Membership | Training | Brochure | WordPress
Websites
Your websites design, development, maintenance and client hosting.
We design, develop and build CMS websites for our clients. It’s important that our clients understand that these 3 go together to produce the websites they require to attract, retain and build loyalty and sales for their businesses.
Website Design
Let’s start with how your website is going to look. It’s the bit that the majority think is the most important part of their website. The reality is that all the elements required in a website are equally as important as one another, but it is definitely the part that excites clients most.
Traditionally you would have used a templated ‘theme’ with a CMS (content management system) or you would have had a bespoke (and much more expensive) coded build.
At childsdesign we’re able to offer the best of both worlds, a bespoke designed theme that can be templated (if required – more about this later) at a much more competitive price. Giving you maximum flexibility without additional and often expensive ongoing bespoke coding and maintenance.
Represent Your Brand
Your web design should reflect your brand. If we’ve been working with you to help build your brand we’re likely to have worked on your brand guideline which will already have started to spill into how you brand should be presented online. We’ll have a colour palette in place, fonts, image styles, brand messaging, etc., and a defined understanding of how everyone is going to use these elements together.
Website Elements
We’ll already have worked with you to define your sitemap, the navigation through your website that’s logical to follow for anyone visiting your website for the first time. This will have indicated the different page styles that will be required and define the elements that must be on each of these pages.
We may not have all of the text and images at this stage, but we can start to set different elements consistent paramiters, the volumes of text required and how this will be broken up (intro, main body, conclusion, call-to-action, brand messaging, etc.).
With this information we can begin designing the different pages, that once completed can be turned into base, bespoke templates for use throught your website. There are other key elements to consider at this stage, such as headers, menus, footers, interactive elements – some of these work hand-in-hand with the final build.
Website Development
Most people see and understand website development as putting the code together to create a website. This isn’t wrong, but it is only part of the development process. We see the development process of a website as all of the elements that make it up, this includes;
- The website design
- The text for your website. This may involve a copywriter
- The images. This might involve a photographer or detailed searching for specific brand message or brand focussed stock library images,
- The marketing objectives, which means your marketing team will be involved
- and the website developer who will be putting elements together that allow you to do some of the things you want to do, such as integrating your CRM (customer relationship manager), creating a functioning e-commerce system that takes payment through your chosen payment gateway and then sends emails to you and the customer.
Hopefully, if you hadn’t already seen or understood, getting your website up and running is a holistic process. The more holistic it becomes, the more success your website will give.
Website Building
This has been started already as it works alongside the design and development. Let’s give you a little more insight into our website builds.
All of our websites are CMS websites. Content Management Systems are website builders that allow you to design and built a website. Once built the sites are easily controlled and edited. Administered through a web browser, they give the flexibility to make changes whenever required – day or night, anywhere that you have online access.
Why We Use WordPress
Our CMS websites are built on the WordPress platform. WordPress runs around 43% of all website currently online (that’s 43% of 1.93 billion websites as of March 2022). That’s a stagering number of sites, making it the biggest, most popular and most supported platform by far.
WordPress is extremely flexible, robust, secure (if setup correctly) and – most importantly – they have longevity. The WordPress platform is used throughout the world by major corporations, banks and online stores as well as businesses small and large in any industry you could mention.
Being supported by thousands of developers creating ‘plugins’ (additional modules that will do just about anything you want them to do, either alone or in combination with one another), means that it’s continually being upgraded to include the latest functionality, internet technologies and marketing tools which can be used within your website if required for a fraction of the price of a single bespoke build.
As we’ve mentioned, WordPress traditionally used designed themes as the base of a website, so you will see similar websites as some themes are used by many thousands of individuals as well as developers. We design, develop and build our sites creating bespoke themes for each and every client.
What Else Does Your Website Need?
It’s no good having a website that can’t be found through the search engines. childsdesign are able to support our website services with SEO (analysis of competitors though our SEO tools, keyword research, content analysis and implementation), content creation and copywriting as part of our fully holistic services to boost your online presence.
We’re not a hosting reseller, but we do host our clients websites if they would like us to take care of this while working with them. We have our own servers, and depending on our clients business and website traffic we can also arrange dedicated servers for their website hosting. As a client this has great benefits;
- we manage your hosting or server, so you don’t have to think about how it works or what to do if it goes wrong
- we carry out the updates and security checks and maintenance as part of the hosting package, it’s not an additional charge, and of course
- we’re at hand with instant access to help with any problems should you be making changes to your site yourself and something should go wrong.
- we do also offer additional maintenance and upkeep packages should they be required.
Brochure Websites
Some businesses we work with will only require a brochure website.
These sites are generally for simpler, though specialised businesses, that don’t generally sell their services to a wider community. Customers or clients are generally refered to them and these sites are generally used for company due diligence.
The majority of businesses we work with require more than just a brochure online. They require websites that work as lead or sales magnets. Their service offering is often more complex with more than one service that they can offer to prospective customers.
