What's happening for us in 2015

Well, we have been a little quiet on the blog front, that is because we have been so busy we simply haven't had time.

We can only apologise for this and let you know that we have been busy with website designs, developments, SEO and Logo design, in fact the Logo design is proving extremely popular so we will be featuring a blog on the Logo design we do as well as featuring each of the websites we have been working on too.

Don't forget that is you want one of the services mentioned above to get in contact with us via our websites contact page http://www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk/html-default/contact.html

Thanks for reading :)

Interesting Facebook Facts: The Good, The bad and the Ugly (weird!)

Whether good, bad or ugly ( or weird), here's some facebook facts that we found interesting:

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg via Getty Images

1. Facebook has more monthly users (1.32 billion) than India—the world's second-most populous country—has people (1.24 billion). As of 2012, China had 1.35 billion people.


2. There are more than one trillion posts on Facebook (1,000,000,000,000!!!).


3. At 1.35 billion, Facebook has more monthly active users than WhatsApp (500 million), Twitter (255 million) and Instagram (200 million)—combined. The social giant spent $20 billion over the last two years on WhatsApp and Instagram.

Yes, a billion more active users than Twitter!

4. More than 1 billion people use Facebook on a mobile device on a monthly basis. That's about 1/7 of the people on planet Earth.
(Above all found here: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101611586#.)

5.You can change your language to 'pirate' me hearties!! http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Your-Facebook-Speak-Pirate

6. Al Pacino was the first "face" on Facebook. http://www.oddee.com/item_97980.aspx

7. Smartphone users check Facebook 14 times a day. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2300466/Smartphone-users-check-Facebook-14-times-day-admit-looking-movies.html

8. 64% of Facebook users visit the site on a daily basis. According to a 2014 Pew study

9. Half of all adult Facebook users have more than 200 friends in their network.


Facebook users differ greatly when it comes to the number of friends in their networks:

• 39% of adult Facebook users have between 1 and 100 Facebook friends
• 23% have 101-250 friends
• 20% have 251-500 friends
• 15% have more than 500 friends

Among adult Facebook users, the average (mean) number of friends is 338, and the median (midpoint) number of friends is 200. In other words, half of all Facebook users have more than 200 friends, and half have less than 200.

Younger users tend to have significantly larger friend networks than older users: 27% of 18-29 year old Facebook users have more than 500 friends in their network, while 72% of users age 65+ have 100 friends or fewer.


10. Facebook is named as a factor in one of three divorces. Only in Ameri....Oh this is a UK Survey!!

The social network was implicated in a third of all divorce filings last year, according to Divorce-Online, a survey by a British legal service. The reason? Social networking is making it way easier to track down former flames and communicate with potential new flings. http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/surprising-things-you-didnt-know-about-facebook

11. People have been murdered for unfriending someone on Facebook.

realitytvgifs.tumblr.com

In 2012, a Tennessee man fatally shot a couple who had unfriended his 30-year-old daughter on the social network.

  http://gizmodo.com/5883546/two-people-are-dead-because-they-unfriended-this-mans-adult-daughter-on-facebook

12. Adding /4 to the end of Facebook’s URL will automatically direct you to Mark Zuckerberg’s wall.

Facebook: zuck

There’s more! Adding 5 or 6 to the end of the URL will take you to the respective profiles of Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz, who are Facebook co-founders and Mark’s former college roommates. Adding 7 to the web address takes you to the profile of Arie Hasit, another good friend of Zuckerberg from his days at Harvard.

13. Facebook is blue because Mark Zuckerberg suffers from red-green colorblindness.

Zuck told New Yorker reporter Jose Antonio Vargas in 2010 that “blue is the richest color for me — I can see all of blue.”

14. You Can't Block Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook. http://mashable.com/2010/08/23/block-mark-zuckerberg/

15. 83% of prostitutes have Facebook pages.

fanpop.com

(According to a 2011 study at Columbia University.)

16. Someday there will be more dead people on Facebook than living ones. 

It’ll probably happen in either the 2060s or the 2130s. http://gizmodo.com/will-there-ever-be-more-dead-people-than-living-ones-on-1455816826

Wow some shocker in there!! And in conclusion to these mighty impressive stats we have learnt that facebook is massive, if you business is not on facebook your missing out. (So get it on FB and get a mobile version of your website!!).

Younger people have more friends, which I kind of thought anyway!

