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website audit news
Breaking the mould in Free Website Audits 800 536 Editor

Breaking the mould in Free Website Audits

Do you know how well your website is performing for you?

The pace at which website design and technology moves on now is staggering.   Many websites fall behind in their SEO, and in its general appearance.

We are here to audit your website

We offer a free website audit service, that we like to call a Website Healthcheck.  This is where we check over the health of your website.  This isn’t just down to speed, or if it looks ok on a phone.  It’s much more than that.  You’d be surprised at the things that can make a website unhealthy.

Our service is great because after we run the Audit, and send you the document, we like to have a chat and see how you feel about it.  If you would like us to resolve issues, we are happy to offer that service to you, but we don’t pressure sell.  We have never done that.  We dislike it ourselves, so it’s not within our remit at all.

website audit news

The Audit

Does your homepage have text?  Is it coded correctly.  Does it have vital SEO codes on it – some of you won’t have the first clue what we are talking about here, some might have an idea.  But this is why you “call in the experts”.

Most websites have images on them.  Are they optimised – what does that even mean?

Well, does your website resize them so on a big screen they are produced big, and on a mobile phone’s smaller screen, does it produce a smaller image.

Note – this is “how it appears” on screen, but literally the actual image – is it a big image.  Unless you know what you are looking for, how can you tell if the image optimization is correct.  Again, call in the experts.  We can look in the code to see if this is happening.  Trust us when we say – image optimization and resizing is very important!

For example, you have a page with a nice big wide photo of your office.  It might be around 1800 pixels wide or there abouts.  But on an iPhone, you might only need an image that is around 500pixels wide.  Your’s might be sending out a 1800pix wide image to that phone.  That’s wrong!  It should not need to do that.

This is usually down to the theme you are using.  It can mean a theme update, but sometimes it means you need a revamp – a new theme.  Uh oh.  Yep.   But after it’s done, this will make it much more Google friendly.

This is what makes it a really Responsive Website.

What else do we check for?  A myriad of items.

SEO Headers and titles

It’s seems rather obvious, but all pages need a title.  Well we come across a lot of websites that don’t have titles on the homepage or internal pages.  Why is it important?  Google needs to know where it is going, on what page it has landed.  If there is no title, there is no clue; or less clues.

This is also where a theme can play a part, as we have found some WordPress themes that assign the wrong codes to the wrong sections within a website.

So we have to try and fix that, and find where your titles are.  Quick example for those that know a bit of HTML: H1, H2, H3, H4.  Maybe you know their purpose is about font size, maybe you know the SEO meanings.

But we have seen websites that have a H1 and a H3, no H2.  Bad!  H2 is H3’s parent.
I know we are getting a bit techy here, but you are hopefully getting our point.

Worry-free Website Audit

A Website Healthcheck looks at all these things, and so much more.  The GREAT thing is that you don’t need to worry about it.  Just visit our Website Healthcheck page, enter a few non-personal details, and we will look into it for you.  Easy.

Pop along to the page, enter your details and let’s get started!

If you prefer to call us and ask us to do this, by all means: 01775 894479.

magic css coding
Achieving the seemingly impossible 900 624 Editor

Achieving the seemingly impossible

Yesterday (Tuesday) was one of those days when things just aren’t all going to plan.  We had a situation of an ecommerce website that had an upsell section added to it.

So you see the product page you are on, with Buy Now, price and so on – the usual things.  But within that, are check boxes to add other products to the cart… at the same time.  For example:  A radio controlled, with the Upsell of some big batteries and some improved compatible tyres.  The idea is the customer clicks on those too, and when they add to basket, it adds all three items rather than just the one.

Big Sales Upsell Method

It worked for this website many moons ago on a non-Wordpress platform.
This time round they are using a plugin, but it had one major glitch – it didn’t work well for Variables.

If they had the option of Red, Blue and Black, that suddenly made the Checkbox area show TWICE.  We couldn’t mess with the code, and the people behind the plugin said it wasn’t compatible with variables.

