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Hello & Welcome!
Thanks for stopping by... It's nice to see you!
"Hello and welcome to WebSmiths - a team of professional website designers based in North Staffordshire, England. This landing page has been designed to introduce our firm and what we're all about. If you've already seen this, or just want to get to our list of services, click on Services where you will find a more conventionally laid out list.
"Our main business is building websites for local clients as well as for clients from all over the world. All websites we build are responsive and will work on any device. We also arrange several other IT services like: SEO, marketing (e.g. Google PPC), emails, hosting, website audits and videos."
"We pride ourselves on delivering a very personal and dependable service aimed mainly at individual traders and small to medium-sized businesses, as well as clubs, groups, and charities. If you become a client, you will be allocated your own lead designer and you will get that person's mobile phone number - no call centres at WebSmiths!"
"As we all know these days, one of the first things any potential customer will see about your business or project is YOUR WEBSITE...
and if it's not the the first thing, then it will certainly be the second -
almost nobody these days buys anything or hires anyone before CHECKING THE WEBSITE!"
"That's what you're most likely doing now...
...checking out our website!"
"You'll be asking yourself if we are a good FIT to build your website, or maybe rebuild it - as many of our clients came to us because they already had websites but they looked ancient, didn't work properly or otherwise needed updating or amending."
"So, let's get down to talking about website design, shall we?"
"And what better place to start than at the very beginning?"
Our Approach to designing your new website...
Any website consists of TWO main features: Content & Presentation.
If the content is no good, no amount of presentational features will compensate for it.
Similarly, if the content is good but the presentation is awful, then visitors will notice the terrible presentation and not the good content - no matter how good that content might happen to be.
To have a good website that achieves what you want it to - both the content and presentation need to be correct.
Let's start off by looking at content first.
A wise man once said:
"There are really just two basic types of website content: promotional and informational - and all websites that exist are just combinations of those two."
Disclaimer
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Image for illustration purposes only: no actual Greek philosopher is ever known to have said that.
"Now, while it's probably a little bit more complicated than that - because there are variations like entertainment and community, for example - this interaction of promotion versus information is always a good place to start when designing a website."
"So the first thing we need to do is work out what you want to say - is it purely promotional (e.g. a sales funnel), purely informational (e.g. toddlers group meets at 2pm Wednesdays) or a combination of the two - which most websites are (e.g. this is why you need face cream so visit our online shop for great face cream). It doesn't matter what the message is, what matters is that before we do anything else (e.g. layout, colours, effects etc.) we need to be 100% clear what we are trying to achieve by making the website."
And then on to the fun part!
So, once we know what the aim of the website is (e.g. more leads for your loft insulation business) and we have a very clear message about why the customer needs what you're selling or doing, and why YOU are the best business to buy it from...
... we arrive at the design stage. Now we will decide together on what colour scheme (or indeed schemes if we are having many pages) is going to match what you do (e.g. sober, bright, witty etc.) how we are going to present the information to the visitor, whether we are going to go mostly static or animated, whether we are going to add videos, etc.
Of course much of this will depend on your available budget but you may well be surprised how much design work we can do for the money available. Don't forget what might look like magic to a site visitor is just basic code to us.
So, the next thing to work out is what type of design is going to match your business - simple, elaborate, focused, multi-page, elegant, down to earth, vibrant full colour, nostalgic black & white, etc.
This is something we cover in detail in our Presentation (see menu) but let's just view one example here on the homepage...
"How you present your message to your site visitors is absolutely key to the success or failure of your website, and different types of audiences expect to see different types of presentation - and this includes font choice, colours, layout and images. For example..."
"...if you have a website selling beach holidays to 18 to 30 year-olds and you have images like this all over your site, don't be surprised if you get little business - this just doesn't fit."
"BUT... if you are selling short breaks to Normandy to learn pencil sketching and water colour painting, and your target market is the recently retired, then this image could work for you in the right context; the presentation must always match the intended audience's expectations. "
So, why should you choose us to build your new website - or to rebuild your existing one?
By the time you have arrived at this point on our website you will already have a pretty reasonable idea of who we are, what we do and how we build websites - because, of course, we obviously built this one!
But we know there are a lot of web designers out there who, to be fair, are just as good at designing websites as we are. Some might be a bit cheaper maybe, while many others will be more expensive; we have made a thorough analysis of the local market, and we believe our prices are both fair and very competitive.