Be careful who you befriend, because unfriending them may be very hazardous to your health!!!

Thanks for reading.

P G Framing Ltd

P G Framing is predominantly a picture framers based in Mold, Flintshire. However, P G Framing has built up an impressive reputation for high quality framing of pictures and framing of a more bespoke nature too.

Their less obvious portfolio of framing includes cricket bats, sports shirts, tapestries, and CD's to name a few, all very impressive and provide excellent ideas for unusual gifts or auction lots.

P G Framing have not only built up an excellent reputation for their exquisite work but they have a reputation for working within their local community. P G Framing promote local artists work within their art galley that is housed within their shop. P G Framing have sponsored local sporting events, including a football for Wrexham Football Club and have been involved with local charity events, (most recently donating the framing costs for a picture for Hope House charitable organization).

We were recommended to build P G Framing Ltd a website by a previous work colleague and we were happy to do so. The owner of P G Framing had quite clear design ideas of a less formal website that could include social media updates (essentially face-book and twitter), be capable of displaying a large collection of images and that would be easy to navigate.

The website we built for P G Framing is a bespoke, fully responsive website that has the capability of housing thousands of images, it has the social media aspect included as well as an excellent contact form with captcha security to reduce spam messages. We provide access to an easy to use content management system, but we are regularly sent updates that we perform to the website as and when required. This insures that P G Framing has maximum time to concentrate on their framing and customer service as we take care of any updates to their site etc.

We also provide regular emails to P G Framing showing analytical information that shows how the website is performing and how many visits it receives etc. This is a great tool that helps to show a wide range of data, how the data is interpreted is always open to debate but essentially you can assess how well your website is performing, when interest peaks and gain insight into how to improve your online presence. You could assess either when it is best to promote your business or maybe when's best to book that holiday as to not effect trade.

Ultimately we are happy with the website results, but more importantly P G Framing are happy that we could portray their digital desires properly, which is of course our main objective. Please check out the website www.pgframing.com and if you like what we have done contact us on our main website www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk. We would love to build you a website that looks and operates the way that you want it to.

Thanks for reading. :)

What do I need for a Website?

Getting your business online, or just getting a website can be confusing. Often people are not aware of what you need to get yourself online and how each one of these different criteria may cost you. Indeed quite often I approach businesses that simply cannot believe the low cost service we provide. Others sometimes exclaim that they can get it cheaper, but they are always referring to a part of getting yourself online and not the whole picture.

To get online there are a few things you need for your online presence to be felt. (Please be aware that this is a brief guide and very basics like having a computer and internet access is assumed!!)

Firstly you will need a website address otherwise known as a URL. This is usually related to your companies name or field you wish to be found in. For example out mother site is Above Website Design so we own the address www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk (and a few others that direct to our .co.uk address).

These can cost anywhere from cost anywhere from a couple of £s to tens of ££s depending on the domain ending eg .com, .co.uk, .eu etc. And usually you renew the domain name (www.) every year, and if you sign up for multiple years the cost comes down...usually.

In my opinion having the ownership of your domain is of utmost importance, make sure you own your website, or if you let someone register the domain name for you, make sure that if you leave there services you get domain ownership. The last thing you need is to get a popular domain name and the provider sell it from under your feet and you can do nothing about it, or your choose to leave and they won't release the URL without you paying and extortionate amount.

Another way you can be caught out is by companies offering to register a domain name for you that is actually part of their domain, so they become more popular on the back of you putting effort in to promote your site. eg www.yourdomainname/RIPOFFCOMPANY.com These type of companies offer extremely cheap of free domain names and you can have absolutely no rights to the URL and what they do with it and they get further exposure off the back of your hard work promoting it online.

So own it yourself or make sure you have the rights to it from the start.

Secondly you need to have a website created or designed. There are several companies and organizations that provide free websites. These are usually fairly basic websites, with limited design and feature options, but could be adequate for your needs. These 'free' sites may have a limited time offer for them to remain free or options to pay to upgrade features or designs etc. Also if the site is 'free' check out the support they provide.

Free sites are great if your just starting out on the internet, but expect to spend a lot of time yourself adding and changing content to get the best out of them. If you have the time to experiment than great and do so, if not then expect to pay someone with experience to do it for you.

Thirdly you need to have your website 'hosted'. Basically put when you have a website design you like you could put it on your won computer (host it or run it) and everyone could view it. But when you turned your computer off they would no longer be able to see your website. When you host it you place the website onto a 'server' which is a computer that is constantly running. So as it is never turned off people can view your website anytime of the day everyday....in theory.