They asked us if we could ‘hide’ the first or second set of check boxes, but the answer (or so we thought) was no.

After some research (and a lot of hard work) we are pleased to say we found a fix.  We found a smart method of hiding the second row (literally telling it which row ‘number’ to hide’, but then allow just the first row to show.  It sounded impossible, as the styling code cannot run ‘queries’… (count how many there are, add another piece to the code to highlight the others and then hide them).  This cannot be done within digging into the plugin of someone’s code… which could be over written by an update!

We have written code like this before, we you tell it ‘ever 4th row to do x’, but this could not be done in that way.

magic css coding

Smart Website Thinking

So we found another way – a better way.  We shan’t go into the details, as those who wrote it might be asking us for help to make it possible, but it’s a genius bit of coding, only 9 lines long.  They now have a product page with one block of upsell products; better still, they can reduce the price of those upsell products ONLY when it is part of an upsell!

ie  the batteries are £3.99, but if bought with this car, they are £3.49.

We are really proud of the finished result.  It generated big sales for them on the old website, and now they have it on this one, we hope the same will happen.

Smart thinking.  Not giving up.  Paracetamol.

bg web designing
A Busy Web Designing Week 1024 562 Editor

A Busy Web Designing Week

bg web designing

It has been an extremely busy week for us.  A whole myriad of things had to be done.  But busy is good!

Video Production and Social Media

Working on Video Production and Editing for a local delivery company, getting it edited and them adding intros and ‘outros'(?), then placing it within their social media and on their own YouTube channel.  That had a few challenges of it’s own, but the results are great.

WordPress Quotation System

We also looked at a new Quotation system whereby you can book online to have your deliveries collected at a certain place, at a certain time, and see immediately what it will cost it.  It’s is a bit of a game changer for this relatively small company.  They are growing rapidly, and work with some well known house hold names – so a tool like this for those and other clients will prove invaluable.  It’s a tool within WordPress, but we have worked with the developer of the tool to make it work perfectly.

Gaming Website Overhaul

As well as many background tasks we perform we also started a website for a local company that hires out games systems.  Believe it or not, they are in Lincolnshire, but also Dorset and London.  Rather spread out.  An exciting website to build, as they hire out all sorts of fun stuff, including those F1 simulators.  One of which was used by Lewis Hamilton no less (with a video to prove it).

Gardening … well more than that!

Some of our clients work with some very well known people too.  One of which is a landscaper and has some a very impressive CV.  More on this as it happens, but David, if you are reading this, we are very excited and hope to create a strong relationship with you.  The photos of homes he has worked on are just outstanding; as well as certain well known “garden attractions”….

Server upgrade

We also had a major hosting server upgrade thanks to our hosting partners.  It was a move that was expected toward the end of the year, but we are pleased that it was pulled forward.  It did cause a couple of hitches here and there, but we are pleased with the final result.  It also means better SSL for our clients, and an improve back-end system.  Just better in so many ways.  Sincere thanks to our hosting partners, particularly Pete.

We don’t stand still here.  Things are always moving forward.  Starting on a new ‘Action Figures’ project next week as well.  Our work os so varied, it’s untrue, but this is why we love it.

Local ECommerce Website

We also met some fine people in Spalding this week who need an ecommerce website – as theirs is “admittedly to them” not the finest in today’s marketplace.  Had a fab meeting with them, and a delicate situation that turned out to break the ice in a brilliant way.

Supermarket brand

Finally we also did some background work on the website overhaul we are producing for a major herb and puree tube brand in supermarkets.  A really good strong relationship there with some great people.  It’s a few months in the making, but man are we excited!

What a week.  So if any of this is the sort of thing you need, from Ecommerce to WordPress, or just to contact us about a meeting, we are right here ready.

Roll on September…. 

ecommerce website design
Internet Sales are changing habits 1000 800 Editor

Internet Sales are changing habits

Have you noticed in the press recently there is talk about the fluctuation in Internet Sales?  More and more people are buying online, researching their products online, and using ecommerce to get the best deals.

