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What website design will look like in 2015

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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…

Social media wars: which is better?

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With the fallout from the Google Authorship and ‘is it a ploy to get us all using Google+?’ question still being bandied around, businesses can be easily confused as to which social media platform is the right one for them.

It can be tempting to be on everything but the problem with this blanket approach is that you may be using platforms that are not suitable and, keeping up to date with them all can be a timing nightmare.

In this article we look at Google+ or G+ and what it can offer you, as well as looking at arguably the most powerful and well-known of social media platforms, Facebook.

Things are changing

Facebook is the ‘daddy of ‘em all’, with a reach that is phenomenal it has, for many years, held the top notch position; it was and still is, the social media platform you must be on. If you wanted to reach out to the largest audience ever, then FB was the place to be.

But things change and on the world of online sharing. Once the poor relation, is seems that the ugly duckling is blossoming into the beautiful swan; 2014 has marked the best year for G+ yet, with its monthly active users reaching 540 million across the globe.

The difference between the two? G+ allows people to search for your business and is obviously geared towards this end of the market, whereas Facebook is more ‘personal’ in its approach but there are reasons why both could be useful, if not essential.

Circles

Some people think that circles on G+ are complicated but they are far from that. It’s a way of sorting the wheat from the chaff if you like and rather than being bombarded with every single post or share, you can group people together, choosing what you see and when.

Facebook has a similar set up now with Edgerank, the algorithm it introduced in December 2013. Rather than users being bombarded with items or posts they may find irrelevant, this algorithm sorts what it thinks the user will like. The only problem with this is that you don’t control it – unlike the G+ circles which you set up – the algorithm checks what you have been looking at and makes the decision for you.

Reach

On Facebook, any posts or statuses you make will need to reach a certain level of ‘likes’ over a set number of times before it is available to the masses, hence the almost begging Tweets and messages from businesses imploring you to like them on Facebook.

BUT, if this doesn’t work, you can always pay for the privilege with various adverts to boost your appearance and views on the platform. But, some say that this is losing sight of its original intention as small businesses may not have the budgeting resources to play alongside the big players.

The algorithm

Facebook’s algorithm is a double-edged sword; on one hand it has a positive impact but recent bad press from experiments such as the ‘emotion experiment’ has made some people question the platform and its integrity.

However, you cannot throw away 1.32 billion users around the world lightly and so, by improving your Facebook posts, from asking questions to running competitions, you do have an excellent way, at your fingertips of attracting new people and customers to your business.

Is it just about numbers?

Reaching the masses is great but, if only a small percentage buy your product or service, is it worth it for a local, online business?

No sale is a bad sale, and so if it reaps the smallest reward then that is not to be sniffed at but if it comes at a cost in terms of both time and money, it may be worth a re-think.

A G+ ‘hangout’ is as some people say, an awesome resource that allows businesses and customers to connect. Think of it as a modern-day equivalent of consumer research and with G+ and Google being the same, you are sending out some strong signals to the most popular search engine.

So, who to choose?

Internet trends change from week to week; it would be sheer folly to predict today what will be right next week or the week after and so on. However, the rub is that, as a business you need to connect to a wide an audience as possible, but balance it against time spent ‘doing’ social media and the return it gives you.

The answer is this – place the same post across the social media platforms you currently use and see where you get the most responses; do this a few times at different times of the year and it gives you an indication of where your audience is at.

Once you feel you know which platforms are right for your business, put time and energy into creating a plan so that you have something to offer customers and something to talk about over both G+ and Facebook – and any others too!

Which platforms do you use? How did you decide which social media sites were best for your local business?

WordPress Blogging tips – issues with layout & format

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As part of the support we provide our clients we get a vast array of questions relating to WordPress, but there is one that keep cropping up which if you don’t know how to resolve can be very frustrating, so we thought we’d write a few words explaining how to fix it.

If you find that the bullet points are out of alignment you can’t get any breaks in between your paragraphs & that you cut and pasted from a word document (which most do)  this is more than likely your problem.

It’s simple to fix; > delete the blog post content > cut and paste again from word with one difference > Click on the ‘w’  paste into the box and insert.

Doing this will strip out all the unnecessary word press code which will mangle your blog post.

WordPress Blog format problem

Pasting into WordPress from Word

Local SEO tips: How fast is your website?

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One key element, which often overlooked, that should be investigated as part of your search engine optimisation strategy and whether Google likes your website enough to put it to the top of their listings is how fast your website performs.