Hosting your site for free is possible but you better get used to seeing adverts! Hosting costs vary massively depending on your needs, or the needs of your website. As a general rule the more data on your website and people interacting with it the more it will cost, memory or space required to keep running your website and features has always cost and always will. Find out what you need for your site and only get what is required, if you don't know what you need the
n, again, expect to pay someone with experience to provide you with advice or to do it for you.

With these first three steps in place your on-line! But in order to get your website noticed you will need step four: Off site SEO or on-line marketing.

This is essential and costs vary massively. It can be done for free but expect to spend a lot of hours to do a successful job yourself.

This is a basic guide, but I thought it would be a good idea to make non-internet savvy people aware of the costs that can be involved and what the cost are for. Maybe you can do some of the work yourself to lower the cost but it can be an expensive past time getting your business online.

We presently offer a 'package' that covers all of the above for a mere £30 a month, but this offer is due to expire in October 2014.

If you have any further question you would like Above Website Design team to answer please contact us on here or on our main website www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk and we will be happy to help.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

Einstein, Arthur Sasse, 1951

Without doubt a picture can effectively put across a message in an instant so getting it right for your website is of the utmost importance.

If you have commercial premises, sell products online or have an online shop it is important to make sure the images you use portray your circumstances in order to negate any possible negative feeling between you and your clients/customers and promote as many leads as possible.

An example of this would be advertising your online business as a warehouse, supermarket or store without including the magical words 'online' or 'digital' etc. I once worked for a company which did this and received many complaints because their customers could not actually visit the business premises to view its wares or return goods to as they were strictly an on-line business but the company owner thought it was better to portray the image of having a physical shop......not a practice I would advise as it appears largely deceptive by most and will catch up with you in the end!

Honesty is the best way forward and showing your business, product or service for what it actually is will pay dividends in the long run, if you have to show it as better than what it actually is then maybe you need to improve rather than deceive!

Lunch atop a Skyscraper

taken by Charles C. Ebbets GE Building at
Rockefeller Center in 1932

This said you should use images that show your business in the best light possible and to help explain what it is your business is involved with. For example if you are a builder use images of clean tools, finished projects and a well presented happy work force. We all know builders get dirty and like a cup of tea, but best not too promote that side of things. Also don't show images of massive structures eg, sky-scrapers or ship yards if your company cannot deliver on these builds. They will make you look like something your not, people may assume your too expensive for their needs and it may cost you custom, (so keep it real).

"The Kiss"Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1945

Keep in mind that reviews will pay a part in your trade when you have a website. Customers will review you and positive reviews will gain you custom, which you should promote on your website. Negative reviews will do the opposite and may be made by competitors so it is important you keep aware of who is saying what about your company and challenge any false reviews to ensure a true representation of your business is shown.

Your website designer, developer or provider should be able to advise you on pictures and images you use on your website as well as legalities and copyrights etc. At Above Website Design we advise and will also provide suitable images for your website use. We even take high quality digital images of your business at no extra charge should you wish to promote your actual shop, product and service. For a free consultation contact us though our main website www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk or click the link to our main site at the top of the page :)

Business Tips: The Financial Year (UK)

If you're new to self employment and business you may wonder what the financial year is. The financial year may also be known as the 'Fiscal' year or even budget year. Although there is  subtle differences between the financial year and the fiscal year for this small business blog we will be using the fiscal year as the financial year.

This period of time in the UK runs from the start of the financial year (6th April) to the end of the financial year (5th April). When I opened my first business (early 2000s), or the naughties as I like to still use! I couldn't grasp why my first financial year ended in April, when the business had only started the previous Christmas. To me it seemed like a very short year as it was only a third of a year really. What was the point of putting together my books when the likely hood was that I was going to make a loss in such a short time period. Well the basic answer is it's the law, and nowadays you have to declare how much your have earned to make sure you pay the tax on profits above a government set amount. It is also important if you claim any benefits to be able to show how much you have earned and are expecting to earn in order to keep receiving the benefit.

Does it matter that you make a loss? Well no not really, as long as you can project a profit to be made in the future otherwise whats the point in being self employed? Quite often people will use their previous years loss and offset it against the present years profits but look out for future posts for an explanation on this.

