elsey adcock design | graphic design, websites, content creation, strategy

Investing wisely in a website

6 pointers to help business owners

Flexible design is the key

No themes and low-code. That's our approach.

But what does that mean?

Themes can lock you in to fixed layouts and colour schemes. Instead, consider using site builder software to control the design and personalise your site.

For example, we use Visual Composer with WordPress. This allows rapid prototyping, flexible design and easy updates, without the restrictions of a theme.

We also adopt a low-code approach using drag and drop elements to build pages. This makes it easy to add features quickly. Elements can be customised with code to enhance the design further.

All these things reduce time to build prototypes, draft pages and make changes, leading to lower costs for you.

Be Clear & Don't over specify

Have a clear idea of the pages and content your site needs to brief the designer. This will help them give you an accurate estimate of the work required.

Give some examples of sites you like to help with direction, but remember the site should reflect your own business.

It's easy to waste resources on expensive website tools or features you don't need. Discuss your ideas with your designer, as often things that appear very simple on a page are technically complex to achieve and may blow your budget.

Keep it up-to-date

It's important to keep things up-to-date, especially if you use social media with your website as marketing tools.

Of course, you can update the website yourself, but consider how much that will actually cost in your own time and resources.

In many cases it's cheaper to ask your designer to make updates for you, after all that's their job. And they will make sure it looks great. Ask your designer for a price for updates.

Security, Privacy, Data Protection

Since the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) website owners have a responsibility to guard against loss of personal data. Therefore, it's wise to avoid storing this kind of information in your website database.

However, you will probably want to gather customer details for marketing purposes, or take payments online. In these cases we recommend using third party providers, such as Mailchimp or Shopify, with their own robust security to store your valuable data.

We integrate with these all the time to keep data secure.

Don't skimp on hosting & Support

In our experience you get what you pay for when it comes to web hosting.

To that end, we use WP Engine to host our client sites. They offer SSL (Secure Connection), an excellent staging (prototyping) and backup system, modern hosting architecture and built-in caching to make your site as fast as possible across all devices.

What about support? While your site is hosted on our WP Engine account we deal with all technical support issues for you. Just call or email us.

Who owns it?

Make sure you can take ownership of your site and or hosting. If you want to change designer or run the site yourselves in the future you need to know this is possible.

We can assign any of our hosting accounts to a customer free of charge* through WP Engine, as long as they have an account. So your investment is safely in your hands

* You will need to purchase your own licenses for any licensed software we have used in your site.

Find out about our Modular websites for SMEs and Startups . Prices start at £495 + VAT.