The Central Coast based restaurant and cafe, “Delish of Erina” redesigned their new website to take their business to the next level and enhance their overall business image.

The website had a custom design created to change and enhance their existing image. We gave the design warm earthy tones but also kept a clean crisp layout to represent the quality and fresh food Delish serves. 

The website has a CMS behind the scenes that allows the menus to be updated, news items to be added and a email marketing newsletter system to be managed.

Here’s what Delish had to say:

“ When looking for a web designer, Big Click Studios stood out from the rest. Justin and Dean responded to my initial enquiry very quickly and were very professional throughout the entire process of design to completion. We are delighted with our finished website and look forward to the business it will generate for us. Thank you very much for all the work you have done, we look forward to a continued working relationship in the future.”

Bree Tebbutt (www.delishoferina.com.au)

The site design strongly promotes a newsletter sign up. The newsletter informs subscribers of upcoming events, news and catering specials. The email marketing aspect of the website is a strong marketing advantage to “Delish of Erina” and they hope to use it as a way to inform and communicate with their clientele. 

The website will hopefully generate new business and exposure for “Delish of Erina” on the Central Coast, Sydney and Hunter areas of NSW, Australia.

There are many ways to promote your business online and each one deserves it own article. Ill just brush over the main online marketing techniques below.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search engine optimisation or SEO is a hugely successful method of online marketing. SEO is the name given to the process of optimising a website to rank high in the search engines. SEO takes a lot of effort and time to successfully gain high rankings.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is another globally excepted form of online marketing. Many website ask for you to subscribe to a newsletter or you might get emails that look like a website strait into you inbox at home. This is email marketing. If you collect emails from your clients or customers you can send out promotional information, news, offers and notes direct to their inbox. 

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

The most demanding technique for online marketing is Pay Per Click Advertising. Pay per click advertising is offered by all the major search engines. You can bid and pay for your choice of key phrases and your website will appear in the search engine’s sponsored listings. This is an easier technique to get instant returns on investments but it does cost more.

Paid Listing on Web Directories

There are millions of online business directories available for free and for a price. Most of the web directories offer the facility of submitting your website within their relevant categories. Some charge some money for that which can be annual or on monthly basis. After paying, your website will appear on their directory within the relevant category.

The design of the website must be appealing and inviting to the user. Think of your website the same as you would your shopfront or signage. If your shopfront windows are dirty, there’s graffiti on the wall and a tipped over garbage can outside your door, it’s unlikely you’ll get any customers. It doesn’t matter what you have inside because nobody will even get inside! This is the same as your website home page design. It needs to capture your website visitors using a design that reflects your product or service in an attractive way.

Your web design is crutial in capturing the viewers attention and insuring they browse deeper into the website. The design needs to reflect your companies service or product. The colours, the layout and the overall web design should give the user a first impression that leads them further into the websites content.

There should be clear page elements defined in the web design that highlight the website’s goal whether it be buying a product, subscribing online or making an enquiry. The design of the web page is essential in making the end goal call-to-action prominent and clear.

The web design needs to appeal to your target audience. If your business is more corporate and serious like a law firm you probably would not want to use a hot pink design with floral background. However if your business sells flowers and chocolates for weddings, a hot pink web design may be better suited.

Overall the design of your website is very important in generating you business. The content, the functionality and the sales pitch all go hand-in-hand with the web design and if the design does not compliment the others you’ll find you wont get as many sales.

Different web design companies favor different programing languages. There is different code and programming used for the front-end of the website ( the bit that you see ), than the back-end ( the bit that makes it work ) . Generally the web design companies specialise in one or two programming languages but very rarely them all.

The languages used for the front-end are pretty generic across the web design industry and you have probably heard of a few of them. The major ones are HTML, CSS and Javascript. Just about every website has been designed using these front-end programming languages. The front-end code determines the structure, design, layout and navigation of the website. This code would normally refer to images placed in a folder and position them to make the website look like is all fits together. A basic website can be built using only these tools. To add more functionality and complicated features you will need some back-end programming to make it work.