The financial year shouldn't really stress you out in any way. It is just the period of time that the records for your business should be kept, most importantly your businesses incoming and outgoing finances.

The secret to keeping good books is keeping on top of them and record as much as possible. Needless to say bank statements and receipts are a must but keep proof of every transaction because should your business be scrutinized by HMRC you want to be able to provide evidence of exactly what transactions your business has made or received to make sure you don't get hit with a fine or a heavy tax bill. In most small business this will not happen, but it could so better safe than sorry.

What do you then do with the financial records? Well you use them for your tax returns which will have to be sent to HMRC by the following October if paper based or the following January for on line submissions. This means you have plenty of time to get your books in order before submitting, but please, for your own sake, don't leave it to last minute.

Here's a small video from the HMRC you tube site that explains the basics:

Business Tips: Simplified Expenses

1988 movie Rain Man © 1988 United Artists Pictures Inc.

If you started your business after April 2013 or you are thinking of starting a business then you may be interested in the Simplified Income Tax Expenses. This can be quite a hard topic to explain if your new to business expenses, but if you expect to earn below the VAT threshold or work on a cash basis then the simplified income tax rules may save you money. It will certainly save you time and probably the need for an accountant, (however I would always advise an accountant if you have any doubt, their fee is tax deductible!!)

HMRC have a good You Tube section with many great videos on hard to understand business topics which I would recommend to any small business owner. Here is the basic video that gives a quick explanation:


And if you can find the time then take a look at:


If you are new to business or wish to find out more regarding you business and your responsibilities then check out the HMRC  youtube videos.

Simply, what is SEO?

Search engine optimization is an area of website design and online marketing that is loaded full of acronyms and terminology that are simply not easy to understand if you don't keep in the know. This obviously suits some pompous SEO experts as they get the opportunity to procrastinate whilst explaining within their own importance about topics their audience probably isn't actually interested in! But not all SEO experts are like this, indeed many people who work within the SEO field can find the secrecy that revolves around the subject quite laborious and the constant need to justify the importance of SEO plainly put 'a pain in the bum!!'.

Rant over!
So, I am going to touch on what I understand to be some of the basics and this will hopefully make the subject a bit easier to understand.

The main purpose I feel of SEO is to get a website found when someone searches for it. SEO takes place in two major parts, it takes place within the website and it takes place within the world wide web:

SEO Within a Website

In order for a website to be found when someone searches for it it has to meet certain criteria that is set by each search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo etc). As a general rule if you use valid interesting and engaging content your site will get picked up by search engines and begin to move up the rankings.

The coding or language used behind the scenes on your website is very important too. If you use the most up to date code on your website then you are more likely to gain higher rankings and listings then a website using out dated code.

For example HTML 5 uses the most up to date HTML code and it takes into consideration older browser versions, allowing simplified or alternative versions of content to be displayed if the original content is not compatible (with the use of a boiler plate etc *sorry bit of tech speak!!*).

So this is probably the best html code to use if building a website today. But this is not enough, if you want the website to move up the listings or page rankings then your content must be good, keep the reader or website user engaged (or at least on the page) and the content needs to be updated on a regular basis. This is why many websites that have largely static content will include a blog page to ensure the content is updated etc.

SEO Within the World Wide Web

This type of SEO is when a website is marketed or advertised to the wider audience in order for it to be noticed (or viewed) more. This will can rapidly increase your page listings but is by no means a long term solution. If you start to get a website up the page rankings and it immediately drops in the rankings when you stop promoting it then you have to ask why? Is it the content, code or the topic area?
Care must be taken when promoting a website this way, over promoting will damage a websites reputation and it may be permanent damage. Under promoting of a site may mean it won't get listed as high as your competitors and it will be losing potential exposure.
For example when I finish writing this blog I may post it onto face book, twitter or google plus, ideally posting it on these sites across a number of days but either way gaining further exposure for the blog. This will get a few genuine people viewing it and hopefully they will re-post and advertise the blog further, if the like what they are reading then they will return to my blog and so on. This will hopefully have a 'snow ball' effect and my blog about SEO will end up ranking at the top of page one on all search engines when someone searches what is SEO!!!!
However if I was to post my blog across every social networking site, every hour for a week then it would have detrimental effects as search engines are wise to over pushing or advertising your content, particularly if your advertising the same thing over and over (known as duplicate content). This could damage your websites reputation or even get your website banned from some search engines. It will also result in people ignoring your posts and an increase in 'bounce rate' (people that visit your websites page, don't like what they see, and leave straight away!). If your bounce rate increases then search engines think the content on a website isn't what the the search term is looking for, resulting in a loss of page ranking.

