TALKING – STILL IMPORTANT!

In a digital world where everything is online and automated, we believe that the best business practise is to talk to each other and get a real feel for what is on the table from both parties. Whilst we promote digital products, our view is that these do two things. The first is to attract attention to your services and products thus encouraging potential clients to talk with you. Secondly, your digital profile acts as a sales support network to your verbal communications and meetings. Sitting in a meeting with a potential client and having the ability to present both digital and printed materials that are branded and cohesive in everyway ensures that your business looks professional and managed. It builds confidence and reliability in your ability to deliver your promises. – CALL US – 07584 575725

WEBSITE THEME DESIGN

A ‘theme’ is the type of software, or a collection of creative and technical tools, that you plan to build your website with. The ‘theme’ is installed to WordPress and from there you build your pages and every aspect of your website. There are many ‘themes’ available, but we use DIVI which is one of the most powerful and creative tools available to designers like us. This website you are now looking at was built using DIVI. Good website design is about ‘the correct delivery of information’ and DIVI enables us to make that delivery an interesting and intuitive one!

WORDPRESS BACKEND

You can view WordPress as an engine that powers your website but needs a ‘theme’ to make the website interesting and comprehensive in its operation. WordPress is a powerful and constantly evolving web/BLOG platform that powers over 38% of worldwide website installations, making it the most extensive platform to work with. However, caution must be observed as WP needs a powerful security and service plan behind it to ensure your data remains safe. Whilst WP makes use of powerful ‘themes’ it also uses many ‘plugins’ to power internal sections like e-commerce, e-mail, database apps, visual tools and much more. WordPress offers the user a cost effective and reliable option for building extremely powerful websites that can accept thousands of ‘plugins’ to help grow your site as your business expands. We can also add a ‘user-management console’ to make managing or updating your website an easy to follow experience.

MULTI-OPTION FRONTEND

We have mentioned ‘themes’ above and these are extensive in their designs and options. However, DIVI is about the most comprehensive ‘theme’ you can get and one that we use regularly due to its creative and technical facilities. However, as part of our project management service, we evaluate each client’s requirements and projected business growth and decide which ‘theme’ offers them the most scalable and logical range of services. For us, whatever frontend application or ‘theme’ we use, it must look good and engage the user!

DATABASE – MEMBERSHIP

Unless you are looking at a website as a simple point of contact and nothing else, chances are that you will be using some sort of database to store data. WordPress has many database or membership applications that offer powerful tools to run your business on. For example, we have a Landlord Association client who accepts membership payments and offers all sorts of online user facilities as well as chargeable and downloadable products to their members. GDPR is assured via the manufacturer of the applications as well as the hosting company. In essence, your WP site passes the data through to the secure and protected applications that are then further protected by the hosted security features. Add to that, the additional security protection offered via the ‘plugin’ applications and you have a very secure operating base!

SITE SECURITY & BACKUP

WordPress is a great platform to work with and whilst it offers a huge range of commercial solutions, it is a vulnerable and easy to ‘hack’ system without the correct level of security and protection. The first and most important area to address is your choice of hosting company. We use ‘SiteGround’ who are recognised as world leaders in WordPress hosting. They provide their own range of chargeable security options that can be managed by us. The second level of security is ensuring we select the correct WP ‘themes’ and ‘plugins’ as poorly developed ‘apps’ can allow Trojans and Hackers to damage your installation. Our third level of protection is selecting a range of security ‘plugins’ that constantly monitor your website and provide live reports to your mobile devices. Once this is in place, you need a secure and sensible offsite backup solution. We use a tried and tested backup ‘plugin’ that offers a range of customisable setting to automatically backup your website at pre-selected times to a separate hosted server solution off site. Last, we take a static copy of each website every week and back this up to our own servers.

