Look, we get it. It can seem intimidating to Invest in a Custom Website Design.
It can be tempting to purchase an out-of-the-box website template. They’re often inexpensive and can be set up in only a few days. But the truth is a custom website will always provide more value to your business in the long run than a template site.
That’s why it’s crucial to view your website is an investment, not an expense. In the same way that a great employee or a great store location will eventually pay dividends, the same goes for your website.
Why is that?
Here are six reasons why every business should invest in a custom website design with Fox & Lee.
The most obvious benefit to custom web design is the ability to highlight what matters most to your business. Whichever features matter most to you and your customers, you can display them front and centre.
And consider this: what matters most to you today may change tomorrow.
Any business owner understands that a business is constantly evolving. Whether it’s a new product, a new brand, or a even a new core focus, the strongest businesses are those that can pivot when the market calls for it.
A template website is confining. Even if you found a template that worked for you before, you may find yourself permanently cemented in that solution, unable to change.
Your adaptable business needs an adaptable website that can keep up with your demanding business needs and your demanding customers.
With a custom website design, you have full control and true business independence to make any custom changes required—no matter how small—to make sure that your business is never held back by your technology.
Modern marketing is all about branding. Actually, it always has been.
While your business offering may be better than your competition’s, the strength of your brand is what gets people in the door.
With a templated website, your ability to stand out from the pack will be handcuffed. When potential customers see a cookie cutter website, they see a cookie cutter business.
With a custom website design, you are far more able to showcase the true power of your brand and what makes you unique. A beautiful website design with a strong, focused brand promotes your business as more reliable, more professional, and more compelling.
A great web designer will work with you to make sure that all the best aspects of your branding are reflected in your website to make sure your visitors truly understand who you are and what you do.
Just as you should strive to give every customer a tailored, personal experience in your day-to-day business dealings, you should strive to do the same with your website.
A one-size-fits-all website solution is unlikely to give your particular customers the unique experience they deserve.
With custom web design, you can tailor your website to your customer—because you know them best.
Whether it’s a unique landing page layout, a clear navigation architecture, a highly responsive design, or an intuitive user funnel, your website needs to provide a great experience at every step of the way.
Because every interaction with your website is an interaction with your business.
Technology changes fast. It’s no different when it comes to web design.
The way people use the web is constantly changing, whether it’s newer phones, changing browsers, or other unexpected contenders entering the scene.
With a custom website design, you can stay on top of that change to ensure that your site visitors—and potential customers—are always getting the most modern possible browsing experience.
The most important search engine ranking factors can all be positively influenced by a custom website design. Especially a custom website studio that understands modern trends in SEO.
The most important ranking factor has always been the number of high-quality links pointing to your website. Nothing earns more links than a beautiful, compelling website design.
More recently, Google’s search ranking algorithm is placing more value on websites that provide an incredible user experience thanks to unique, engaging content.
Factors like the time a user spends on your site and how many pages they interact with are now taken into account when ranking your site in search results.
So the more you can “wow” your site visitors, the more likely you are to positively affect the signals that Google cares most about—boosting the number of visitors your site and therefore boosting your business.
Ultimately, you’re in business to make money. With every business decision you make, you should be asking yourself if that decision is contributing to your bottom line.
Therefore, you should treat your website the same way. Is your site simply an online business card, or is it powering your business?
When it comes to web design, a customised design is always going to generate better ROI.
Every previous benefit on this list has been building to this point. Having a custom website will draw more potential customers to your site, provide a better customer experience once they’re there, and ultimately convert more visitors into business.
That’s why it’s wise to view your website as an investment rather than an expense. A powerful website will pay itself off many times over by working for you to generate new business.
At Fox and Lee, we create beautiful solutions. Our Melbourne-based custom website design firm understands what it takes to translate a successful business into a successful website.
Ready to get started? Click here to fill out our web form now
Websites require maintenance to stay up to date and functioning properly. As your business grows, your site evolves with it. The necessary maintenance can include everything from introducing new features to servicing old ones. A Website Care Plan ensures your website stays online and error-free, ready for customers as well as representing your business professionally online.
A poorly functioning or difficult to use website can end up costing your business a lot of money in lost revenue. When visitors go to a website and find things wrong with it, they often don’t stick around. Most business owners don’t see their website through the same eyes as their customers. Missed website issues or downtime can hurt your business more than you’re aware.