Hopefully this installment hasn't blown your mind! After all there is a good reason SEO experts are called experts! This is just the tip of the iceberg and I will continue more in depth SEO blogs in the future. If you are itching to find out more then check out our web crawler and website indexing blogs found on the side of this one -->

Or if you would like Above Website Design to do Some SEO work to boost your websites potential then go to our main website and contact us. www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk

Happy New Year!

Wishing you all a fantastic New Years Eve and a prosperous 2014.

Need a website this year then get in contact for the best site, service and price: http://www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk/contact.html

Many new blogs planned for the new year so keep watching and reading :)

New blog layout and listings

As this blog isn't very old we have happily been blogging about website topics and we have started to get a few regular readers, which is great!

To improve and expand on our blogs and topics, to hopefully increase our regular readers we are going to shuffle our posts around a little, so we will also be blogging about Business Tips.

These posts will start with Business Tips: then the tip or blog title.

We are deciding to do this as although we have many years experience in IT we are still a fairly new company and we are finding out about many aspects of business as we go along, so if we come across anything that may aid fellow small business we will write a blog about it and post it on here.

Hopefully you will gain some use from these blogs and as ever is you have a topic or question you would like us to tackle then please let us know and we will gladly respond with the best information we can find.

Why does my business need a mobile website?

Mobile websites and mobile apps have seen a large boom over the last couple of years and there is a requirement for websites to be specifically designed for mobile devices to ensure the content is usable, legible and fast loading.

So why the demand for mobile sites? It's simple really, on the whole most mobile phone users in the UK use smart phones and the average smart phone user spends over an hour a day on their phone. Many people will now quickly pop online using a mobile or tablet device rather than start up a laptop or PC, so if you don't have a mobile website it will take longer to load and often not have compatible features for your device which may frustrate the user and potentially lose you sales or income.

Why is a mobile website different?

Most mobile websites are designed in the same way as standard websites, but they take into account the smaller screen sizes, and lower processing power of these smaller devices. At present you find that the more interesting, interactive and attractive features available on high end websites simply are too much for the smaller devices to cope with and will result in loading failure or very slow loading times which will result in people closing your website down and looking for one that works well.

Mobile and tablets devices often feature touch screen capabilities, and although laptops and PC's are catching up with touch screen technology they are not there yet. The suggests that a mobile website will often have a different menu structure and layout and often feature larger buttons or tabs which, although more suited for being operated by a finger or thumb, would simply look silly when scaled up to a full laptop or PC screen! So taking the functionality of the website into account is an important part of the design.

Is a mobile website different to my existing website?

Dot mobi (.mobi) mobile sites are the top domain level for mobile sites, standard website top domain are dot com (.com). This means that your site will be listed and potentially could get more exposure online as it is using the top domain level. But you don't have to use a .mobi domain to have a mobile website.

This can get confusing for many business owners that simply want the best exposure for their company, and at the best price. Bear with me though as it is important you know what you should be getting for your mobile website.

A properly designed .mobi website is the best option....but it will cost you more, and you have to ensure that the content is usable and appropriate for mobile devices.

If you already have a website then you may not have to shell out for a new domain for your site as your website developer (if they have anything about them) will be able to create a scaled down version of your existing website. This should be at a fraction of the cost of having a new .mobi site designed and launched.

If you are having a website built for your company or redesigned from scratch then the answer is simple, include you mobile site at this point. As a website developer I can honestly say it is much easier creating a website with tablet and mobile compatibly at the same time, all using the same domains (.com, .co.uk, etc) It may cost you a little more but your developer will know where to find all the information on your website and it should be far more cheaper and effective in the long run.

All our websites at Above Website Design are mobile and tablet device friendly, we simply truly wish for the best success of the websites we build, it makes sense for our success to make your site successful. As this is what we do we would always advise it's what you should do to and you have to question why other web design companies don't include mobile device compatibility or charge much extra for the privilege.........don't be ripped off and make an informed choice on this matter. If the company won't provide examples of their prices then make sure you compare their quotes with other companies too, Many web design companies have excellent sales men and crap designers/developers so take care when choosing who does your online work and make sure you trust them.

