Tag: Charlotte website design

5 Potential Obstacles to Your Website Project and How to Overcome Them

Posted on by jenny

As a website design and development company, you’d think we’d encourage anyone to build a website anytime they’re ready. Websites are an important asset, and keeping a website up-to-date and with modern design and functionality is something that most companies need in order to thrive.

However, after working with clients for over a decade, we have come to recognize certain situations that signal a need to take a minute before jumping into a website project. There are times when we uncover issues that need to be addressed before we begin.

If you’re considering a website project and wonder if now’s the time to start one, this list will probably assure you that you have what it takes. However, if any of these situations sound a bit familiar, there could be some work that needs to be done prior to beginning a website project.

Either way, our team at Bellaworks is here to help! We’re a small shop, and our core business is building websites and servicing our website design and development clients. We do all of our website work in-house from kickoff to launch. Plus, we provide hosting services. 

We can help your team overcome obstacles so that you can enjoy a smooth website process and finish with great results. 

5 Potential Obstacles to Your Website Project and How to Overcome Them

Reason #1: Your Company’s Management is Not Really on Board

Sometimes there can be a disconnect between the owners of a company and the person who oversees marketing efforts. 

The marketing director may see so clearly the potential that exists through a new or redone website. The business owner may agree to move forward with the website project, however, when it’s time for decisions to be made, they can have some reservations.

Sometimes business owners have a hard time making changes to the things they think made them successful. We’ve also heard people say that their last website project was so poorly run by another company that they dread doing one ever again. These are just two of several reasons we’ve heard that the management team just can’t seem to get on board.  

Bellaworks has worked with companies in a variety of capacities to overcome hesitancy and ease the perceived pain points on the way to creating a new website. 

Reason #2: Cost

Understandably, cost is an important factor. Companies need a quality website at a price that makes sense for their business. Since websites can range in price from free to many thousands of dollars, finding the right fit for your budget is important. 

In order to determine the cost of a website project, Bellaworks starts by discussing a client’s goals. Then, we scope the work involved. We determine whether an existing website can be updated or if it’s more cost effective to build a new website. If we determine it’s better to build a new website, we can discuss building it on a template or from scratch.

Our Bellaworks team always aims to find the most cost effective solution to achieve our clients’ goals. Having a clean, modern, responsive, secure website that positions your company in the best way possible is like having a great salesperson who is always on the job. There are many options that Bellaworks can offer, and you can rest assured that any website we build will be high quality and a great reflection on your company.

Reason #3:  Unsure of How to Present Products or Services

Descriptions of your products or services are a core component of a website. Yet, sometimes business owners can have a hard time describing their services to potential clients. We’ve seen this with clients ranging from business consultants to service people.

While we can’t make decisions regarding what services your company offers, we can help you present them in a compelling way on your website.

We like to help by offering suggestions for setting up your website navigation and information structure. We also provide clients with a content guide that has tips for preparing content. Many clients also choose to partner with our copywriting expert, who can really remove the burden of copywriting.

So long as you can outline the service or product you want to offer, we can help you package it and sell it on your website with compelling copywriting.

Reason #4:  You Don’t Have the Visuals that You Need

Some companies offer products and services that require the use of specific photos on a website. For example, if you are selling the use of a physical location or property, you need photos of it. Or, if you are offering a particular product, you probably want photos of your product.

It’s always preferable to have your photos ready before you start on website design. Our designer is inspired by photos, and good photos can really enhance a site. However, if you don’t have the photos you need, placeholder photos can be used temporarily. Custom photos aren’t needed for every company, and for service providers, we often rely on stock photography. 

At Bellaworks, we discuss your photography and video needs in our first meeting, so we can plan the best way to ensure you have the materials you need and get the best design for your website. We have excellent photographers and videographers that we can recommend to help you get the photos that you need.

Reason #5:  Not Prepared to Respond to Inquiries

Typically, one of the main jobs of a website is to generate next step actions from potential customers. The next step usually includes a request for more information or an interaction of some kind such as a quote for services, a newsletter sign-up, or even a phone consultation. 

We recently talked with one small business owner who provides a service. He said that he would like to have a website, however, his business is already booked. He doesn’t have anyone who can handle inquiries, so he doesn’t think a website makes sense right now.

Deciding how to interact with potential customers is an important part of planning a website. We discuss many different options with our clients in order to find the solution that works best for them. Generally, we are able to identify the right next step that will help our businesses move forward without overwhelming them.

In Conclusion

Our team at Bellaworks has been designing and developing websites for over a decade. We have experienced so many situations with our clients and have helped them to overcome countless obstacles that could have prevented them from building a great website. 

Reach out to us. Our team will be in touch with you quickly to begin discussing your project.

5 Reasons Why Bellaworks Uses WordPress for Website Design and Development

Posted on by jenny

If you’re in the market for a new or updated website, you’re probably seeing lots of different options that are available for website design and development. From Wix to Weebly to Shopify and Squarespace, there are so many products out there.  

