Website Design

Clean, Functional, and Easy to Use Websites

Rocky Mount Website Design – Most small businesses don’t need an elaborate or expensive website to tell their customers their story. Most website developers only create either expensive, or poor quality websites. We provide affordable and transparent quality.

Attractive
Easy to use
Mobile Friendly

Things to Know

Before making a website design decision, review the following key factors of how Websites fit into the business marketing mix, what you need to be ready to make one, and what to avoid.

What should be on a website?

It’s important that a website is both visually appealing and useful to your customers and potential customers. Your website should include, at the minimum, who you are, what you do, where you do it, and how to contact you. With the near extinction of the phone book, your website is now expected to be a source of reliable and updated information – don’t let it fall too far in your priorities list!

The Importance of Website Content

Aside from the bare-bones basics of information to include on your website, you must include content in order to capture new customers. Search engines such as Google and the human brain have something in common – they determine if your business is reliable and worth looking into by words you provide them. Understanding the intricacies of Google algorithms isn’t something I’d expect the average business owner to do, so as simply as I can put it, include two paragraphs of good content per page.

What does UX mean?

UX is a fairly new term. It is a shortened term for User Experience, and is an important part of website design. If your “Contact Us” button is in an unusual location, or if your website plays music very loudly upon arrival, or has several popups interrupting your guests, you may be providing a poor user experience. It’s easy to track, however, by looking at a metric called bounce-rate, which is the percentage of website visitors who immediately leave your website without browsing. Maybe your visitors are browsing your website and choosing to shop with you, but the link to “How to find us” is broken. UX is important, and an outsider’s perspective on your website can help identify some of those issues.

Aren't websites expensive?

Yes, and no. There are many excellent opportunities for inexpensive website setup and maintenance. Unfortunately, some lack visual appeal, some lack functionality, and most designers or companies offering attractive websites with everything you need tend to charge exorbitantly expensive one-time rates, or high monthly fees. We’re here to resolve those issues. There’s nothing that’s “too good to be true” but we do guarantee that we’ll build you a functional, attractive website for less money than what most companies charge for a functional, attractive website. Most small businesses just simply don’t need anything extravagant, and our custom websites start at $500 setup + $20/month for hosting and basic maintenance.

How long does it take to have a website made?

In most cases, you can have a website up and running within a week or two. In cases of e-commerce with a lot of inventory options, it may take longer. Highly technical websites may need continuous work to improve content. Most small businesses could have a website up and running within 2 days, outside of the time it may take to transfer an existing domain (url or web address) to the hosting platform (internet database that stores your website), and possibly setup of a new hosting platform.

Why do I have to pay for my websites over and over again?

The costs associated with having a website often include: Design, hosting, domain registration, SSL certificates, domain privacy, and updates. Most business owners are okay with paying for the design, hosting and domain, but hesitate to pay for the other things if they can avoid it. That’s no problem! If you’re not sure why you should or shouldn’t pay for something related to your website, let us know. We’ll explain the pros and cons and let you decide.

I paid for a website just 2 years ago, I don't need a new one, do I?

I hope not! A website should be a good investment for your organization. However, many business owners (and small website design companies) fail to update websites when the “internet” changes. This could be a change in the Google algorithms, a change in HTML standardization, a change in web browsers, or something else that makes your website no longer operate the way it should. Your website needs regular updates or even a 2 year old site could be failing you! This is especially true when a site is built on a platform such as WordPress, where updates to the platform are even more common (often every week).

I think I need a new website, how do I get started?

Send us an email. We’ll review what you already have and schedule a time for a consultation where we’ll ask questions to determine what your current website goals are, what future plans you have, and technical information about your current hosting/domain/website situation.

If you have any other questions, please contact us.

Expert Advice

Our primary purpose is to see other small businesses succeed. Whether you’re looking for website design or not, come back regularly to read our free advice column for marketing yourself and your company. If you have any questions you’d like to answered in the column, drop a line.

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