WEBSITE & E-MAIL HOSTING

As well as creating and managing your hosted space, we can create and setup your e-mail system. We so often find businesses with e-mail addresses that are different to their actual website address, e.g. david@hotmail.co.uk as opposed to david@davidjmarsh.co.uk  It is more professional to have your e-mail use the same URL as your website. It looks more corporate minded and managed. We are happy to visit your offices and setup your e-mail on your systems where necessary should you be using Office 365 etc. Likewise, we can show you how to use your ‘webmail’ facility from your mobiles and desktops. We can setup your feedback forms within the website to go to specific e-mail addresses etc.

WEBSITE PHOTOGRAPHY

Photographing for website applications involves a different set of disciplines to that of normal photography. First you need to be able to visualise how an image will look to people on a website that is viewed on many different monitors with varying calibrations and clarity. Thus, you must ensure your composition is more focused on your subject matter and purveys the message you want your clients to see. Secondly, you need to edit and downsize images for use online so that they download very quickly, whilst maintaining quality, and in line with the guidelines laid down by Google for fast website delivery. You will see from our sister website, www.autophoto.co.uk, that we have been providing pro photographic services for over thirty years and especially for website applications.

GRAPHICS & DESIGN

Design is so often used in place of common sense! For us design is an aid to get your corporate message over whilst engaging the user. However, modern day design must take into consideration responsive ‘UI’ for website, online and social apps. Graphics must be created to work with the online guidelines for fully responsive web design. Responsive design is where your website recalibrates itself to fit into your mobile device’s screens yet retain clarity and legibility. We create all our own graphics using the latest Adobe software. Our design ethos is that every aspect of your website must be echoed throughout your POS and marketing materials creating a strong brand and the feel of a well-managed business. Thus, careful planning must be applied when designing graphics, logos and POS. Finally, design must convey a clean and professional impression without being confusing and using technology just for the sake of using technology!

CORPORATE BRANDING

Branding is vital in creating a stable and memorable corporate image for your potential clients. Branding is not just a clever logo design, it’s about the whole delivery of your corporate promise for your clients. If we look at the famous McDonalds logo, you know immediately how your meal will be presented to you, how it will look and taste and the delivery of the restaurant and its surroundings. Thus, branding is about advice on your entire business structure, how you deliver your information via online apps and services, your packaging, your products and services, prices and discounts and your sales approach. Finally, your LOGO design must be a simple but recognisable statement of your brand. Our services are all designed to work as a comprehensive range of ideas designed to strengthen, or cerate a strong brand for you.

ONLINE MARKETING – SEO – SEM

SEO and SEM (search engine marketing) are vital marketing tools in getting you found online. SEM is about the promotion of your website via targeted paid adverts. SEO (search engine optimisation) is about ensuring your site is optimised for attracting your targeted audience. An SEM campaign is about capturing data via landing pages and using social media advertising. We recommend using adverts in targeted online platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Emerging platforms like ‘TikTok’ are also proving beneficial as well. Instagram offers a sensible single point for business promotions backed by your well-structured website. One of the most common mistakes to make about website design is that once you have launched yours, it is going to get loads of hits. NO, this is NOT the case. First, Google wants to see well structured websites that have regular activity via BLOG pages etc with relevant information. Unless this is done, you will NOT be ranked by Google. Indeed, many poorly built websites are eventually ‘blacklisted’ by Google. Unless you are prepared to invest in a website and its subsequent services and promotions, then you are wasting your money in building a static site. As part of our online marketing we can make use of powerful investigatory tools to track your competitor’s online success and evaluate their ‘key wording’ etc. In addition, when loading videos to say YouTube, we have tools that tell us the best ‘keywords’ or ‘tags’ to use.

However, we endeavour to adhere to the Google ‘SRG’ guidelines to ensure our websites are found online.