A Website Care Plan takes care of both the expansion and maintenance of your website. Website Care Plans optimise the site performance, load time, downtime and uptime. This is all dependent on the WordPress software and plugin functioning as needed (and on the up to date version). It also allows for website growth, fresh content, analytics, monitoring and design changes. Everything is professionally executed in a smooth and well-tested manner.
At Fox & Lee, we first backup the website and then check that after our updates no issues have occurred. We keep a record of which plugins we update so if there is ever an issue we can see what plugin version was changed and then revert back. Also included is our monthly maintenance report which highlights performance and security scans. In the event we ever catch a plugin issue, it becomes a support ticket and we address it before you ever knew there was a problem.
Maintaining your site yourself could cost you more than you expect. If you just update from your WordPress admin, you won’t have a record of the updates history. And if an update to a plugin creates an issue a couple of weeks later, it would be difficult to know which change caused the issue and how you can revert back without restoring a very old backup (and potentially losing content changes, sales orders and contact entries).
Inexperience and neglect can damage the visual impact and functionality of your website. When that happens, you’ll have a choice to make. You can try and fix it yourself, at which time you may end up doing further damage. Alternatively, you can then pay the (sometimes large) price for a professional to fix it. Your website is just like a car, it costs more to fix it than it does to maintain it properly. Regular oil changes help keep your car running properly and regular site maintenance helps keep your web site running properly.
You have a lot on your plate running a business. The peace of mind offered with a Website Care Plan through Fox & Lee lets you raise a support ticket when it’s needed and get back to what you need to be doing. By securing experienced web professionals to update and maintain your site properly you are saving potential lost sales and visitors.
If you’re interested in securing a Website Care Plan for your website, contact us on (03) 9043 1039 or click here to learn more about how we can help keep your site expanding and functioning.
Here at Fox and Lee, we are a proud member of our local community. When Melbourne based Businesses are looking to grow themselves with eCommerce Web Development, we are happy to lend a hand.
We offer expert design and advanced development specialities (such as CS-Cart mastery). Thus, you can trust us to transform your online presence to a strategic representation of your business.
We are committed to being apart of your online journey. We support your business as it grows online and different opportunities arise.
Here are three of the many examples of eCommerce Web Development where we developed a web solution for local businesses.
Lashes Australia is an exclusive online supplier of quality lash products. Upon visiting, you’ll notice they proudly express their core values of great customer service quality product throughout their website.
This design is bright and clean and highlights their product. Similarly, messaging is clear with key promotional details highlighted using impactful banners. Language including ‘Premium’ and ‘Quality’ reinforces their brand promise.
By including a page about ‘Lash Tips’ Lashes Australia position themselves as an expert in the industry. Additionally, they invite reviews on each product in their range. Lashes Australia is proud of its brand and products. Hence, they let that shine through with their online presence.
Lashes Australia is a wholesaler of lash extension and accessories. The transparent nature of the features included in their eCommerce web design reinforces the integrity of the brand. As a result, this speaks to their target audience, being businesses and professionals in the industry.
Windragon let pictures of their products do the talking on their homepage. Beautiful flowers are everywhere you look. The use of imagery acts as a strong selling tool.
Windragon’s website features an easy to navigate menu system. They’ve also included a Gallery in their web design that showcases their beautiful artificial flowers.
This website is customer-centric and makes getting in contact clear the user. The customer service provided with a user-experience focused design represents the company’s values in a digital format.
The ordering system was a key part of the development of Windragon’s website. Because of this we sorted out the backend for them and left Windragon with an easy to use web experience.
Collecte had the great idea of setting up a marketplace that focuses on preowned designer furniture.
As a Multi-Vendor eCommerce website, Collecte balances both customers and vendors landing on their homepage. Easily identifiable paths of navigation are laid out to both audiences. For example, separate help centres exist for vendors and customers in the footer of the page. Collecte manages dual requirements with specific functionality catered to each audience.
Their website’s integrity is managed through a range of features, such as a review system for vendors and an approved list of designer categories eligible for selling on the site.
Additionally, their website design incorporates a range of elements that make their website unique. Attention to detail positions Collecte to meet their customers needs no matter how varied they may be.