Of course, there are some super-cheap "exotic" deals advertised on "certain portals" (we shall not be rude by naming them) but our experience is that these are usually very poor, often don't work well (if at all) and usually don't look very nice. So, anyone wanting that is welcome to it; but we don't operate in that space.
So, why choose us? Below we have set out 10 good reasons.
We will create a bespoke website for you - fully customised to your own vision that will stand out and get you noticed. You'll get the kind of comments you want and your site visitors will remember visiting you!
If you want to get online in a hurry we can accommodate that! Although website builds typically take longer, we have turned around very basic 3-page brochure sites in as little as just 3 days for clients in a big rush to get online!
You always get to speak to your lead designer (i.e. the person in charge of building your site) by call or video meeting. You will not be handled by a call centre or someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.
Unlike some other web designers, with us your domain and email server will be LEGALLY registered in your OWN name NOT ours. You will also have FULL admin access to your site's hosting and thus be in full control.
We are very careful and don't often make mistakes but if we do make a mistake with something (e.g. error 404 broken link, word spelled wrongly, image won't load, etc.) we will fix it for FREE in 72 hours or less of being told!
We provide full ongoing support and edits as required. You can pay for these as and when, or you can take out a maintenance contract with us which we will explain to you. In both cases we usually turn around most edits in a week.
We provide a FREE, no obligation, call or video meeting to establish what your budget is and ensure whatever we propose to do for you is comfortable and affordable AND WE WILL ALWAYS STICK TO YOUR BUDGET!
We offer various payment options (including monthly installments) so you can get the website you want and which your business or project deserves. We will always try to find a way to work with you, if we possibly can!
Although we can make visually complex websites - which have a lot of animation, videos and various scroll effects - if you're on a tight budget we can also make really smart simple sites for only a few hundred pounds - just ask!
Last but not least... ALL of the sites we design (even the most basic ones) are capable of running videos (including on mobiles). Even if you decide that you can't afford to add videos at the outset, your site will still be capable of adding a video or videos at a later date - and simply. With a WebSmiths site, adding videos is a simple and quick job as all the architecture is already there. We strongly recommend, however, that you consider adding at least one short video to your website from the outset. Why?
Because, as we said above, you need to meet audience expectations and video on websites has now become an expectation with many audiences. A lot of people just won't read minutes of text anymore - they expect to be either shown or told what you are selling or doing - this particularly applies to younger generations who use social media like TikTok which is all video based.
To put it simply, if you don't have any video on your website then you will lose customers. Fortunately, WebSmiths can make short promotional videos in-house for a lot less than you might think, and we have arrangements with specialist graphic and video designers for anything more complicated. What is available these days is quite extraordinary compared to just a few years ago so please do discuss this with us when we speak - you can also use any videos we make for you on any other platform that runs the MP4 format, so that's all the main social media platforms. Videos make great adverts for your business, group or project.
Please check out the examples below...
As you will see when you click them, the videos are fully controllable with play/pause, forward/rewind bar, Vol +/-, and whole screen mode. Yours would be the same in terms of functionality and ideal length which is between 1 and 5 minutes - anything longer than that risks visitors getting bored and switching off.
Example 1: This is basically a video of the 10 good reasons to choose WebSmiths (as above) so you can compare the two presentation methods with reference to your own website. Which method do you find more appealing?
If you were telling your clients or customers why to choose you, which method do you think would be most effective for your own audience - or maybe both, as we have done here?
Also bear in mind that once we have created the video(s) for you, you can use it/them on all of your Social Media channels.
You might want to check your sound is on for these videos, as they contain audio.
Example 2: This is marketing video which runs for about 2 minutes - deemed to be an ideal length for a video of this sort. As you will see when you watch it, the concept is very simple indeed and basically explores the question of whether the person watching does or does not need a new website, and if they do, then there is call to action (CTA) to connect us. That's pretty much it and in terms of your own business, group or project, something very similar to this is what you really need on your own website. We have also used this video on TikTok and Instagram.
Well, that's the end of our main sales pitch folks!
If you like what we're all about, why not click below and arrange a chat! It's completely FREE and without any obligation at all!
If you want to find out a little more before contacting us, then please check out our Presentation & FAQs (on the top menu) or read some of our blogposts and reviews below.
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