We all still like a wander through the shops, taking a day out to go to a big shopping centre.  It’s nice to pick something up and try it out. Sometimes we might even buy it.  But often we look online to see if it is cheaper.  This is when having a great website is key.  Really really KEY!

So what makes a great Internet Sales ECommerce website eh?  Well there are a high number of factors involved.

secure hosting internet sales

Secure Hosting SSL HTTPS

It sounds pretty obviously, but an ecommerce website should be hosted securely, mostly because of the monetary transactions.  Nowadays, ALL websites should be HTTPS website hosted, but alas many still are not.

Easy to Navigation Websites

If your website has poor navigation, who will want to search and look for your products?  They will get bored, frustrated and leave.  All our websites are highly customer-focused.  Many receive over 60,000 hits of traffic a day, because they are so massively popular.

responsive internet sales

Mobile Friendly Internet Sales

Again, this sounds obvious but if your website is not designed to work great on a phone, will your customers be happy to browser it on their phone?  Some have the “it’ll do” attitude, but we don’t.  A responsive website is absolutely paramount nowadays, and we are highly established at creating websites for mobile devices, so they look brilliant there at first glance.  Not as an afterthought!

PayPal internet sales

Product Sales Gateways

We deal with a few different payment gateways, including PayPal and Stripe.  Both are easy to setup, both are secure, and both can be integrated into your website with ease.  We don’t even need to see your PayPal or Stripe account to do it.  Just a few account details and it’s “connected”.

So the Internet Sales market can be easily yours if you need to be there in that marketplace.

If you want to discuss this, please click our livechat in the lower right corner of the screen, or give us a call on 01775 894479, or even our dedicated mobile line, 07521 488074.

We look forward to hearing from you.

budget cheap websites
What do you get in Cheap Websites 1024 576 Editor

What do you get in Cheap Websites

Many folks just want a cheap website – something simple, such as a one page website.  It’s something we can do in a matter of hours.  Once we have your logo, content and desired email address, we can point your domain to our systems and get you up and running in a morning.

When it comes to being optimised for Google, a one page website is going to be tough to rank well.  But if cost is your own objective, and you want to just have one page put up online with your details, photo, and some other small piece of info, we can do this from just £190 (based on our pricing on our Budget Websites page.

A Cheap Website is literally built quickly and cheaply.  It doesn’t including any Google My Business account, but we DO submit it to Google as part of the package.  We also include one email account.

What can Cheap Websites include?

  • Full screen image (or small image)
  • Your existing logo supplied to us
  • Links to your social media
  • Contact form

When we do such a website, we offer additional features that you might like to add, but this will of course bump up the original price.

These are features such as creating you a logo – this takes an hour or so, and is based on information you give (colour scheme, logo icon style and so on).

google my business

Google My Business

We can also create you a Google My Business account, so when someone finds you on Google, there can be a right hand pane that has your address and other details.

We can create further email accounts for you, as well as social media accounts.

If your website needs to be a few more pages, then the costs will rise, as each page is independent.  One page might be really simple, while another may take an hour or two for us to create.  So when you think of a website you are after, think of what content you need, if you want to rank well on Google, or just a place to direct your customers.

Cheap doesn’t mean poor quality!

At 7DESIGN, every website we build is made to the highest standard.  We do not take shortcuts.  While others might throw a website together and hand it over, we check it looks perfect on all devices.  So cheap does not mean bad.  We are here to make it distinctive perfect.

Just give us a call on 01775894479, email us via our support page, or even better, use the Live Chat.

responsive website support
What makes a good website, a fabulous website? 910 700 Editor

What makes a good website, a fabulous website?

We like to think we know a think or two about building websites; with over 15 years of experience in the field of Website Design, this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.  However, we see websites popping up here and there, and it’s clear that some companies are ok, or good at website design.  But we excel in this field, hence we feel our websites are fabulous!

Fabulous websites: quite a statement!

