Website Design & Development
Modern businesses use their website as the central hub around which they build all their marketing, both traditional and online.
Depending on your business needs, a great website will do some or all of the following:
- Make it easy for customers to find your business and products or services
- Provide information to customers and answer many of the questions they have
- Allow you to sell products or services online
- Attract people to your physical shop
- Build customer perception of your brand and products
- Showcase what your business does.
Choosing a website platform
The first big decision when you are building a new website is deciding which platform to use. The big players at the moment are WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace and Wix, but there are lots of other options available too.
Each website building option comes with pros and cons and navigating them all to find the best choice for your business can be very confusing. That’s where getting some professional help can make a big difference.
We’re big on insights here at Synthesis and choosing a website platform is no different. We work with you to figure out exactly what you need your business website to do. This includes your new site hitting the ground running when you launch it, while also making it as future proof as possible. For more info on different website platforms, have a quick read our article “Best Website Builder – Helping you make a choice” that compares WordPress vs Shopify vs Squarespace vs Wix.
Website design and branding
The way that your customers or clients see your website forms a big part of your brand, so getting the design aspects right is crucial.
When we build your website we match it to your brand identity. Whether you are just starting out and have only a logo, or you need an entire website redesign, we will make sure it carries through your company’s colours and styles, etc. to accurately represent your brand.
How we work with you to build your website
If we are helping you overhaul your current website, or building a new one, we approach the process the same as we would for a rebrand.
A Discovery Session
This is where we sit down with you to create the deep insights that mean your website ends up being exactly what you need. We use the insights gained during your discovery session all the way through the process of building your website.
Finding Inspiration
We look at the websites of your best performing online competitors, and any other websites you like, and work out what does and doesn’t work well on them. We then use this to inform your website design. We also want to know what you’ve seen online that you like and don’t like. We work collaboratively with you in the design and build phase.
Building Back Better
If we are updating and redesigning an existing website for you, then we pull apart your existing site to find the hidden gems and make sure they get carried across to your new site. We also figure out where your old website was holding your business back and take solutions to these areas into the new website design.
Content for both customers and Google
Writing the content for your website is a fine balancing act. Good, well-written content is actually doing a lot of different jobs on your website.
Your website content needs to:
- Build your brand and tell your story to visitors.
- Provide the information that customers and clients want and answer any questions they might have about your products or services.
- Have your target keywords woven through it
- Work well for the spiders (bits of online software) that Google uses to work out what websites are all about.
SEO from the foundations up
A website that really performs on Google is one that has had search engine optimisation built in at every step.
Right from the basics, like the structure of the site, the navigation headings, the number of pages and their names, we make sure everything works for your customers and ticks the boxes for Google too.
Trying to optimise a website after it is built is always a compromise and will never give you the best results, which is why at Synthesis Marketing we talk you through the SEO decisions right from the start. This extends to all the backend search engine optimisation essentials that many website design companies just don’t bother with.
We build SEO into:
- Url’s
- Site navigation
- Page names
- Page meta descriptions
- Image filenames
- Image alt text