E-commerce Websites
We also work with online shopping and online stores, producing, often quite complex, e-commerce websites. E-commerce websites have to be easy to use and navigate, products need to be found logically, complex searches and filtering needs simplifying, we can also allow you to offer different pricing structures for trade or non-trade visitors or through customer loyalty programmes, payment gateway and credit card integration.
E-commerce, whatever the product requires carefull consideration when it comes to text and copy and its presentation. Product images are very important – a good image sells! Over the years we’ve help our clients produce tens, if not hundreds of thousands of images for their online stores – from children’s toys to outdoor gear, white goods, jewellery, clothing, furniture, homewares and more.
Learning Management System Websites
Online learning has become very popular since the covid lockdowns of 2020. More and more training businesses (in many different sectors) have seen the benefits of taking their training online if they can. It’s more difficult where face-to-face contact is required, but even then many companies we have been working with have split their training course to limit the needs for face-to-face learning.
The obvious benefits to clients are the reduction in running costs (no venue require) and the number of trainers with the right skills. To those taking the courses, they now have paid access to them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and generally training can be offered to them at a better price.
Membership Websites
Finally, membership website. Be they trade memberships, customer loyalty memberships or club memberships, these websites allow you to tailor content to members to your paramiters. You can offer instant free or paid memberships, different membership levels for different content access, hold membership applications for your to check details before allowing membership access, split pricing through e-commerce for members and non-members and lots more.
Holistic Service – Design
Our wide ranging design services cover everything that any business could need; Branding, graphic design, packaging design, design for publishing and web development.
We also offer to review your current collateral through a branding audit to ensure that your brand is consistent and clearly portrays your business to your customers.
Holistic Service – Photography
From office based reportage to studio product photography, the images you use are as important as your brand design and the words you use to acompany them.
When it comes to product based e-commerce, how your products look online will often be the first time that your potential customers will see them – they must have impact. With food photography, your packaging or promotional images have to sell the quality of your products. We have plenty of experience presenting our clients products to their best.
Websites Frequently Asked Question (FAQs)
What exactly does a website agency do?
There is no fixed definition of a website agency, in fact, even the turn ‘website agency’ differs from business to business. They may be called ‘website developers’, ‘website designers’, ‘digital designers or even just an online or digital agency – they’ll all do something a little differently to one another.
At childsdesign we would say that we can define, design, develope and build a businesses website in line with their marketing strategy, business goals and aims. We can manage all aspects of the website, be it design, content creation, development and importantly, SEO on your businesses behalf.
Do I really need a website?
There are some that would say, no, and that may be the case with a handful of businesses, but the majority really do need a website.
Websites are no longer just an online brochure, they can be ‘lead magnets’, bringing you real enquiries for real business, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
I need an online shop that can display thousands of products with dozens of variants, can you do that?
We can. We’ve designed, developed and built some very complex online or e-commerce stores.
We have integrated just about every payment system or gateway going, instigated discount systems, trade and consumer pricing systems through customer login, created some very complex filtering systems and a lot more.
Having worked for a long time in mail-order we have a lot of in-house knowledge that converts directly to online stores.
We’ve photographed and processed 10’s of thousands of product images and created accompanying text for those products.
I don't know what I want, can you help?
We can help just about anyone with their website. There is something of a process thast we go through for each client to establish what they actually need their website to do for them, how it integrtes with their brand, how they will be found and what they will be doing outside of their website to attract visitors through their arketing efforts.
I've seen another website that I'd like you to copy, can you do that?
We can, but we won’t.
Why would you want to try and clone someone elses website? Surely you are your own business?
It’s okay to show us what you’ve seen elsewhere that you like or don’t like, the way something works or a functionality that you feel would enhance your own website, but we won’t be copying them – if you want to copy someone elses website or any designs for that matter, we’re not the agency for you.
Will I own the website when it's finished?
In short, yes – as long as we’ve received all due payments.
Do I need to know about hosting?
We offer hosting for our clients, so you don’t have to know about hosting to get your website live, we can sort everything for you.
We only offer hosting to our clients and those clients that are continuing to work with us.
For the benefit of any doubt, we don’t and won’t allow anyone other than ourselves access to our hosting and if you are working with another agency going forwards, we don’t offer hosting only.
Can you help me after the website is live?
Yes we can.
We offer simple monthly maintenance packages, continued SEO support and further development.
We don’t really want to just build you a website and say goodbye, we’d ideally like to help you to grow further through onlnine support, brand development, marketing and more.
Talk to us about your next project
Use the form on this page, email or call us to set up an appointment to discuss your next project.
We’re based in Letchworth Garden City in Hertfordshire and are happy to visit you to discuss your requirements if you are based locally to us.
If further afield, that’s not a problem. We can arrange a phone or online call to see if we can help you. This enables us to gather enough information from you to give an initial quote. If you are happy with our quote and would like to engage us to work with you, then we can arrange to meet if necessary and discuss further.