The best part of this website is that with all these moving parts, Collecte still feels undemanding and natural to navigate for the user.
Collecte launched this year. We’re excited to see how they grow and develop as more people discover this one of a kind website.
Here at Fox and Lee, we create Strategic Digital Solutions and Ecommerce Sites that elevate your business. We think your website deserves better than a template.
We’d love to be a part of your eCommerce Web Design website design. Please get in touch with us on 03 9043 1039 or by completing the form below.
Related Reading: 5 ways to make your ecommerce solutions more profitable
Before you decide to invest in Childcare or Daycare website Design, there are many things to consider. At Fox and Lee, we build custom websites that reflect your personality and what makes you special.
Families care about their relationships with people who spend time with their children. Personalising your digital presence allows you to properly introduce yourself before they have even stepped through the door.
When you work with Fox and Lee we take the time to understand your business and what makes you unique then make sure this reflects online. We also know it’s valuable to think about what’s important to prospective parents.
When we design and develop a website for your centre, we find the perfect harmony of conveying what you need to say, with what your customers need to hear. The combination of this focus paired with our expert design results in a website that sells your centre to prospective parents.
Your curriculum is one of the most important things to include on your Daycare website. It provides prospective parents with insight into your centre’s teaching philosophy and how their children will be educated through play-based learning
Outlining your curriculum online helps you stand out from competitors. You can show parents the developmental and educational advantages that come with enrolling in your centre.
Parents want to ensure their children will be fed a healthy and nutritious diet, this information must be displayed proactively and clearly to address this concern.
We love how Beachwood Early Learning uses a dedicated page to reassure parents that all allergies, intolerances and dietary restrictions will be catered for in their centre. They’ve shown initiative and answered a key question for many parents with their web design.
Bambini’s enrolment pages communicate the process for enrolling in one of their centres. They also have multiple easy to find ways for the visitor to contact them directly or book a tour online.
Parents are more likely to contact centres that make finding and understanding information regarding enrolments clearly accessible.
As with the previous point, your contact information must be easily found on your website. Contact information should be made convenient for the user within the Daycare website design.
We like to include ways to get in touch in your header, footer and on a dedicated page to make sure the people who have begun to fall in love with your centre can give you a call immediately.
As you would know, your biggest competitors are the other Childcare centres around you. When you work with Fox and Lee we can offer a range of solutions to give you a competitive edge.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can be integrated into your website to help you place above competitors on Google. Good quality SEO takes time, and the investment in building your organic position in search results has a massive pay off.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) allows you to buy the space at the top of search pages for phrases we know your customers use. We’re able to generate leads to your website and measure return on investment with SEM.
We’re happy to help you get your website in front of more customers with our digital marketing solutions.
Admittedly, with proud parents in our team, we love working with Childcare and Daycare centres to build strategic and personalised web solutions.
Bambini Early Learning Centre and Beachwood Early Learning are just two examples of the many ways we can bring your centre to life online.
We’d love to be a part of your daycare website design. Please get in touch with us on 03 9043 1039 or by completing the form below.
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Online Shopping is very popular at the moment. Consumers needs have changed and a lot of businesses have had to change the way they do things to survive through the COVID-19 Outbreak. We’re hearing a lot of questions about whether online shopping will continue at the same pace after local lockdowns end and the pandemic is resolved.
We’ve looked at Google Trends and compared some keywords to see what consumers have been looking for over the last 12 months. This helps to show us how people were shopping before and what’s happening now.
Understanding the demand for online shopping can help when considering a custom ecommerce website for reaching new customers.
The trend is really easy to read here. For ‘buy online’ you can see that after the peak brought on by the first wave of restrictions that search traffic has still maintained at a higher level than where it previously sat.
Across Australia people have been looking for things to ‘buy online’ more than ‘buy in store’ consistently over the last 12 months.
A very similar trend on this comparison. Omnichannel retailing has become increasingly more popular in recent years. While both ‘delivery’ and ‘click and collect’ involve visiting a website, delivery allows customers to not have to leave their home. So unsurprisingly delivery has been incredibly popular through the COVID-19 Outbreak.