The back-end programming languages are very different to their front-end counterparts, but generally they need to work together to make the design and function come together as one. The main back-end languages used are PHP, ASP, JSP, Coldfusion and .Net. These languages are used for what is called a dynamic website. Dynamic websites are normally connected to a database which stores information for the website and can be updated using a content management system (CMS). It can store all the text, the images, statistics, members and anything else. The database can display and cross reference any data stored - which makes it a powerful tool in building larger websites.

At Big Click Studios we pay very careful attention to the front-end html and css. You will notice most of our websites have W3C validating code which means it’s perfect! Our back-end programming work is also perfect but you’ll have to take our word for it as there is no official validation that can test and read the code. At Big Click we favor PHP over all other languages, PHP is free, its robust and very powerful. We combine our web design skills and our programming skills to create websites that are perfect.

Sooner or later, a website redesign becomes an essential task every business needs to undertake. The questions are, how often should your website design be updated and how do you know when it is due for an update? There are many factors that can contribute to your website needing a redesign; an out of date style, poor goal conversions or search engine rankings not high enough.

An out of date look and feel

Your website may be looking out of date and not use the current design trends. It is very important that a website looks good and the design layout targets your demographic. The way a website presents visually can make, or break, a sale. Your design should reflect your company’s image and product, which will then also appeal to your demographic.  Web design trends change just like any fad or fashion. If you look at the current trend, it tends to have lots of white space, rounded corners and glassy, stylized elements. Most web designers would refer to this style as Web2.0. Web2.0 is just one of many styles that are popular today. Each website is different and they all should have a unique design to compliment their function. You can compare a websites look and feel to the look and feel of the latest model cars. Most car brands have a new model out every 2 years or so. The new model will always look more striking, run more smoothly and probably go faster. It is much the same with new websites. An out of date website or older model car might still get you from A to B and look ok, but a newer model will alway out perform it’s predecessor.

Poor goal conversion

Your website may not be converting as many goals at what you would like it to. A goal conversion could be a sale, a sign-up or an enquiry-Basically, it’s whatever you would like your visitors to do when they get to your site. There are a number of aspects that can contribute to a poor goal conversion; A confusing layout can distract your website visitor from continuing with their session. Old technology might impact the user’s perception of your business, due to the site looking out of date or it simply not working. A website redesign would address all these issues and almost certainly increase your goal conversions.

Search engine rankings

Search engine rankings are the most important factor in generating sales through your website. You may have the best looking website and a very efficient goal-funneling process but without traffic, your website is useless. If your website is out of date there could be elements that need to be updated to follow the latest search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. A website redesign would potentially give your website a much better result… And let’s face it… how many people actually look any further than the second page of Google?

There are lots of different web design companies that specilise in different areas and create very different styles of website. Some may appeal to people with a lower budget looking for a quick simple online presence and some may be willing to spend that extra bit to develop a state-of-the-art online presence and create a valuable business asset.

It’s worth contacting a few web design companies to get an idea of what they can offer for your budget. Some web designers offer package deals which are quite useful for a quick and easy way to get online. The packages generally have a set number of pages, limited features and a basic template design. However, if you business needs a more customised solution a package deal is not the way to go.

For a more customised solution you will most likely need to have a discussion with a web designer so they can ascertain the best way to transfer your ideas and vision into a functioning, visually appealing website. They will then develop a price based on the complexity of the project.

For your no obligation quote contact us today and take your business to the next level.

The number one feature of a website is the content - everything else is secondary. The website should be designed around the content and nothing else. However, the design of the content and the page layout is integral to the success of the website. Let’s use an example to explain this further. Say you need to find a solution to unblocking a kitchen sink and you search for exactly that using a search engine. The first site you click on has a large logo with a very pretty background and some fading pictures. This doesn’t really tell you much, but, the second result you click on has a lot of text, no graphics and a large heading saying “How to unblock the kitchen sink”. I know which one I’d choose to read more about.

