Website Archives | James Dowen

Tag: Website

A new website for Certes IT Recruitment

Certes approached me with the vision of bringing their current website at the time up to a more modern and sleek design, that better reflects the industry that they serve – IT recruitment. In a competitive market like this, it’s important that well established agencies like Certes maintain their high profile web presence with an update to date website to stay current. Below is how their website looked prior to design and development work:

As well as providing a new design, we also worked on eliminating many unnecessary pages, especially after they were advised of how easy it is to lose a users attention, and how simple navigation is vital to creating a positive user journey on any website.

The job searching process is more streamlined than before, allowing users to easily search for jobs through various filters. Following that, the simple application process is made simpler if the user has an account, allowing them to easily apply to jobs without having to fill in their information or upload their CV every time.

We developed an API alongside their job software provider to connect the two systems together, meaning when jobs are posted on their internal systems, they are also pushed to their main website. This works both ways; as when a user applies to a job, this application gets automatically sent to their internal software.

Content pages are also much easier to digest, with a reduction in lengthy text and the introduction of more relevant imagery.

Overall, Certes is well deserving of their long overdue redesigned and redeveloped website. Visit their new website at https://certes.co.uk/

5 things to consider when creating a website

January 30, 2017 / James / 0 Comments

A website is important to any business. It is a customers first port of call when they require information, potential customers visit your website to find out more, and for a lot of people their website is even their primary income source. But when you are getting a new website, or completely revamping your current one, there’s a lot to consider.

There’s often some things that people fail to consider which may have negative impacts on the website in the near future…

1) Is my website responsive?

A responsive website (or mobile and tablet friendly as some may call it) is important today as it will accommodate the ever growing mobile user-base. Over half of internet traffic comes from a mobile device, and if your new website is not suitable for browsing on a mobile device, then potential customers will most likely leave the site.

2) Website Hosting

You’ll find there’s often very cheap web hosting available for as little as £1.99 per month. While this seems good on paper, I’ve seen many people become let down over the years by poor service levels, resulting in a lot of downtime for their site. 100% uptime of your websites server is a necessity. If someone visits your website while it’s down, stats show that 87% will not return again.

3) Social Media Integration

This is expected by most today, therefore making it mandatory that your site users can easily interact with you on social media via your website. Whether this be links to your social media profiles so you can easily be found, or embedding social feeds, site visitors expect to be able to find this information easily.

4) Security

I once worked at an agency who mainly built WordPress websites for their clients. While this wasn’t an issue in the short term, the longer term often seen plugins and themes not kept up to date – causing security vulnerabilities to appear. Sites would often be attacked with spam comments, spam links, technical errors and so on; not a great look for those visiting your site. This can easily be prevented by keeping site and server software up to date, or using secure programming methods if going down the bespoke route.

5) Content

It used to be said that content was king. Although things have changed on the web over the years, this still appears to be the case in most cases. It’s important that all text is unique and not copy/pasted from another website. Doing this will flag your website as duplicate content to search engines, thus resulting in a possible site ban and loss of traffic. Duplicate content isn’t the only worry though; content must be engaging and of a high quality.

This is just a handful of five factors to consider when creating your new website. The list could go into the hundreds, and it varies from site to site. A small business site would have less factors than a large-scale ecommerce website.

8 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use a Website Builder

October 10, 2014 / James / 1 Comment

A lot of websites I come across are often built with free (or cheap) and nasty website builders. Why? Because people think they are getting a top of the range website for no more than £15 per month. But they’re wrong. Here’s a list of 10 reasons as to why you shouldn’t use a website builder…

1) You don’t own the website

When using a website builder, you don’t actually own the website you create. The company who operates the service you are using own the website.

2) SEO tends to be a no no

Website builders do almost nothing to optimize your website for search engines. The structure of the content they produce is poor, and no care seems to be taken when a website is generated. Not forgetting that a lot of site builders use Flash, which Google cannot read or index.

3) Poor designs

Despite the fact that website builders offer hundreds (or even thousands) of ready made templates, they all tend to look like they’ve been stolen from Microsoft Powerpoint’s template directory. They are old and amateur.

4) A website can be built in 30 minutes

Seriously, it takes longer to bake a cake, or cook your dinner. If you value your business or organisation, then surely you’d put more time, effort and money into the website that will represent you. A website is usually the first thing people see before contacting you. It has to reflect that you offer a quality service or product, and that you are professional.

5) You don’t have a proper domain name

Is a web address such as mybusiness.webs.com really that professional? I think not. Your website needs to be at a memorable domain, such as mybusiness.com.

6) Adverts

Is having “THIS WEBSITE WAS CREATED BY 1&1 MY WEBSITE” plastered all over your website ideal? Just think about it…

7) You’re paying forever

So £30 per month seems cheap, right? Total that up for a year. Or even 3 years. It’s not so cheap afterall. Yes you will find plans that start off free (or at a discounted rate), but they do not stay free forever. There’s not a lot of free things in the world today.

However, if you was to hire a professional web designer or web developer, then you’d end up paying a one off fee that usually costs less than your site builder fees.

8) They don’t care

The people who make these website builders do not value your business and they do not care about your success. However, an agency or a freelancer works with you for as long is possible to ensure you get the success that you wish for.