Top FAQs: What do you need to know about website design and development.

If you are the paying client, normally the website is your property and your IP. Or at least – this is how it should be! A designer and developer does not own your website, but check the terms of your agreement with them. Your website should never be held to ransom. Things should never reach this point, you should have a great and trusting working relationship with each other where everyone wins.

If you need to know where you website is hosted, a little trick is that you can go to builtwith.com and find out! Your website provider will definitely be able to tell you. 

Why is a website important? Well, particularly because of the global pandemic, a website is your ‘store front’ and your ‘online business card’. It’s a representation of your business online. It’s how people will find you. Therefore your website should only do a few things, very well. And that’s get your message across quickly, and be relevant for who is looking for you and your products/services. You read more about branding for business here – it’s what your marketing agency should be telling you!

Your website provider should be able to tell you. Another hint, can be to look at your privacy policy online in the footer of your website, as that (should have but-) may not have been updated since your site was launched. You can look back through your emails too otherwise.

We have a whole blog post on how much you should pay for a website with all the pros and cons listed out to help you. However, if you mean the ‘worth’ of an already established website – that depends on the number of people that visit that site, the domain authority of that website (so how highly search engines rank that website) and a few other factors.

We have a whole blog post on how much you should pay for a website here. We’ve listed all the options and pros and cons for you – whether you choose us or anyone else. We believe this is the right thing to share with people. No smoke and mirrors!

Estimated 1.7 billion! So your’s should be totally unique to you and your digital marketing (SEO) should be helping you to be discovered in searches.

WordPress is most flexible, technical, good for SEO and professional! Here are the top 10 reasons why it’s the platform that professionals use to ensure future online success for clients.

A website should be wire-framed (planned structure of the content), designed (look and feel), and custom coded especially for you (so it’s high performing and best for your digital marketing / people being able to find you online in searches). We have a full article here. You can read what a web developer actually does here.

You should start with WordPress if you want the best long term results. Be very careful using page builders and premium pre-built templates versus custom code (full comparison here). These will slow your website down and search engines like google do not like this at all – so people will struggle to find you, the user has a bad experience and then you might question – why did you start a website in the first place?

To get across your unique brand personality and your unique key selling points over your competitors! Here’s 5 reasons why WordPress should be used for web design and here’s why your brand should have some real thought and strategy put behind it.

Website owners and webmasters with access can see the demographic information of who visits from sources like Google Analytics. The personally identifiable information is anonymous though. There’s a way to bypass though. There are some services out there who can give more detailed information of recurring and returning visitors who have left their information with you before. This is so you can personalise your marketing for users and give them an even better experience and generate more inbound marketing. Such as customers. Tools like this include HubSpot. We’re specialist and a professional HubSpot partner.

This could be a technical issue, a sign of hacking or malware issues. We have monthly security maintenance packages to prevent things like this for you.

You website should have content that is updated very regularly if you want search engines to continue to promote your website in search results. Your technical updates should be installed as soon as they become available to prevent hacking and malware issues. Ensure you leave enough time though to check that the updates you’ve made haven’t broken any functionality on your website. A website should have a new (updated) design and a refresh when you feel it is behind the times and not communicating your brand, products/services and message very well anymore. A well designed and coded/well-built website should last many years. Here’s an article on why coded vs non-coded.

You can find out in your admin / control / settings panel when you website was last updated. You should update your website’s software very frequently to avoid malware issues. We have monthly maintenance packages to do this for our clients and we work to prevent any issues for them. 

It’s important for any business actually! Your website is your online store-front / business card. Your website helps to give information to clients/customers in an easy way. People search for products/services like yours in search engines. Without a website, people can’t find you and they will find your competitors instead. You website can provide some valuable insights about your customers too and be used as a great marketing tool to help you sell more. Here’s an article on branding for business and what your agency should be telling you. Alternatively, this one talks about why digital marketing is important.

Check if it’s truly a Chrome issue or not first. Try other machines, other web browsers and ensure you’ve checked that you have your SSL (security) certificates correctly installed and valid. An indication of this is if your URL has http:// or https:// (s stands for secure). Otherwise, here’s a full article on why you might not be appearing in Google searches.

First, check Chrome on laptop, mobile and someone else’s account too. If you think it’s fine on other web servers like Safari, Firefox etc. but just not ok on Chrome, then there could be a number of reasons. Ensure your site is secure (has https:// not just http://). However, genuinely, if your website is not loading in Chrome it’s likely that there’s a technical issue with the site rather than with Chrome settings. We have monthly maintenance packages that prevent any website issues from arising for you and prevent any malware problems. Need us to look at this for you? Our hourly rate starts at £60 per hour, but fixes like this would be included for you in our monthly maintenance packages.

It can depend on where you are launching the website from. Is it a click-through from a mobile application? Have you disable Safari and enabled Chrome (or Firefox etc.) instead as your default browser on your phone or computer? Need us to look at this for you? Our hourly rate starts at £60 per hour, but fixes like this are included in our monthly maintenance packages.

Websites can be far cheaper in India, as labour tends to be cheaper than for example, the UK. Consider though, if you are getting your website built overseas – is it being custom coded each time and do you know how to check that’s the case? If problems arise in the future, there will be a time difference and possible language communication barriers around technical problems. Cheaper when getting a website while typically cost you longer in the long run – that’s genuinely what many clients come to us saying. Here’s a full article on how much to pay for a website with pros and cons.

