Beautiful.Functional.Effective
Website design
Aesthetics
Most people are interested or attracted by aesthetics, even if they don’t know it. The aesthetics of a website can influence a brands credibility and perception. In fact, studies have shown a clear link between solid design and site credibility.
User Experience (UX)
There is no point in having the most beautiful website in the world, if no one can find what they want. User Experience looks at website design from the user’s perspective. As Steve Jobs said himself, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
Conversion
Most websites exist for one reason, to convert your website visitors from prospects to customers. Designing your website so that your visitors can easily understand your offer and move through the purchase process is vital.
Software We Use
Take a look at some of the programmes we use to create websites*
Elementor
Elementor is a Website Builder used by a millions of businesses and individuals. By using Elementor we can deliver beautiful websites in a fraction of the time it takes to build one writing code. More importantly, it makes it easier for us to show our clients how to use their site, which means you can make simple edits yourself.
Wordpress
Wordpress is a Content Management System (CMS). Originally it was deigned for blogging - something it still excels at - but it has also become the worlds most popular CMS fro website design, with approximately 38% (or if you prefer, 355 million) websites using the platform. There are countless alternatives to WordPress, many do an amazing job in certain areas. However, WordPress wins for us because of its flexibility.
Photoshop
Photoshop is the industry standard for photo editing and digital art for website design. There are some fantastic free alternatives, but nothing works quite like Photoshop. Whether you need to edit the colours in an image or completely remove the background, photoshop allows you to do it all.
Adobe Illustrator
Illustrator is to graphic design what Photoshop is to photo editing. We primarily use Illustrator to create and edit graphics for websites. It's a great way to work with shapes, colour, effects and typography.
Adobe Xd
Adobe XD is a prototyping tool for user experience planning. We use XD for creating wireframes to model your website design before we start to build it for real. It's much faster and easier to design and build in Xd, so you can make the big design decisions when it's easiest to change things around.
Consult. Design. Deliver
Want to know what it looks like to go from 'Do I need a website?' to growing your business with Grow U? Check out the timeline below to give you an idea of the stages we go through to complete a project.
Get in Touch
Fill in our contact form or give us a call. We will get back to you to discuss your project in detail.
Contact UsWireframing
Once we have agreed on a basic layout and the core functions for your website design, we produce a 'wireframe', this helps to visualise how the site will function without the distraction of content.
Have lookHigh-Fidelity Wireframe
Website Review 1
You can access to the website, so you can test it to make sure it look and works as expected.
At this point we can still make changes to many aspects of the design within the scope of the original project.
Website Review 2
Final review before we sign off the design and hand the site over to you. This might include minor changes and alterations.
Handover
Once you are happy the site looks and functions as you planned, we will hand the site over to you. This includes demonstrating how to access your User Dashboard and maintaining your site, unless this is something you would like us to do for you.
Hosting Your Website
Don't already have a hosting provider? Don't worry, we can help you out.
Hosting simply means where the files which make up your website are stored. Essentially, a hosting computer or server is a powerful computer which is always on and connected to the internet. When someone requests to see one of your website pages, the host computer sends the relevant data to the recipients computer. There are huge differences in price and quality of hosting companies, but they're all doing basically the same thing, sorting your website data and serving it up to people who want to access it.
We don't host websites for clients, and we have a very good reason. Hosting is actually very simple and the companies providing the services are very professional and competitive. Most web designers will be reselling the services of a much larger hosting company, so you're really adding a middle man. We believe that it is much better to show our clients how to set up their own hosting service - don't worry, it's really easy - and manage it them selves. This gives the client full control of their website and complete flexibility in making future changes. The only difference is that the bill for hosting is paid by you to the hosting company rather than by the web designer and then passed on to you.
If you know what you're doing and want to set up your own hosting account, that's great. Once the website is ready, we you just need to allow us access so we can upload it to your hosting provider. If you want us to provide ongoing maintenance and support, you'll be able to give us access to make changes to the site on your behalf.
If you don't have hosting at the moment or want to start fresh, we will can guide you through the setup process. Getting your account set up should only take a few minutes and you will quickly get the hang of it. Once you're set up, there isn't much you need to do as we can take car of the rest for you.
We use a company called SiteGround and would recommend it to our clients. Firstly, the layout and interface is very easy to use for beginners, compared to more traditional hosting companies. If you're learning about hosting, SiteGround is a great starting place. They are focussed on small and medium sized businesses and their support is excellent. In addition to great support and ease of use, their speed and uptime are rated as excellent. If you already have a hosting provider or wish to use a different company, no problem, there are loads to choose from.
