Solving issues with a website redesign

We are currently redesigning a website for a Jewellers based in the City of London.

They came to us with 3 specific problems facing their existing website that was developed for them several years ag. All of the issues are based around the fact the website was built using Flash at a time when issues which have subsequently become important were not a major consideration:

• the site doesn’t load or display properly in several browsers/platforms
• it is hard to update since the website designers are no longer in business and there is no access to original source files for the flash animations.
• There is almost no SEO evident on the site due to the site being entirely built in flash.

So our brief is to redesign the website so that not only is it visually brought up to date (although this was also a consideration) but also so it is easier to update and is optimised for search engines to take advantage of the bespoke nature of their products and services within their geographic area.

We will rebuild the website using non-flash technology so that the website displays properly in all browsers and on all platforms. We are integrating a CMS into the website so that our client can easily amend, add and delete products and content themselves from their premises, allowing them to promote the one-off nature of their products as they come into stock. And at the same time our redesign will be naturally search engine friendly from the outset with each product in their stock being displayed on individual and semantically named pages, automatically linked across the site and promoted to search engines via a site-map.

Our redesign will provide the reassurance of a future-proofed website since we are using a well known CMS that is widely supported amongst website development companies and provides a wealth of features as our client requires them. This means that going forward our client can be assured that their investment in a website redesign will be realised for years to come.

The divergent costs for IFA website design

Areoff recently provide a quote to an IFA for redesigning their website.

After studying our quotation to provide website redesign, usability, SEO as well as an option for putting a CMS for editing pages and publishing new content, they commented that our costs were ‘considerably divergent’ from a quotation they received from a leading telecommunications company.

Their alternative quote was 50% cheaper than ours.

However, when I studied their quotation which our prospective client was kind enough to share with us I immediately noticed that there was also a considerable divergence in the website design service being offered. These were the main features of their quotation:

• We will create a maximum of 6 pages including a contact form.
• We offer a choice of colour schemes, and 6 different site and navigation layouts.
• We offer the option of one Image Rotator, scrolling up to 5 images.
• You may supply up to 2 images per page in your page content.
• The contact form will collect name, e-mail address and a message from anyone wishing to contact you.

This suggest that they would receive a very rigidly structured template based website instead of the bespoke build Areoff provides to all it’s clients. And what happens if you want more than 6 pages in your website, which is more than conceivable, if not immediately, then maybe in a few months.

Their quotation also made absolutely no reference to SEO friendly features like the inclusion of proper and complete meta-data, header tags, DIV/XHTML page structure and semantic URL’s amongst other things that Areoff always provide as part of a website design service – our believe is that a website should be search engine ‘ready’ from day-one.

Lastly, the telecommunication provider’s proposal made no mention of a CMS which is crucial if a client wants to be able to edit existing wording and add new content to their website. The benefit of a CMS such as the packages Areoff offers is that it goes a long way towards future-proofing a website since it enables the client to add on a whole host of additional features as they need them like blog posts/news, calendars, additional forms, galleries, polls. And a CMS allows you to have as many pages as you like for no extra charge, which has to be a better deal than the ‘pay-as-you-add-pages’ approach that was proposed to our client in the alternative quote.

So our message to all IFA’s looking to have a new website designed or an existing one redesigned: look at the value that is being provided to you by a design/development company rather than just the bottom line cost. More often than not the cheaper of the two proposals can end up working out more expensive – less visibility on search engines due to a poor build, fewer conversions from your website due to poor usability and inferior levels of interaction with visitors, and the ongoing hidden costs of adding and amending content on your website.

New concept white-label insurance micro-sites

We have just provided our online insurance client with a design draft for a new concept white-label micro-site.

This project was briefed and instructed by our client last week and we and have been working with them on the concept, copy, design and strategy over the past few days.

The intention is to produce similar white-labelled micro-sites that are ‘ready to roll’ for their affiliates who require more than rebranded quote/application forms to slot into their own websites.

We look forward to finalising the design next week and enabling the effective and rapid roll out of micro-sites for our client’s affiliates.

The basics of marketing your website

We spoke to a potential client this week who was sold a website design following a tele-sales call. They paid £180 to have a basic website for their company.

Six months later they still have not had the website produced for them and their domain name resolves to a hosting company sponsored listings page.

They then told us that their fleet of vans has the website address emblazened in very large letters. We explained that if a potential customers sees their website address and then goes to check out their website to see what the company does, where they are located or even just to grab their telephone number to get in touch, it’s a potential lost customer. Any person looking at this website, or more accurately hosting company sponsored listings page would rightly assume the company may no longer be in business – particularly in this current unstable economic climate where small to medium sized businesses are going to the wall with frightening frequency.