There are lots of reasons that can happen. Is it a loading issue like the website being slow? Is it a security issue like no SSL certificates (so does the URL have https:// for secure, or http:// meaning insecure)? Do you see an error message like 404, 403 etc? Does the website open not open on many different devices and on different browsers? These questions should help you diagnose the problem.

Your website content must be stored in the cloud somewhere. So where your website is most likely hosted is on a cloud-based server. You can ‘host’ your own website and pay for the service of hosting to the hosting provider. You can also pay someone to host your website for you. Hosting sometimes comes with running updates, securing your site, storing back up versions of your website and generally preventing any issues from happening for you. Check what your hosting package provides. We host websites on our own platforms to prevent problems… not fix problems that have happened. Our maintenance package information is available here. So whether with us or someone else, you can see what you should be getting for your money.

It could be anything from £10 – £50+ per month. When you pay annually it tends to be cheaper. When you pay an agency is also tends to be cheaper because agencies get a discounted rate for hosting so many websites (economies of scale). However, if an agency is hosting your site they should be running a number of services for you to prevent any issues. Here’s what should be included so that you know. 

This means that your URL has http:// rather than https://   And this means, your security certificates are either expired or not actually activated. Your security (SSL) certificates are a very easy and quick fix and this well secure your website. The longer your website is insecure, the most at risk all the data is and the higher the chances of it being hacked and you not being able to get it back. We have monthly maintenance packages that prevent any of these issues and look after your website for you. You can ask any questions that ever come up and we complete all your updates. 

Design is one aspect of the website and development (custom coding) is the next. Design should cost £300 – £2000 roughly, depending entirely on how complicated it is and how much back and forth is required. If you give a strong brief and know what you’re looking for, and you have a designer who actually listens, you can always expect the lower end of the budget. Here’s our detailed article of what you should look to pay for a website. In terms of your next steps, here’s why design and coding are important. Make sure you’re not being mis-sold.

A slow loading website is very bad for your SEO (digital marketing) performance with search engines and of course, is a terrible experience for your users. Here’s why it might be slow. Check what error code you are seeing and you can Google that error code. If you need any help, feel free to get in touch with us. 

Not often – good design should really stand the test of time. It should last a few years. But updates should be regularly made and improvements to the layout, content and images for the best user experience. However, if there is a business merger, or a company rebrand, you might need to totally redesign the website. After many years, the website might just be dated and that is a perfectly valid reason for a redesign. Just don’t feel pressured for a redesign unless you truly feel your look and feel doesn’t align with what your customers are needing and what you want to communicate to people.

It’s really good to let customers know updates like this. Especially if you have a busy website. You should definitely let customers know other ways to get in touch or connect with you if your website is down, so ensure that information is in your website. Also communicate the expected date the website will be back up and running. 

Think of it this way – your website should only do a few things very well. Your website and digital marketing should convert views into sales. The number of views you have doesn’t mean people are more likely to buy. You can get lots of views, but if that traffic is not relevant, you are actually more likely to be negatively scored by search engines. It’s not about number of views – it’s about number of relevant views. What digital marketing strategies do you have in place to make sure you are getting the RIGHT people to your website who are ready to buy? Here’s a complete guide to digital marketing with a free PDF download. If your agency is just talking about getting you loads of views… question their strategy. It might be harming your website credibility with search engines. We have digital marketing packages and you can book a free consultation with us.

Sometimes what happens is your website is slow at loading (here’s why). So the way it’s developed might be with ‘clunky’ coding. Perhaps it’s using a website design template or page builder. Perhaps you have a lot of large photos and the server (cloud-based service) that hosts your website doesn’t have enough space and you need to increase your hosting package. There are some possible reasons. Hacking and malware problems can be another. Our maintenance packages are available to view here. We would very likely be able to fix this and prevent anything from happening again. 

First step is to try a few things to identify the issue. So, is the website not opening in a certain internet browser (like Chrome, Safari, Edge). Is the website secure (does it have https:// is the URL or just http://)? Are you seeing an error code (404, 403 etc). You can Google the codes and see what they mean. Has your website been maintained? If not, potentially it’s been hacked and taken down. Are you the only admin on the website or do others have access? Identify what the actual problem could be first.

There are so many reasons why you should pick a developed (custom-coded) website versus a non-coded. Here is a detailed answer, how much you should look to pay and the pros and cons of all options. Here is what a website developer actually does.

Hacking is so sophisticated and easily done. You need to maintain your website to prevent problems – here’s a full article. Essentially, you must do regular back ups and regular updates and ensuring nothing is breaking or being hacked. Preventing problems will ensure the security of your information. It will ensure the protection of your brand online (so people don’t associate your brand as being ‘dodgy’ with pop ups). Ensures the information of your customers/clients is safe. We have maintenance packages which are all about prevention rather than cure, to ensure peace of mind. You can see exactly what you should get for your money from us or anyone else here.

You can find that out with tools like builtwith.com

The S stands for security certificates. If you see a website URL that doesn’t have [ s:// ] and just has [ http:// ] then this is a sign that the site is not secure. If you’re the owner of the site, you need to have security certificates which are easily arranged. If you’re the user of a site – do not continuing using that webpage, it’s not safe for use.