What if you combined the two? Display a clear heading with formated text, some fading images and a diagram. This option would be a more attractive and, to the audience, a more inviting read. The perfect website is designed in a way where the design and the content both compliment each other. The web template should exaggerate the key areas that need to be more visible and if needed tone down the less important aspects.

Any experienced web designer will be able to create an effective design that promotes your product or service. They will determine what your goals are and then create a web design that best serves your websites purpose.

TDG Building’s aim was to bring in more business though search engines and hopefully become their main source of business leads.

After the website was complete and live for a few weeks, it was starting to rank already and was displaying on the first page of the search engines for Central Coast building!  We were quite impressed with the result and now, a few months on, TDG Building are now consistently ranked number one.

TDG Building’s website has our custom built CMS behind it and allowing them to easily update and manage their content. The site is visually appealing and uses flash elements to enhance the design.

TDG building now have a professional logo, stationary, signage and a top quality website that ranks very well. Here’s what TDG Building had to say:

“Karen and I would like to thank Big Click Studios for all their efforts in creating the website for TDG Building, we are extremely happy with the outcome.

Justin & Dean went the extra mile when asked to assist us with the design work for our business logo, office stationary and signage for the company ute, we gave the guys our ideas and requests for the designs and they were executed perfectly without delay. We also found the guys to be very helpful and patient with us considering that we were not very computer savvy when it came to website & design work!

We wanted to lift the profile of TDG Building and we feel that we have accomplished this through the assistance of Big Click Studios.

Many Thanks,

Troy & Karen Gruden
TDG Building. “

Clear Page Goal

All websites should have a clear goal or page action. Ask yourself the question what do you want the users to do when they visit you website? The goal could be to sign-up, to register, to email or to buy something. Whatever the goal, it should be the most prominent design element on the page to draw the users attention. 

Design Flow

The page should flow easily. You may be thinking what on earth I am talking about, however, the page design flow is one of the most important factors in designing a website. We naturally scan from left to right and top to bottom. Your eye should flow through the web design with ease from element to element.

Navigation

The navigation is how the user travels or navigates around the website. the navigation is normally a bar or left column that is visible on all the website pages. A good navigation bar does not have too many items. You should probably keep the navigation to under ten items so not to give the user too many options. Keep the navigation items relevant to the main website sections

Colour Balance

The colour balance of the web page goes hand in hand with the page goal and design flow. The tones and strengths of the colours can draw the users attention to the areas you want them to look at. Most webpages use contrast and coloured panels to highlight key areas.

White Space

White space is very important. One big mistake web designers make is using all available space and not using the white space. They try to cram too much information into the web page space commonly refereed to as “above the fold”. If an element has white space around it, the element will stand out compared to an object that does not have white space.

Font Styling

The font styling contributes to the balance of the web page. The main paragraph text should be the same size and have the appropriate line and letter spacing to add to the readability. The titles or headings should be a larger size that the paragraph text to differentiate it and to symbolise its importance as the heading. There should not be too many fonts in use on the page, the heading 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and paragraph text should be all you need. The headings should be used in the order of their importance and also be represented visually.

There are so many variables that factor into the cost of a website that make is very hard to put a set figure on the cost. A lot of web designers or web design companies do offer package website deals but they have to stick within their specified package outline otherwise they run the risk of losing money. 

You could compare the question, how much does a website cost? to the question, how much does a car cost? the answer most people would give is, it depends on the type of car, do you want an economical run-about like a corolla or a top-of-the-range M3 BMW. There are lots of extras available with every car you can buy and the same principle applies to a website. 

The best way to find out how much a website costs is to contact a web designer with your project brief and they can give you a quote based on your specific requirements. If they have a package website deal running, they can advise you whether your brief will fit into it.