So does your business actually need a mobile website, I say yes......but I would. To be totally honest if your business doesn't need a website at all, then you don't need a mobile site. If your business already has a website to simply be listed online and mapped on google maps etc (other maps are available), then it may not be a priority but something to consider. However if you're business is in transport, restaurant, hotel, pub/bar, attractions or retail area you simply need a mobile site sooner rather than later, check out your main competitors as they probably already have one! If they don't could you get ahead of the game by being the first?

Above Website Design offer exception complete small business website packages that we feel are unrivaled for cost effective website design and development. Click through to our main website to find out more.

Social Media versus Company Websites

I would say about 50% of the small businesses I talk to about regarding creating a websites at first have the response that they are not interested as they have a Facebook page or Twitter account (other social media companies are available!) or they sell through ebay (other on-line auction sites are available!). So why do they need a company website?

This can be most frustrating for website designers and developers because in trying to explain the importance of a company website you can be perceived as trying to 'sell' your website skills to them, which is unfortunate (and probably not too far from the truth!).

This has created a Social Media V's Website culture which shouldn't exist. I always think about the big businesses, I mean really BIG. They always have a website and in many cases don't bother with social media sites.......So why is that?

Well, a good business website will promote your business and services completely, in a professional manner with a user interface that is easy to use and navigate. This creates an instant trusting relationship with your customer base and enforces your company brand, allowing the owner of the website to, in many ways, control and possibly manipulate how the business is perceived.

Social media can promote your business well, but as you gain notoriety you can loose control of how your business is perceived and it can also take up a lot of time to address comments and statements left about your business. Bear in mind that not all comments left on social media sites and review sites are genuine! (They may be left by competitors in an attempt to damage their competitions reputation and adversely they may be left by your own business or company itself, via business employees or friends and family of the business 'helping' the reputation of the business).

Monitoring what remarks are left on social media sites is very important and when a comment is left many genuine customers will expect an immediate response from the business. Which is very hard to achieve all the time but customers quite often won't care what you have on, they have a problem and you need to solve it now! Failure to do so will open the flood gates for more negativity so you better act quickly and be warned your actions could set a precedent so make sure you respond appropriately!

Obviously, as I work for a website design company I would always choose the website option over anything else for a business! (It's my lively-hood after all), but I think that the Versus scenario is now outdated.

Social media and websites should go hand in hand, small businesses can't ignore the exposure that social media brings and it is often free and easy to use. If you are starting up in business you need to be present on social media sites. Social media sites can really help to reinforce a website and usually a company website will provide 'links' to the social media sites they are involved with in order to actively take advantage of the exposure that social media brings, similarly social media sites should link to you company website to take advantage of the security and trust associated with a company website.

I would advise anyone starting a business or already in business to consider social media and websites as a joint on line marketing strategy. The company I work for Above Website Design is primarily a small business specialist website design company that works to provide your business with a website and to promote your website across the world wide web. We will always offer advice on which social media site is best for you and in many cases set up the suggested social media account on your behalf free of charge.

So, if you are considering whether to go for either a website or a social media presence on-line then check out our and other website design companies as the web design company may do all the social media incorporation for you too.

Q: Why does my business need a website?

Short answer:
To make more MONEY!

Long answer:
1) Public expectations.
If you ask any pc, laptop, tablet and smart phone user is it important for a company to have a website they instantly will agree YES! And the reason is because they all use devices that allow them to go on-line, and it has become generally expected that any self respecting company would have a website then there's your answer, in fact it may be perceived that not having a website could be damaging your sales.

2) Advertising and Promotion.
Whatever your business or product having a website offers you excellent exposure and promotion. It is also excellent value for money (compared to other advertisement types) and will let potential customers know where your are, what you do or what services you provide, when your open and what deals you are promoting.

3) Extended Operating Hours.

Potentially your business is never closed, and if you have an e-commerce business you can take sales whenever from anywhere in the World!

Now I appreciate that not everyone is as into technology as me, and I still have people today show me their old 'brick' type mobile phone and say 'this is all I need' or 'this does the job for me!' which is great for them, but they are ignoring the average customers needs of today by not having a website.

The costs of websites can vary dramatically, from free (if you want to put a lot of effort in yourself) to very expensive (depending on the requirements). If your thinking of whether or not to get a business website STOP! Your business needs one! When your thinking of how much to spend on a website consider how much time you wish to devote to the website. If you want a professional website then get a professional to do it. If you just want to get on-line and reap the benefits of being on-line and have time to spare then try it yourself to start with.

