Time to upgrade…