Perhaps one of the most interesting observations about website  design is the way in which they have evolved over the years. Rather than being a linear progression, the changes in website design have varied and even come full-circle. Starting off by presenting text for the most part, they then went on to host images and animations as well as - or, in some cases, instead of - text. However in recent years, traditional text-based websites have made a comeback.

Of course, there’s a very good reason for this evolution, which looks somewhat unusual on the surface. When the World Wide Web made its debut in the 90s, Internet connection speeds were much slower than they are today and so websites were developed to contain mostly text: anything more and there could be long loading times. As things went on, Internet connections grew faster and could handle larger files, such as images and eventually animations. When animations entered the fold, multimedia platforms such as Flash encouraged companies and their designers to develop their websites to look pretty, eye-catching and - forgive the pun - “flashy”.

With the birth of Broadband Internet access, online browsing speed is even faster these days, yet many companies have dropped their animated-based sites in favour of more text-based websites. Why? Three words: Search Engine Optimisation.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of increasing traffic to a website via the search engines. There are many factors influencing how this can be obtained and therefore many different techniques can be implemented, but one of the most important factors is that search engines crawl text, so a text-based website will fair far better in the search engine results over those that focus heavily on animations.

SEO is on its way to becoming a standard practice for every business website - even for the big brands, who are scared of losing customers to higher-ranking competitors. Those who implement SEO into their website last will inevitably be left behind.

Even though many website designers prefer to create websites with animations instead of text it is foolish to do so at the cost of online enquiries. The key to perfect website design is a good-looking site that also performs well in the search engine, not placing too much emphasis on one and sacrificing the other.

What is Website Optimisation (SEO) ?

Website optimisation describes the process of making a website more popular on the Internet and more specifically the Search Engines like Google and Yahoo. In order to achieve good website optimisation we need to analyse the competition on the Internet in your business area, identify keyword phrases for your business, and then optimise your website for the chosen keywords. We also need to identify your target audience and potentially their location. Essentially if you want your website to be found by your chosen target audience, you must optimise your website appropriately.

As well as the keyword optimisation important considerations are: quality of build for your website, URL re-writing, domain handling, error handling, cross browser compatibility, website hosting etc. In fact these more technical issues are at least as important as getting the keywords right.

So why optimise my website?

The reason to optimise your website is simple; there are hundreds of millions of websites out there on the big bad World Wide Web, it is likely that your business will be competing with thousands of these websites. Just like any business it is difficult to compete globally or even nationally, yet the Internet provides exactly this level of coverage, but do you need to compete on this level? unless you optimise your website you will in fact be attempting to compete on this grand scale, to do that successfully requires lots of work and a large budget. Having said that it is sometimes a requirement to compete globally and simply understanding how difficult this can be is half of the battle. Competing in a more local business area is easier and can achieve fantastic results. 

Simple example: if you are a small business based in Cardiff and you type into Google website design, let's say you get ten website design companies; the top two are for companies in Scotland and the next two are in Ireland, but the next one is in Cardiff – which one are you likely to do business with?

Another example: in the scenario you are still in Cardiff and you have typed wedding cake designer and you have ten results for companies all over the country but none in Wales, what do you do next? You change that search to wedding cake designer Cardiff or wedding cake designers wales, in fact this is now how most people search.

So whilst competing on a global or national level is far more appealing, the reverse usually yields the best results in terms of sales. With that in mind in most circumstances we encourage our clients to be the best in its locality first and foremost, and then after achieving great results and a high level of exposure on the Internet we can look at a wider audience.

For this reason our website is optimised for website design Cardiff, which yields the best sales results for us. It does not exclude us from competing nationally and we have dozens of clients outside of Wales to prove this, however, it does give us a much higher profile in our locality.

We always look at each client individually and provide advice appropriate to their business, often this advice is governed by the level of competition for their business type in the UK and the local region. we offer our advice free of charge with no obligation. if you would like to have a chat with someone regarding website optimisation please call us on 0845 272 6813.