At Above Website Design we provide a selection of all inclusive packages that are ideal to get your business on the world wide Web. Check out our retail website today www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk

What's all this KEY WORD stuff?!

Key words, or keywords are very important to your website. and keywords are something that search engine optimisers seem to love to ramble on about, why? Because they are really important for your websites search listing and page rankings.

Basically I would say that a key word is a word or phrase that someone (a potential customer or blog reader etc) would type into a search engine to find your website.

For example if you sold fruit cakes on-line it is important that you refer to that fact you sell them and what features a fruit cake have.

So if you sell a range of alcoholic or non alcoholic fruit cakes them this needs to be displayed on your website, and the more you can tell your customer and the search engine about your cakes the better. But be aware that if you repeat the phrase or key words too often then you may be marked as SPAM by the search engine and this will demote your rankings, with some search engines even banning your website from their listings as a result!

Key word stuffing is a term for when you 'stuff' as many keywords into your website as possible, and this is NOT a good idea. Search engines do recognise this procedure and they will penalise your website for it.

My advise when it comes to your key words or key phrasing would be to always think carefully about what the general public would search for in order to find you. Try to always put your key words into a phrase or sentence and do not repeat that phrase or sentence again without changing a few of the words around.

For example on page one of your cake site write 'we sell our fruit cakes on-line keeping our overheads down and your prices low' and on page two write 'luxury fruit filled cakes with on-line ordering and direct delivery to your home' and page three 'alcohol free and alcohol laced fruit cakes delivered to your choice of address when you place an order with us on-line'
These examples use the keywords fruit cakes, ordering, on-line over and over but disguise them with the ordering and changing or words and sentence length.

It is important where you use your keywords too, meta tags, image tags, alternative text and heading are all places where you need to think of what and how your writing for the search engines.

The best way to have success with your keywords and phrases is to write them as if to keep the reader engaged in the topic you are promoting and try your best not to duplicate content, you wouldn't like to read the same thing over and over and the search engine doesn't like it either.

If you would like us to take a look at your site and advise you on how to improve your page rankings then please visit our commercial site www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk where we have a number of services/packages that could benefit your website. (You can have your fruit cake and eat it!!!)

Web Crawlers

To me they sound like something from a horror film: 'the dreaded web crawlers!' but despite their 'creepy' name these are what retrieve the information from your website for indexing.

Web Crawlers are often also referred to as an internet bot, web spider, web scutter, ant or an automatic indexer. I'm sure their must be more names but these are the ones I have actually heard people refer to them as. Web crawlers are NOT something to be feared, in fact you want them visiting your site as much as possible!

Depending on what search engine your referring to and or system you use you will usually start using one name and stick to it, I prefer the 'Spider' analogy as the whole 'web and spider' scene works in my mind!

So what does a web crawler do and why? Well a web crawler visits websites and sends back information to the search engine for the purpose of indexing (page ranking) your site. They recover meta data, key words, the last time of update, the frequency of usage etc.

Depending on the search engine it is thought that as the amount of world wide web content that is indexed is somewhere between 40%-70%.........which I find shocking. If you think of some of the past things you have searched for on-line and the search engine has returned hundreds, maybe thousands of results, now think that at least 30% of results aren't showing! This is why it is important to get your website indexed and indexed properly.

With the shear scale of the world wide web it is understandable that not all of it is indexed, and as accessibility to it becomes easier more and more content appears. Search engines must work out what is popular and relevant as well as what isn't and what has stopped being used altogether.

This is why when a company begins SEO (search engine optimisation) work it can take up to 3 months top be web crawled, but once your site has been 'crawled' for the first time the web crawlers will return to see what changes have happened. Once your site is really up and moving it could be crawled as much a once a day but at first it will be more like once a month.

If the results returned by the web crawlers suite the search engines algorithms then you get to watch your site move up the page ranking, which in turn will drive more traffic to your site and so on! If your site isn't returning what the search engine wants then don't expect any positive page ranking movement.

(I have heard that they recover text in a ratio of somewhere between every 3-7 words and that they only really concentrate on the first 100 characters found on your site. This can be very useful information but I would always recommend providing a website full of useful, relevant information and not to try to second guess the web crawlers activities).