What is Web Hosting?
Hosting simply means where the files which make up your website are stored. Essentially, a hosting computer or server is a big, powerful computer which is always on and connected to the internet. When someone requests to see one of your website pages, the host computer sends the relevant data to the recipients computer. There are huge differences in price and quality of hosting companies, but they’re all doing basically the same thing, sorting your website data and serving it up to people who want to access it.
How We Can Help
We don’t host websites for clients, and we have a very good reason. Hosting is actually very simple and the companies providing the services are very professional and competitive. Most web designers will be reselling the services of a much larger hosting company, so you’re really adding a middle man. We believe that it is much better to show our clients how to set up their own hosting service – don’t worry, it’s really easy – and manage it them selves. This gives the client full control of their website and complete flexibility in making future changes. The only difference is that the bill for hosting is paid by you to the hosting company rather than by the web designer and then passed on to you.
Setting Up Your Hosting
If you know what you’re doing and want to set up your own hosting account, that’s great. Once the website is ready, we you just need to allow us access so we can upload it to your hosting provider. If you want us to provide ongoing maintenance and support, you’ll be able to give us access to make changes to the site on your behalf.
If you don’t have hosting at the moment or want to start fresh, we will can guide you through the setup process. Getting your account set up should only take a few minutes and you will quickly get the hang of it. Once you’re set up, there isn’t much you need to do as we can take car of the rest for you.
Hosting Providers
We use a company called SiteGround and would recommend it to our clients. Firstly, the layout and interface is very easy to use for beginners, compared to more traditional hosting companies. If you’re learning about hosting, SiteGround is a great starting place. They are focussed on small and medium sized businesses and their support is excellent. In addition to great support and ease of use, their speed and uptime are rated as excellent. If you already have a hosting provider or wish to use a different company, no problem, there are loads to choose from.
Get SiteGround web hosting here.
Other Software
We provide everything you need to get started, but depending on your business, you might need a couple of extras.
We build websites using a tool called Elementor Pro. Why? Because it makes building beautiful websites faster and allows our clients more control, if you want it. If we continue to manage your site for you after we hand it over, we will continue to keep Elementor updated for you. If you decide not to use our support, you will need to subscribe to Elementor Pro to keep it up to date. Subscriptions for single websites cost around £36 per year.
We install free security software called Wordfence to protect your site from being hacked. They provide a firewall and security scans. If you wish to upgrade to the premium version, it costs around £73 per year. Alternatively, if you have a preferred security plugin, we will happily instal this for you. Many small businesses or individuals such as bloggers may not require paid security, but it is recommended for businesses taking online payments or storing GDPR sensitive data.
SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate encrypts the data that goes from a user's computer to the target website and back. Every time a user enters information into your site, SSL makes sure it can securely travel from their browser to your web server. If you don't have an SSL certificate your website and associated emails will be less secure. Also, you will not be able to enable HTTPS, which means your website will display as 'Not Secure' to users, not great for business!
There are different levels of SSL, although they all provide the same level of encryption, the level of validation is higher for paid SSL. If you are running an e-commerce, government or enterprise business, a paid SSL is what you need.
Elementor Pro
We build websites using a tool called Elementor Pro. Why? Because it makes building beautiful websites faster and allows our clients more control, if you want it. If we continue to manage your site for you after we hand it over, we will continue to keep Elementor updated for you. If you decide not to use our support, you will need to subscribe to Elementor Pro to keep it up to date. Subscriptions for single websites cost around £36 per year.
Security
We install free security software called Wordfence to protect your site from being hacked. They provide a firewall and security scans. If you wish to upgrade to the premium version, it costs around £73 per year. Alternatively, if you have a preferred security plugin, we will happily instal this for you. Many small businesses or individuals such as bloggers may not require paid security, but it is recommended for businesses taking online payments or storing GDPR sensitive data.
SSL
SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate encrypts the data that goes from a user’s computer to the target website and back. Every time a user enters information into your site, SSL makes sure it can securely travel from their browser to your web server. If you don’t have an SSL certificate your website and associated emails will be less secure. Also, you will not be able to enable HTTPS, which means your website will display as ‘Not Secure’ to users, not great for business!
There are different levels of SSL, although they all provide the same level of encryption, the level of validation is higher for paid SSL. If you are running an e-commerce, government or enterprise business, a paid SSL is what you need.