Well yes, it is.  Here’s why.  Let’s say a website has been created by one of these website builder companies.  At first glance it looks ok, perhaps quite clever.  Maybe images are big and fill the screen, but does it take a long time to load.

We were asked to look at such a website recently, and while the homepage was only around 2mb, which is fine, it timed out on certainly only check systems.  Over 60 seconds to load.  This is down to code, and the hosting platform.

responsive fabulous websiteWhen ‘responsive’ is not ‘responsive-clever’ at all

An area many design agencies miss, is how something looks on a phone.  Yes it might be responsive, but is it designed to be responsive.  There is a substantial difference!

Examples:

  • Logo overlays the text on the page
  • Text is all crunched up and unreadable
  • Every page looks the same before you scroll down

All this is poor design – it’s lack lustre!
It’s a pet hate of ours to find websites like this.  They probably charged less to do it, hence… shortcuts!

We check everything.  We look at the website on desktop, tablet and mobile to ensure the layout is great.  If not, it’s fixed FAST.

We are different

When we build a website for you, we put the design together, check the mobile format, and then begin building the pages.
It’s at this stage we can see if the mobile view is good or bad.  Often we do websites were the top area (logo, menu..) overlaps a large image; if this image has a graphic within it, bringing down the size of the page shows very quickly how poor it has been done.

So we check everything as we go.  Do NOT just assume the page looks great on a phone… “because it is responsive”.
If it has been done badly, it will look bad.  Thus, cheap.  We are a quality website design company here in Lincolnshire.  We are proud of each and every website we build, and work with each client after the build, to ensure it stays great.

lincolnshire fabulous website

Check your website – is it fabulous?

Look at your website on your phone, or just open it on your desktop browser and reduce the width of the screen – how does it look?  Does it go OFF the screen (it’s not responsive), or does text overlay and underlay other things?

If so, it’s been done poor.  Time to ring the professionals to have it done correctly. 01775894479.

Or just start a chat with it, and tell is the issues.  We are here to listen, support, and develop a fabulous website for you.

lincolnshire web chat
Web Chat with us today! 1024 516 Editor

Web Chat with us today!

How many website designers, SEO companies or Social Media Management companies can you have a chat with online, without a phone call?

Maybe it’s unique for web designers?

We feel we have a rather unique service where you can talk to us via instant livechat messaging, without any need for social media details, and ask us questions to get the service you need.

  • Do you want a website?
  • Do you need social media setting up and managed?
  • Is your hosting company not great and you need advice?
  • No pressure salesy stuff!

You can do all this for free, without providing ANY personal information, via a chat with us.

What we do and don’t collect

The only information we see from this end is your IP, the device you are using, and a vague location of where you are, but this can be rather inaccurate too.  We collect no private information at all.  Not until we request it from you, asking for email and maybe phone, as well as your name, so we can pursue the challenge you have for us.  That way, we can reply at a later time with a proposal or further advice.

We are really helpful in this way.  You don’t need to email us for this, just pop along to the link in the lower right corner, and have a chat!  We are really friendly, helpful, non-pushy.  Just here for you.

How many companies like us, can say the same thing, hey?

Chat soon…..

Rutland WordPress Training in Oakham 1024 482 Editor

Rutland WordPress Training in Oakham

We spent a splendid afternoon on Tuesday training someone who was pretty good with WordPress, though she had lost her way a little.  She had a few websites and booked us to head over to her location near Oakham to go through her various questions and concerns surrounding WordPress.

Unlike most WordPress Training companies who provide a set course – we go through the issues and questions the user has, and teach them what they want to know – not what we want to train them to use.

wordpress trainingOne on One Training

She contacted us as she needed some one-on-one training on how to do a little more advanced work, like custom CSS, SEO changes, and effective plugin use.  She had a list of things to go through, so one by one, we went thru each month to explain, or “do” what the comment was on her list.