Hopefully now you'll have a better understanding of what web crawlers are and how they work. If you have a website that you feel is not getting the noticed then please visit www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk. We specialise in small businesses and offer affordable Search Engine Optimisation packages that will get your site indexed and moving up the page rankings.

Website Indexing?

Also referred to as web indexing or internet indexing is quite a complex topic. However I feel it is one of the easier on-line topics to explain on a basic level as many of the terms used conjure up mental images that help me remember how it all works.

As website indexing implies it is about getting a website indexed or listed on search engines and the results they provide.

The usual goal is to try to get a website indexed at the first position available when the search engine returns the results back to you after search for whatever you have typed in search box. Quite often this doesn't mean that you will be listed on the top of the page as many search engines will have paid for advertised links at the top of the page, however it does usually mean that you will be found on the first page (directly under the paid results).

So how does the search engine decide which page gets listed where? Well there is no straight forward answer to this as search engines have unique 'algorithms' that set the criteria as to what makes a good website.

When you try to get your website on top of the page listings or index it requires a bit of trial and error, and not everything that works for one website will work for the next, which can be frustrating and opened the debate of whether search engine optimisation of a website is an art or a science? (but that's for another blog!)

There are however certain things we know about how a website gets 'indexed' and if you have a website these are the least things that you need to do to ensure your site gets indexed and moves up the 'listings'

Here's what we know for sure:

Search engines like Google, Bing, Internet Explorer, Zafari, and so on....Use something called 'Web Crawlers' to gather information relating to a website. These web crawlers may gather information from many areas of your website but tend to use your websites 'keywords' and 'meta data' to add to the search engines search criteria (or to match to what someone searches for).

So it is important that your website has the correct terms and keywords in use enable the search engines to list or index your site where it should be when it is searched for.

Although search engines take into account many other factors including site age, site popularity, up to date coding, site usage (content management), and so on, to insure your site gets positioned on the index or page rankings correctly, the meta data and keywords are something you should like to get right from the very beginning.

(If your getting lost with the terms already don't worry because we will explain and link from them in future posts.)

If you require a website why not visit our commercial website Above Website Design. We are specialists in getting small businesses on the World Wide Web.

Let the Blogs Begin!

As anyone involved with SEO (search engine optimisation) and website development will tell you, 'a blog is essential for a successful website', well that is what we think.......erm well, actually know!

Since the introduction last year of the Google Penguin algorithm to regularly update the content of your site with relevant information is of the most importance. It shows that the website is being used and hopefully maintained. So when your site is 'spidered' the information retrieved is different, but also retains the 'key word' or statements associated with your website.

This has seen many retail website owners introduce 'bloggers' into their work place and it has also seen a rise in blogging websites using their platform to release website creating platforms.

I fear however that businesses using such platforms for their wevbsites may be at serious risk of not being able to update the code the websites have been written in or adjust the content of the websites they host should the next algorithm change dramatically. Personally I think these sort of websites will hold some penalty in page rankings in the future as they do negate the skill and education acquired by website designers and developers throughout the world.

For someone new to the world the internet and world wide web it can be an extremely confusing place. Even the reletively simple terms used above can strike fear into the hearts of the non internet savvy!

So in order to promote my new website: Above Website Design, and provide valid 'back links' etc I will be 'blogging' about the terms, phrases and processes of websites, SEO and well.......blogging!

I hope I can help everyone to understand the internet a little better and if I get too technical and you require any more clarity on then please message either through Blogger or visit the website and message me directly.

I start blogging this week and will keep posting out interesting and relevent posts so keep watching.....

Any website, SEO or business questions you require answering?

While we get the finishing touches (legalities) sorted with our company/business launch it would be great if you have any questions regarding websites, search engines, SEO, business start up etc that you would like us to find out more information on and write about in understandable language then please send them in and we will work on the answers with immediate effect and credit the question to the asker :)

Above Website Design

Hello World,

Above Website Design is a website design, development and SEO company based in North East Wales that is due to launch on the 5th of October 2013.

We hope to be providing not only a high level of service in our business areas but also informative and interesting posts on this blog.

As our main market of business will be focussed on start up businesses at first we will not purely be posting technical information on here. We aim to explain topics in further detail as our clientèle request which should ensure what we post is of interest to the wider audience too.

If you are have an interest in website design, development or SEO and wish for a topic to be explained by myself then please message me and I will put my thoughts in writing on here or visit our website www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk

Thanks for reading and look out for our updates when you have a spare minute or two.