As with the pervious example, a years worth of data shows that customers have been happily engaging independently with a company’s website for some time now. The interest in delivery seems to be still growing. It’s an opportunity for your store to reach customers wherever they exist.
Search traffic for customers looking for an ‘online sale’ has peaked and dropped over the last 12 months before positively settling in recent months. A small peak of interest for ‘in store’ sales can be seen at Christmas. Comparing this to the traffic for ‘online sale’ seems unfair but it’s relevant.
People looking for sales in stores are seasonal, but the data shows people are nearly always looking for sales online. We think this is a huge indicator for why online shopping will continue at a similar rate after lockdowns are lifted.
The COVID-19 Outbreak can be very stressful for those managing a business. You may be conflicted about whether it is a good time to adapt your business model and expand your digital presence.
Your customers are online, and they aren’t going anywhere, anytime soon.
With all the support available to Victorian businesses it is a great time to invest in an innovative online shopping experience to engage more customers.
Once you’re ready to get started you can contact with us on 03 9043 1039. Alternatively you can fill in the contact form below. We’d love nothing more than to play a small part in helping your business grow online.
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We know from Google Trend analysis that online shopping isn’t going anywhere and it’s more important than ever to be thinking about your online presence. Maybe this is something you’ve been thinking about for a while, but the cost to build a website can be intimidating. Your business and your brand are important, so the investment of time and money in a good quality website should be a key element in your COVID-19 recovery strategy.
The digital experience you give your customer should be at the same level of great service you give your customers face to face.
We’ve done some research to list where you can find different Government grants and programs that could potentially contribute to your budget. Hopefully this can help bring the dream of a beautiful new website a little bit closer to a reality.
As an example, for us here in Niddrie the City of Moonee Valley the local government is offering $10,000 grants for Adapting to Changing Needs.
This includes online innovation, web design and redevelopment, ecommerce platforms, mobile app development. We’re currently working with local businesses who are applying for these grants and taking the opportunity to discover new customers waiting online.
The Victorian Chamber of Commerce has put together an Employer Guide for COVID 19. It is regularly updated and includes changes to the Modern Award. That’s something every Victorian business owner should want to be aware of.
While you won’t get a cash injection reading this guide, it helps prevent legal costs or fines that could take away from any budget you’ve put aside to cover your costs for building a website.
GrantConnect is a portal where you can review a variety of different grants. They come from different states, industries and programs. Each grant covers useful details such as categories, close dates and eligibility criteria.
This is a great place to find any niche grant opportunities you many not have been aware of specific to your industry.
When Victoria went to Stage 3 Restrictions again on the 8th of July the Business Support Fund was extended. What does this mean for you? If you’re already getting JobKeeper there is now another $5,000 grant available you can currently apply for.
One suggested use of this grant is “developing the business through marketing and communications activities”. We can’t think of a better way to achieve this than updating your website to generate new customers.
Leave no stone unturned. The grants and programs portal at Business.gov.au asks you a few questions and then generates a list of grants specific to your business.
While this list is shorter than the one at GrantConnect it is another place to regularly check for resources that may be available to you.
Depending on eligibility grants might not be an option for you. We know the investment of a strategic and stunning web presence will play a key role in how you operate post the COVID-19 outbreak.
That’s why we’ve included the Coronavirus SME Guarantee Scheme. This scheme gives you an opportunity to get an unsecured personal loan that includes an initial 6 month repayment holiday.
Victorian businesses are eligible for various tax relief measures as a result of COVID-19. If you haven’t already lodged your tax for the last year it’s worth reading up on.
You can use your tax return as an opportunity bring in some extra cash. Any extra budget could be put towards the cost of building your website.
We hope you found this list helpful, but we aren’t experts in government stimulus. We’re experts in custom web design. Eligibility criteria, close dates and other relevant information can be found on the linked websites. It’s worth looking into and seeing if there is anything you’re not currently getting that you’re entitled to.
If improving your online services is part of your COVID-19 Recovery Strategy we can help with stunning bespoke web design, development or custom ecommerce solutions.
Once you’re ready to get started you can contact with us on 03 9043 1039. Alternatively you can fill in the contact form below. We’d love to be a part of making your website a beautiful reflection of your business.
If you’re looking to build a new website for your business, custom WordPress development is the way to go.