CLICK ADVERTS

This a great way to start your Internet journey and getting your new, or rebranded website found online. No matter how well designed your website is, you are going to have to play the waiting game to see your rankings getting higher in Google, Bing Yahoo and other search engines. Click Adverts are basically a way of ensuring your name is at the top of the search engines when certain search parameters are used. For example, you may be a plumber and want to pay £100 per month to Google for your campaign. Every time someone searches for ‘plumbers in Kent’ your site will be listed on the front page of Google. This is assuming you put that same search parameter in your Google admin panel under your account. However, search criteria and indexing algorithms change all the time which is why it is important to have us maintain a constant visual for you on changing trends and search parameters within your business sectors. No SEO specialist can guarantee front page rankings but can make a huge difference in your online results. We have a proven track record in our SEO. An example of this is with our own specialist HDR photography. We have ‘key worded’ this website for HDR Automotive Photography examples and can be seen as follows. Try entering search parameters like, HDR Ferrari Photography, HDR Lamborghini Photography, HDR Porsche Photography. You will see, on the first page of Google, our results under our various websites like wallgo.co.uk, davidjmarsh.co.uk, LinkedIn, Flickr and other imaging sites. We normally have 4 – 5 positions on the first page of Google! And that’s without a click campaign!

GOOGLE/BING SITE VALIDATION

Google site verification is the process of proving that you own the site that you claim to own. Google needs to confirm ownership because once you are verified for your site, you then have access to its private Google Search data and can affect how Google Search crawls the site. Once this process is completed, we then login into your Google account and obtain a ‘Google site verification code’ which we then put into your website for authentication. Google console offers arrange of analytical tools to monitor and track your sites traffic. This can form part of our online marketing tools.

BUSINESS APPRAISAL

Most of the business people we meet started their enterprises out of a passion for their service or products and maintain a keen, but blinkered eye on their development. However, for many people the modern digital world is a complicated and baffling arena and one that they do not have time to get their minds around. In addition, having an analytical and focused business mind can help to push commerce much better. Many organisations we have met have benefitted from our business service where we help our clients look at their products in a different way and re-brand and re-cost their services with a focus on a new target audience. A great example of this is cabung.com, a client of ours who had a great product but was selling and packaging it for the wrong type of clients. We quicky saw that it needed to be rebranded and sold to a totally different target audience. With a price increase of 400% and a new website, POS and marketing materials. As a result, Cabung went on to make huge gains in its sales and commercial awareness.

PRODUCT PLACEMENT

Sounds strange but so often we find client selling their services and products at the wrong price point and to the wrong target audience. It often helps for an outsider, like us, to look at your services and products and evaluate where, if any, they need addressing. As with the example above, cabung.com had a quality product priced incorrectly and selling to the wrong people. We took Cabung’s single product and created 56 levels of the same item and repriced it for its new target audience.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Understanding your target audience is not as easy as you think. To do this correctly, you first must fully understand and accept what your products represent to potential clients. Once this is achieved, you need to understand your competitors’ position and how they sell and market their similar products. However, once you have done this, you need to see if you can reinvent yourself and your services to achieve a higher sales output.

SALES SUPPORT

Assuming you have engaged our full compliment of digital services, it stands to reason that we would be best placed to help you sell your newly structured business to your new target audience. With over thirty-five years’ experience in managing high-end sales teams in the City of London and across the UK, we have some skill in this area! We can attend sales meetings with you, make appointments or advise you on how to present your new products.

SSL CERTIFICATE

Encrypting as much web traffic as possible to prevent data theft and other tampering is a critical step toward building a safer, better Internet. We upgrade all our website projects to the SSL ratification. Your website needs the SSL certificate if you are asking for any personal information. But that’s not all there is to it. Search engines are cracking down on perceived ‘non-secure’ websites. Any websites without the SSL certificate will remain with the standard http, while those with encryption will show https in users’ browsers. Google recently announced that having an SSL Certificate is the easiest thing site owners can do to boost SEO ranking. The Google search boost for using SSL applies to all sites, whether they have personal information or not