Hosting provider

When we speak to clients, we describe hosting as the engine that runs the website. The engine (servers) need to be looked after, maintained and made sure they are running efficiently – this is what we do behind the scenes to make sure when someone visits our client’s websites it loads as quickly and efficiently as possible. Making sure our clients websites load quickly isn’t only for the benefit of their customers and visitors to their websites, it’s also for Google and the search engines. If you website loads slowly and the engine running it isn’t efficient Google will not favor your website because they want their users to get the best experience as possible.

How fast is your website?

There is a quick and easy way to find out how fast your website performs – we use this tool https://gtmetrix.com/.

You’ll expect to see a results page clearly detailing how your website performed similar to one we performed for a client of ours:

Location matters

Getting a cheap hosting package from the USA or overseas may save you a few pounds a month, however, there is a delay across the Atlantic or long distances. Our testing has shown that this can be around a 4 seconds more to your website load time. You’ll not only lose conversions, studies show a 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions, Google will also not favor you kindly for local searches.

So for UK businesses selling to the UK, saving a few pounds a month on hosting costs by hosting overseas may in fact cost you much more than you think!

You get what you pay for!

If you find that your website is slow, and you’re on an overloaded shared host – (if you’re paying less than a £5 a month you more than likely are) you might want to consider either upgrading or getting website hosting from else where. It’s an easy and quick process which will benefit your website’s positioning on Google as well as the experience visitors receive visiting your website.

Local SEO tips: Title tags

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Title tags – what are they all about?!

Utilising title tags is a technique used under the umbrella of Search Engine Optimisation.

The best way to think of title tags is as an index in a book; the reader is looking for a specific topic, let’s say, tracking SEO results, the book index shows the page number then the reader flicks to the page and finds the necessary information, common sense, title tags work in the same kind of concept with an important added factor: title tags not only tell the reader what the page is about but also Google.

When someone performs a search on Google or other search engines title tags are displayed in the free (organic) area on the search engines.

Let’s have a look at title tags in action. Typing into Google limo hire chobham gives us this results page:

title tag example

As you can see from the screen grab above the first 3 results (in yellow) are paid for adverts the 4th result being the first free organic search result. The title tag for the AA limos page that Google served me is Limo Hire Chobham | AA limos Surrey’s Premier Limo Hire. There are a number of factors which determine why Google has put AA limos at the top of the free list, ultimately Google is providing me with a list of websites that they believe will solve my search query thus Google believe AA limos are more likely to solve my search query.

So from doing this search on Google we can ascertain that

  1. Title tags are the first thing that draws searchers attention & should be treated as free advertising space ( especially if they are relevant to the search as Google will make them bold).
  2. Title tags are an element of SEO which can encourage Google to list your website near the top for relevant search terms e.g. limo hire chobham.

Now let’s see how we added the title tags

Being a client, AA Limos have access to a vast array of free and premium WordPress plugins we make available. WordPress plugins makes our’s and our clients’ lives easier. There are many WordPress plugins out there, the one we prefer to use is called Infinite SEO a great premium plugin that makes adding title tags to individual pages and blog posts a doddle as you can see below:

adding title tag to a page in WordPress

Using this plugin all you need to simple do is type in up to the recommended 65 characters and then click update. It gives a handy preview of what’s it likely to look like on the search engines. If your website is not built on WordPress you can manually add title tags using Html:

So that is it, a quick introduction in title tags, why they are important and how to edit them simply using WordPress.

To summarise:

  • Title tags are an important element to Search Engine Optimisation
  • Your title tags are not only an advert for users on search engines but also tell the search engines what the page is about (encouraging them to list your website/page high.)
  • Title tags should include relevant keywords that your customers are looking for online – your service, products etc.
  • Editing and adding title tags to your web pages on WordPress is simple when using a premium or free SEO plugin e.g. Infinite SEO

Any questions or comments? Drop them below or send us a message and we’ll be happy to help out!

Using Featured Images in WordPress Posts and Pages

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WordPress has the ability to assign a featured image to posts and pages.

A featured image is  an image from your media library that has a special meaning to your WordPress theme.

Each theme styling has a different way of presenting the featured image. Some themes will only show it on the single post or page, others will show it on summary and archive lists too. Some themes will present a large image, others just a thumbnail. Themes like TwentyTwelve will actually use the featured image as the header background, but only if it is large enough. The best way to find out what featured images look like in the theme you are using is to try one out.

Adding a featured image is simply a matter of editing the post or page and scrolling down (or across) and finding the ‘featured image block’

Featured Image