At Bellaworks, we build websites exclusively on WordPress. Our small but mighty team both designs and develops websites in-house, giving us full control of the process and the results. We’ve built websites for small and large companies in a wide variety of industries. No two websites are ever the same. 

Here are some of the reasons why WordPress is our platform of choice and what advantages it has for you as a consumer.

Market Dominance

Almost one-third of all websites are built on WordPress. It’s the most widely known and supported website content management system (CMS). WordPress is an exceedingly flexible platform that can serve a wide variety of websites. 

One key advantage to business owners is that WordPress websites are very portable. Many industry professionals know WordPress and will be able to work on your website. It’s like having a car that most mechanics can work on versus a rare import that no one can find parts for or fix.

Easy to Update

As far as websites are concerned, WordPress sites have very user-friendly back-end dashboards. With training, even people with little tech experience can quickly learn to make updates to a WordPress site. 

It’s important to keep your website updated with current information and fresh content, and the ease of doing so is obviously crucial. Our Bellaworks clients appreciate the ability to login and make changes to copywriting, add blog posts, or switch out photos as the need arises. Some of our clients prefer to have us make updates by initiating a work order.  

Flexible Functionality 

WordPress is compatible with a wide range of plugins and other software that can be very helpful in extending the functionality of your website. Plugins are individual pieces of software that can be downloaded and added to your website. You can think of them like apps that you add to your phone. Plugins can help increase speed, security, and SEO, and they can capture leads and so much more. There are both free and paid options available. 

Websites can and should do more than just provide information about your company. They can provide tools that help you work more efficiently and effectively, and plugins are a way of adding these tools.   

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

WordPress is widely regarded as one of the best platforms to use in order to build SEO with the search engines. It has countless tools and options you can use to help you format your copy and photos to help build SEO.

One of these tools is a free plugin called YoastSEO. Yoast can help you optimize your website’s content in order to connect with the search engines. For example, you can customize page URLs with user-friendly keywords for which you want your website to be found. You can optimize the size of photos so your pages load quickly and add alt text with words and phrases that can be found in searches. It can help you format your pages with headlines and subheadings that help the search engines understand information on your website. 

If SEO is important, WordPress is an excellent choice for your website.

Hosting

Our WordPress websites are self-hosted, meaning that you choose your own hosting provider. You own your WordPress files and have full control of them through your login credentials. You can select the hosting provider that has the right combination of speed, service, security, and price for your website.

WordPress allows you options with hosting, just like it does with so many other areas of website ownership. When you host with Bellaworks, you are backed by the Bellaworks team and you can have live support 24/7 from a team of hosting experts. 

In Conclusion

Our team of experts at Bellaworks uses our knowledge and experience to create WordPress websites for all kinds of companies in all kinds of industries. It allows us full flexibility with design and development and our clients enjoy full flexibility with website service and support. 

Reach out to our team, and let’s get started on a new website for you.

The Three Key Pieces that Run Your Website

Posted on by jenny

If you are diving into a website design project for the first time, it can feel like entering a whole new world. Terms like “domain name” and “hosting services” get thrown around, and it can quickly become overwhelming!

To help with this, we are going to explain these three key things that you need in order to operate a website. 

  1. Website domain name
  2. Website files
  3. Website hosting

This will give you some understanding of what these services are and the different types of options for each one.

Website Domain

Simply put, a website domain is a website’s home address on the internet. 

Domains can have different extensions like .com, .net, .org, .edu and so on. The value in the common extensions like .com or .org is simply that they are standard and easy for people to use and remember. 

Domains are purchased through registrars like GoDaddy or Namecheap. A domain price can change based on add-ons and services, but the price for the actual domain will be the same regardless of where you buy it. The price is based on what the sellers think that the market will bear. Common names that might appeal to many people can be expensive. Unique names are often cheaper. Either way, simple names that are easy to use are preferable.

Pro tip:

Once you purchase your domain name, you need to keep up with the renewals. The invoices are usually sent by the registrars via email, and they can be easily missed. If your domain is up for renewal and your credit card on file has expired, your domain can fail to renew. If this happens, your website will go down, and you will likely spend hours fixing the mess. In order to avoid all of this, Bellaworks offers clients the option of keeping domains in our account. We keep up with the renewals to make sure you never miss one.

Fun Fact:

Curious as to how domains work? Here’s a quick explanation. 

Computers talk to each other using numerical IP addresses. While this works great for computers, it’s not very user friendly for humans. So, when you type a website address into an internet browser, that domain name helps route you to a server that decodes it into an IP address. Then, you’re pointed to the specific website that you want to access. Handy, right!

You might wonder… What’s the difference between a URL and a domain name?

The URL is the complete address of a specific webpage. A domain name is the root address for an entire website.

Here’s an example:

URL = https://bellaworksweb.com/about

Domain name is in bold.

Website Files

Did you know that websites are really a bunch of files? Yep. The pages are designed and laid out with your copywriting, photos, etc. and then they are developed, or coded, on a platform. 

At Bellaworks, we build all of our websites on WordPress. We can use preset design templates or we can custom build your website from scratch. Once we build your website, you will own the files, and there is no ongoing subscription type fee just to have your website files. 