A few key areas were in how to set rows of their particular theme to be full width.  Sadly this is not always possible.  Some themes are a little constricted to what it allows.  For example, we like to be able to add a row of say three columns.  plus content in each column, add our own amount of space between each column, and set the row to ‘full width’, so it goes virtually edge to edge on the screen.

Their theme (we shan’t mention brands or products here) didn’t allow this, or at least we could not see how to force it.  But we did show her how to use it in another way which would look possibly better.

Custom CSS in WordPress

Another area was in Custom CSS.  Most people who use WordPress websites create it with the theme, add their colours in the various Theme options, but there are times when the colour scheme does suit, such as background colours to sliders.  In this example she had black transparency, but needed it to be a dark green.  There was no option to do it, so we spent time showing her the HTML code, finding the right area, and working in theme’s custom CSS area to change it.  The final result looked very smart.

Working with someone like this is very rewarding.  They may get a little “oh my goodness, so much to learn”, but we hope they take some of it in to help them advance their knowledge in WordPress.

As we both agreed, it’s one thing to pick it up and build, it’s quite another to make it work correct, and get the SEO spot on.

If you are looking for some WordPress Training, pleaes visit our main website for details.

onsite wordpress training

jimmy cricket
This is Your Life – Jimmy Cricket 1024 465 Editor

This is Your Life – Jimmy Cricket

One of our great friends and clients, Jimmy Cricket, has had quite some career.  He was pretty much the Michael McIntyre of his day.  Always on the television, to the point that the BBC did a ‘This is Your Life’ on him.

We have the pleasure of looking after his website, and his wife, May, asked us if we could get his video of him on that BBC show, online for him, so he could show his fans this very special moment in his life.

It’s recently gone live – you can visit it here: http://www.jimmycricket.co.uk/this-is-your-life.

It features many of the stars of the day, including Jim Bowen and Mick Millar, but also his wife of many years, May, with whom we are in regular contact.  In fact we enjoyed a lovely Christmas Dinner with them both just before Christmas last year (2017), as well as other friends of his in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire.

We hope those who recall Jimmy, and still have a fondness for him today and perhaps still see him live (he still tours, mostly in the Blackpool area), will get a kick out of this rare piece of footage.  We would like to thank May for emailing us the video, so we can prepare it for his website.

It’s on Jimmy’s YouTube channel, where you can see other video footage we have prepared for him.

You can also follow Jimmy online through is Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/jimmy__cricket.

We had a very nice message back from Jimmy:

“Thank you for doing such a good job firstly on the ‘Jimmy’s Cricket team’ radio shows and latterly on the ‘This is your life’ programme. Your technical knowhow and ingenuity has raised our website on to another level.

Best Wishes

Jimmy“.

lincolnshire onsite wordpress trainer
An Afternoon of Onsite WordPress Training 1024 542 Editor

An Afternoon of Onsite WordPress Training

This afternoon we provided our WordPress Training service to a local company here in Lincolnshire.  It was a great afternoon.  We met with Chloe (hi Chloe) who is a graphics specialist for this local corporation, and really knows her stuff.  But WordPress was not high on her skillset, so we were invited over there to provide support.

We had previously worked with a graduate for the company, also working on WordPress, and have since seen the website they have had made, and noticed issues.

So we are providing various services to them, along with today’s (Friday) booked training.  Having sat down and listened to understand her status with the system, we went through everything we felt was useful to them.

wordpress training

The excitement of WordPress’s capabilities

After some time, the excitement of what was possible with their photography to make the website REALLY pop became a possible reality.  We turned some sliders into a non-responsive system, to one that will be responsive, but we could both see the enormous potential of this website, and it’s other company websites too.

We hope this will happen, as it could be really exciting for this company to blow their customers away with something truly awesome.

A morning or afternoon onsite training

Our training tends to be provided in the morning or the afternoon – rarely an all day thing.  Though we have provided training to universities in split formats.  Today’s training was one-on-one for the afternoon.

If you would like Onsite WordPress Training, please visit our main training page for details.

lincolnshire wordpress solutions

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