Website Design Blog

Hi,

Probably the best webdesign tip I can give a newbie is – get a logo! I often make nice looking websites without a logo but every time I make one, get one made, or the client sends me one I’m always amazed at how it ties the website together.

I can made decent logos for my clients at no extra charge, and I’m so confident a nice logo will drastically improve your website that I include the service free with all of my packages.

You can also get a logo done to a very high standard by hiring a professional logo designer. I know some people that are soo good at this type of work it’s all they do. A sneaky trick is to check on eBay and university sites for art students who offer their services cheap and have all the correct training and tools.

The fact of the matter is a logo makes your website look instantly more eye catching and essentially gives you a brand-type logo to use in all facets of your business. In my website design packages you can download the logo and use it on your business cards.

Thanks,
Andy

Hi,

For those of you that are interested I can set up secure email services for you on your website if needed. Some of my customers want to gather data from visitors on surveys and through email forms and they’d feel better if the data was encrypted. I can do this for you, although it will cost a little bit extra.

When you send an email from a website or any email service, that email is passed through many servers before it gets to your recipient and a copy of you’re message is left in plain text on all those servers. So if you can hack the server you can read the emails. Almost all web servers now have security measures built into them to prevent hacking and they often encrypt the data held on the server themselves. This additional level of encryption can only be read by you, no one else will have the key to open the email on any of these servers. It’s a decent form of encryption and it’d take a team of hackers a while to beat it.

I’d still recommend going above this and getting a security certificate (SSL) if you intend to do anything involving financial information, it’s the high-end encryption credit card servers use.

Thanks,
Andy

Hi,

 I usually work for small business owners. Sometimes these are people who have had their business established for many years, and other times they are just start up businesses. I’ve also done work for sports clubs and associations.

I’ll design websites for anyone who needs them really, so give me an email if you’re interested. I accept work from international clients, I’ll even give Americans a slight discount due to the awful US Dollar to UK pound exchange rate. It annoys me that witht he current exchange rate what my customers int he UK and Europe have to work 9 hours to pay for the Americans have to work 18.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi,

It’s been quite a busy month, I’ve had a lot of work designing websites for new and existing small businesses (small business website design is my bread-and butter). And I’ve had a lot of touch ups and updates to do on my existing sites.

Grand Theft Auto IV has been a welcome distraction on my Playstation 3 and I’ve been asked by a former client to design a GTA IV fan site for him, I said I’d do it as long as he doesn’t tell me the ending!

If you need a website designed give me an email!

Andy

Hi,

 Doorway pages are very short webpages that act as a covering letter to your website. They usually say something like “click here to enter”. Hence they act like a doorway to your more indepth site.

I don’t use them EVER! Search engines hate them with a passion and will ban your website fromt heir rankings very easily as they can now recognize them quickly.

Why does Google, Msn and Yahoo hate doorway pages? Because they really mess up the software they use to index and cross-refence pages. That’s because a doorway page with a keyword like “Website Design” and the only other thing on the page is the hyperlink word “Enter” will make the search engines rate the page as containing a very high keyword density. Webdesign is 50% of that page’s words. This used to be a very sneaky trick to beat Google and get a good ranking very easily. With only 2 or 3 word son your page you beat their software and get ranked top for that keyword.

That doesn’t work anymore, the last few years have saw all the search engines become very efficient at recognizing doorway pages and punishing them.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi,

I should point out that I will include setting up an email address ( you@yourdomain.com ) as part of my service if you ask me for it. There’s a few options for you to select from.

 The easiest and best is for you to use Outlook Express or another POP email client running on your computer that logs onto your website’s server and downlaods any emails sent to your address. I just configure the software and email you the passwords and logins for you to add into your own software and away you go.

You could also take the information I give you in the example above but instea dof using an email client on your PC you could use your externam Hotmail, Yahoo!, Gmail or Lycos accounts to collect your emails from the server. The only thing is unlike using a POP email client the emails you send a reply to will be from your Hotmail / Yahoo! etc address and not from you@yourdomain.com .

 The third alternative is more tricky for both of us, so I may need to charge a small additional fee. It involves setting up email software on your domains server, like your own version of Hotmail (but less advanced) and you’d log into your server and then you’d have your own email system there. To be honest the first option is by far the best and easiest.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi,

I work a lot with people wanting to set up a small business online, or have a website designed in order to attract customers to their existing small business. As many people know you can’t just build a webiste, submit it to Google, yahoo! and MSN and expect to get 10,000 visitors a month. You have to get other websites to link to your website, keep adding content to the site and update it occasionally to keep it fresh.

As an after sales service I can provide you with fee tips to achive good SEO yourself, as well as cheap and trustworthy places to go to promote your website. I can also be taken on occasioanally to do some extra work for you - add a webpage, add new content, build links and it’s cheaper than the original price as I already have the website designed, it’s just adding the cntent and updating the rest of the website.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi,

I’m goinf to update the website in August to showcase my new portfolio and contain snap shots of all the website’s I’ve designed. When I first published this website I didn’t include a portfolio, I think including one will increase sales.

I’ll also show off some of the cheap flash website’s I’ll be offering. They’ll be slightly more expensive than the regular websites I design.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi,

 If you’re needing a website designed that will involve writing a script, I can help you find a script writer. Scripts are like programs that process information a visitor enters. A good example of a script is ebay.com - you can enter details of the auctiona nd the script publishes it in a database within it’s own webapge.

Most things you’ll use scripts for already have 100s of free ones already written, and I can certinly installt hem in your website for you. But if you reqire a specilist one written a script writer usually charges £200-£1000. I can often get you a discount on this as I hire them on an agent to agent basis.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi,

 The reason I can design websites soo cheap is simple - I’m not! I offer a reasonable price for my work, it’s other greedy webdesigners who produce the same quality sites as me who charge unreasonable prices.

How can they do this, I hear you ask? Well, I charge by the hour on a decent hourly wage (£7/hr) they make up their prices due to value. They know websites are a way of advertising and even small ones can easily bring in 50,000 visitors over their lifetime. So they charge their price baded on the value of 50,000 visitors. But often they don’t deliver even half of that because they only design a website and you need continous support to get search engine rankings. That’s why I charge by the hour - it’s more fair.

 So contact me for SANE website design prices. http://www.cheap-websitedesign.co.uk

Thanks,

Andy