Fun fact:

When we build a new WordPress website, we will build it on a development server. Once your website is built, we will compress and save your old website files and send them to you if you’d like to keep them. We will then redirect your domain from your old website files to your new files. This cuts out website downtime and makes the process very smooth.

Pro Tip:

Imagine you are updating some content on your website and something goes haywire. Your page is all of a sudden a mess, and you can’t figure out how to fix it. Agh! One huge safety net is having access to daily backups of your website files. This way if your site is ever compromised for any reason, you can quickly roll back to the last copy of your website files.

Hosting

A website host provides stable and secure storage for your website files so they can be easily accessed by internet users. Quality hosting contributes to the proper functioning of your website and a good user experience. In turn, this can affect your website’s position in search engine returns.  

There are many different types of hosting options available with a variety of price points. Less expensive hosting typically offers customers space on a shared server. Your price may be low but the risk of your site being compromised will be high because the environment will be less secure. On the other end of the spectrum, you can have your own dedicated server where you host just your website. This cuts security and performance risks but increases your costs. 

At Bellaworks, we provide high-quality hosting services that balance security, space, and price. We use managed WordPress hosting. This type of hosting goes beyond just providing a spot on the internet. It includes additional support that helps optimize the performance and security of your website in order to keep it running smoothly. This can include blocking malware and hacking attempts at the server level, making sure you’re always running the latest and most secure version of WordPress, and caching your pages to ensure fast loading. Also, our clients can have access to real live human support 24/7 should they ever need help, like a copy of a website backup file.

In Conclusion

Our team at Bellaworks hopes this article helps demystify these three key pieces that combine to run your website. If you have any further questions or want to talk about your website or hosting, please contact us. We are always happy to share more information about how all of this works so our clients can make the best decisions for their company. 

 

 

 

6 Reasons Why You Should Use Video On Your Website’s Home Page

Posted on by jenny

Over the last couple of years, our Charlotte website design clients have been making some really fantastic use of high-quality video. With the changes that are underway with Google Analytics, video stands to offer even more benefits to the companies who incorporate it into their website. If you’re considering a website design project, you’ve probably thought about what kind of photos that you’ll use. However, have you considered adding video footage?

Here are 6 reasons why you should.

Boost Your SEO 

Google Analytics has been overhauled, and the way Google tracks website “bounces” has completely changed. Google now tracks what it calls “Engagement Rates.” If a person comes to your website and stays for 10 seconds or longer, your site gets credit for engaging a visitor. This is also the case if a visitor has at least two pageviews or completes a conversion event, such as clicking on a call-to-action button. The more people who come to your website and “engage,” according to Google’s definition, the better it is for your search results ranking.

Because a video can command a person’s attention for longer than a still photo, using video footage is an excellent way to drive visitor engagement and to boost your position in search. Video combined with well written copy plus a catchy call-to-action button is even better!

Instant Branding

A video provides an unmatched opportunity to communicate an experience, a community of people, and sense of place. It instantly gives visitors a feeling of “ah, so that’s what it’s all about.” In seconds, videos can illustrate an atmosphere and setting. Is this experience formal or casual? Outdoor, indoor, or both? It shows the people who are involved and their age, ethnicity, vibe and even characteristics like whether they have mobility challenges or other accessibility issues.

Add Movement

When we plan website design projects, we often look for ways to incorporate movement into a website. This can make a site more appealing and interesting for visitors. Movement can be accomplished in a variety of ways such as by using custom animations or sliding sections. However, nothing beats the movement that a video can offer on a website.

Show a Variety of Services or Activities

One of our most long-standing Charlotte website design clients is the US National Whitewater Center. If you know about Whitewater, then you probably know that there’s so much more to do there than just rafting and kayaking! The homepage video provides a perfect place for them to highlight the wide variety of activities that are offered at the Center. Further, the video allows them to also capitalize on other areas that we’ve covered, like movement, branding, and SEO, which are also very important to them.

Show Size/Scale

Have you ever tried to take a photo of a beautiful place and thought that the photo just didn’t capture it? We get it. When our clients want to show the scale and how impressive a location is, video is always the best bet. In fact, aerial footage using drones is often the most effective way to capture the scale of a location.

Check out this video that our client Big Beverages uses on their homepage. Big Beverages is a new bottling company that has quickly grown. They want to show their state-of-the art facility and how large and pristine it is. Mission accomplished.

Add Human Connection and Emotion

In a digital world, one of the elements that always makes a difference is showing human faces and emotion. People connect with people. People do business with people. Showing a video that truly captures human energy and emotion is a powerful component to add to a website.

Our friends and clients at The Institute for Speech and Debate could have settled for a nice group photo to use at the top of their website. Instead, they are using a short, dynamic video loop that brings their summer program to life. It contains an aerial shot that also shows the size of a summer camp session along with the energy of the group.

Bellaworks Can Help

Adding a video to your home page is a small change that can make a big difference. Contact our team, and let’s make a plan for using video to engage with your website’s visitors. We can recommend what to shoot and connect you with the right professionals to get it done.

 

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