We explained that we could design an effective but reasonable priced website for them, within just a few days, although we did state that £180 was not a feasible price – companies purporting to be able to produce websites for this kind of money are not running sustainable businesses.

We would certainly not leave a client with a sponsored listings page when their web address is being actively marketed in such a prominent way to the public and would immediately put up a company holding page that at the very least gives contact details while the site is being built.

We await to hear back from this potential client who was genuinely appreciative of our honest and valuable website and marketing advice.

Designing logos

We have been developing a logo for a new insurance company to be launched in the US.

Today we have been working with our client to design printed stationery in advance of producing a website for this new online business.

This was the brief from our client:

Profile

UV is a trading name of UV Limited.

The name has been chosen because it is both short, memorable and we have the domains to launch the company online.

The company will exclusively sell redundancy and unemployment insurance.

Market position

The brand is direct to consumer. However, we will be attracting affiliates and corporate customers who will in turn sell directly to customers.

The brand should be high end, aspirational, trusted and a credible provider of insurance whilst being modern.

The brand should be mainstream but has the same aspirational qualities of Apple where the product has a cache and is desirable.

The geographical market is both UK and US.

Current situation

The brand and website is not yet live and therefore will be a new player online.

Target market

The demographic for this brand/website is

• Age – anybody with a job
• Gender – male + female
• Marital status – any

Budget

The budget for this particular stage of the project concerns the brand/logo design.

The budget for this logo design is £2000.00

Required format

We require logos to be designed in high resolution suitable for use in other formats such as paper-based advertising.

We require logos in an editable format should our client require tweaks/other variations in future, although we would come to you for major design developments.

Website design templates

We have just put the finishing touches to a website design template for general insurance website we have been working on for our client over the past several weeks.

The template has been sent to a web development company to build into html pages that will make up the final website. We have supplied them with a number of page types including:

• home page
• product page,
• SEO page
• PPC landing page
• non-product page
• white-label design specification

In addition to providing the design template we have also specified a number of technical factors including the header tag and URL structure, both of which are crucial in the architectural make up of the website and SEO.

The next steps while the web development company are building the pages is to work with our client on devising a meta-data strategy and structure for each section of the website and individual pages.

Checking IP address location

We have just checked the IP address location for a website we are developing for a redundancy insurance client.

Where clients provide us with their one website hosting we always check that it is a UK located IP address (unless of course it is for a non-UK/worldwide business). If we find that the IP address is not located within the UK we advise our client that this can significantly impact on search engine rankings for their website. This is because Google and other search engines look at the location of the IP address to make an initial assessment of the geographic location of the business and whether to return this website for a search within a geographic area. With local search becoming more important this becomes a more important factor in the SEO of a website.

Working alongside our client to refine sales messages

Had a hands-on development meeting with our client this afternoon to refine sales messages for a white-label payment protection insurance template.

We considered the demographic of the target  and what language we can best use to identify with these particular customers.

Even changing phrases like:

‘What does it do?’

to

‘What will it do for me?’

immediately improves the message and makes it more relevant to people’s own lives.

At the same time we are aware that wording has to be kept to a minimum because visitors to a website will make a decision within a second or two about whether this product is right for them and bulky messages containing the main sales points will get lost.

A very productive afternoon working directly with our client to refine sales messages. The next stage now is to provide a white-labelling solution that can be rolled out to a number of affiliates wanting to sell this product into their respective marketplaces.

Setting up ads. in a WordPress controlled website

Teaching a client on setting up new banner, skyscraper, MPU and other ad types in an WordPress CMS controlled website. We designed and developed this website which will provide financial information for SME’s and is soon to be launched.

We sourced, installed and tested a plugin which enables our client to manage the ads on their website, including:

• zoning – positioning ads in certain zones/areas of the page)
• rotation – ads.automatically rotate where more than one is installed in a zone
• type – ads can be either images, flash or code
• impressions – a maximum number of impressions can be set before the ad. expires if required

So this plugin gives our client lots of flexibility in controlling ads which is very important as the primary means of monetising the content and funding the website when it goes live.

Welcome to ‘The Diary’

We have just launched a new section in the Areoff Blog called ‘The Diary’.

In this section we will publish new posts about the specific work we are doing on a daily basis for our clients.

We market ourselves as insurance and financial website designers and SEO experts. But what does this really mean and what kinds of skills and tasks does it encompass?

I hope that these posts will give you a greater insight into our methods, skills, experience and understanding when it comes to producing better insurance websites for our clients.

So look out for our regular (hopefully daily, but possibly less frequent) posts describing the kind of tasks we are undertaking on current projects.

We take the confidentiality of our client’s work very seriously so we only disclose general details about the kind of work we are doing and only show screenshots or graphics for projects where our client has given us permission to do so.