WordPress is by far the most popular CMS. As of the end of 2018, nearly 1/3 of all websites are built off of WordPress, with WordPress controlling about 60% of the market share. And for good reason.
WordPress is incredibly flexible, open source, and user-friendly—making custom website development easier than many other platforms.
As custom WordPress developers, we’re often asked what makes a customised site better than a template site.
We’re happy to answer. Here are six major reasons why custom WordPress sites lead to superior performance.
While it may seem faster to pick a template website and CMS and simply plug in your own content, custom sites will save you time in the long run.
Why?
Off-the-shelf themes or templates are coded inconsistently from one to the next. Remember: these themes are all built by different developers, each with their own coding styles and preferred structures.
So even with a template site, there can be a high learning curve.
When it comes to making any changes to the theme, whether it’s a HTML structure, CSS markup, or PHP code, you or your developer will have to reverse engineer how the site was built—which can take longer than building an entire site from scratch.
By developing your own custom WordPress site, you are in the driver’s seat. You know how the site is built, so making changes is easy.
One of the biggest advantages of a custom WordPress site is the ability to slim your site down to only the necessities.
Off-the-shelf theme development companies care about one thing only: volume
In order for those companies to be successful, they require a huge number of people to buy their sites. But every individual website user has different needs.
To cater to as many paying customers as possible, these developers cram as many features into these templates as they can. These templated themes come with many page layouts, tons of add-ons, and all kinds of unnecessary bloat—known as “theme bloat”—that you likely won’t ever use.
And, if you ever have to customise the site (which you will some day), you’re just throwing more onto the pile of features.
On the other hand, when you develop your own custom WordPress site, you have complete control over what features go into the site.
That means a slimmed-down, lighter site with only the features you need. Not only does that mean an easier user experience from the backend, it also means less unnecessary code and queries on the website frontend, which means a better experience for your site visitors too.
Which leads us to our next point…
When you’re able to control every line of code on your site, you can be sure that every line of code is being used.
That means your code can be fully optimised to be as streamlined as possible, which means faster load times and a smoother user experience.
With an off-the-shelf template you are at the mercy of the site speed you’re given, with limited ability to optimise.
But their research also shows that 50% of visitors will abandon a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
It’s in Google’s best interest to make sure that they’re only serving up extremely fast websites.
So make sure your site is one of them.
While there are many off-the-shelf templates that provide so-called “SEO benefits,” the reality is that a custom website is always going to have an SEO advantage over a template.
Google’s ultimate goal is to serve up the best websites to its users. If properly designed, a custom site is going to provide a better user experience than a template site—which makes Google happy.
On top of a better front-end experience and faster page load times, custom sites offer a ton of other SEO benefits.
A custom WordPress site will give you greater control over page layouts, the link architecture of your site, the quantity of content you can create, page meta data, and even advanced SEO components like schema markup.
You’ll also have more control over elements like H1, H2, and H3 headings, without being stuck with the default heading tags provided by certain themes.
On top of that, if you ever encounter any SEO issues, you’ll have the ability to get under the hood and fix whatever’s wrong.
With an off-the-shelf template site, more built-in features can mean more security holes. You can’t be certain about the reliability and safety of the system you’re using.
When something does go wrong, you’re also far less likely to have the support available to help you through any issues you encounter.
Investing in a custom site also means investing in a developer who’s going to work with you to make sure your business is protected and that you always have the answers you need.
Ultimately, a custom-developed WordPress site is going to give you and your business the freedom it needs to succeed.
A custom site will give you the freedom to service your customers in the best way possible. Not only will you have the ability to tailor the look and feel of your site to your exact specifications, you’ll also be able to control how that frontend meshes with your backend system—to make sure your business processes aren’t hampered by the need to fit into a predetermined template.
You’ll also have more control over your future, with less reliance on third-party tools that could change or be deprecated at any instant. And when browsers and devices change—because they always will—with a custom site, you’ll be primed to easily adapt to that change.
And should your business ever change (always for the better of course), you will be able to adjust your site to those changes, putting you in the driver’s seat.
At Fox and Lee, we create beautiful and practical solutions. Our Melbourne-based custom WordPress development and design studio can take your business from good to great—with a website that dominates the competition.
Ready to get started? Click here to fill out our web form now
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