Established in 1999, we are a Website Design company located in Hertfordshire with a dedicated in-house team of highly proficient, skilled and experienced designers and developers. Using the most modern languages, technologies and methods available, we create websites and online systems equal to any of the large web design agencies but at far more competitive prices.
Advanced Web Designs Ltd was established in 1999 by the then sole proprietor Richard Stangroom. Prior to this Richard worked as the Commercial Manager for a national organisation and it was during his time in this position that Richard saw the potential in the future of the internet and website design.
Having already gained a basic understanding of standard ‘html’ (Hyper Text Mark up Language, a code used to design standard websites) website design from his general interest in computers, Richard took the bold move of resigning from his Commercial Manager’s position and enlisting on a full time website design course in London.
On completing the course Richard had already secured himself enough work from business within the market in which he had previously worked to enable him to justify setting up a company.
Advanced Web Designs Ltd was established in 1999
During the first couple of years whilst building up the company, Richard designed and coded every website, whilst at the same time expanding the business to a stage where it no longer became practical to do everything himself.
Choosing staff that came recommended to him by other website designers he had befriended whilst studying, Richard began to expand his business taking on staff with the necessary skills and experience to enable the company to take on projects of any size and complexity.
Of course, in order to develop a website you must firstly have a design to work with, and so the first stage of our process is to come up with initial design concepts to give the customer an idea of how the finished website may look.
Typically this will emulate as closely as possible the finished design with regard to the overall layout, the balance and placement of imagery, the copy and the proposed colour scheme. In most cases we tend to use test copy and imagery at this stage, although we do try to use relevant images.
As design is very subjective and what one person likes another may not, we always give our customers the opportunity to provide feedback on the design concepts.
We will then alter them based on this feedback until the customer is happy and the design has been approved and signed off, at which stage we go through a similar process with the key internal pages.
Search Engine Optimisation is an imperative part of your website and online marketing process. It's important to have a great website but you need visitors to make it work.
As well as other marketing activities such as Paid Advertising, Content, Affiliate and Social Media Marketing to drive traffic, you want your audience to find your website via search engines because they are a primary source of traffic for most websites. In some industries an average of 70% of traffic is generated by search engines.
Google holds the worlds biggest market share at 68%. When you look at the UK market, Google has a whopping 89.2% of users.
While glaringly obvious, we at AWD always recommend you look at Google as a unconditional priority when considering your rankings. The market share is so vast in the UK that others should only be a small part of your thought process of how you want us to drive you traffic. If you place well on Google, you’ll no doubt place well on the others too, especially when everyone follows the market leader.
Occupying page 1 positions in Google is every businesses aim and competition in some niches can be intense. For some keywords, it is not possible to target certain keywords unless you have a site that competes in terms of pages, authority and also backlinks.
Competitor Research can unravel the mystery behind why some sites ranks and others don’t in addition to unmasking a competitors keyword rankings and therefore their strategy not to mention PPC campaign.
It is always recommended that Competitor Research is undertaken in conjuction with keyword research to fully understand the landscape of your niche market.
Since its inception in 1994, social media websites have flourished on the web, allowing people to connect and share content in ways that had never before been possible. Introduced in August 2003, MySpace – a free website allowing people to create personalised online profiles – peaked in 2005 with an estimated 100 million active users, and today, Facebook boasts an estimated 1.23 billion users, with 170 million people joining and using the social network in the last year alone.
A micro-blogging platform that allows users to create accounts and share 140-character ‘tweets’ with their ‘followers’ – boasts 214 million active users per month, with users spending an average of 170 minutes per month pouring through their Twitter news feeds.
These website’s reach and ubiquity make them a potent marketing tool that really cannot be missed.
Did you know, for example, that Facebook’s average degree of separation (the number of friends of friends to connect you with anyone else on Facebook) is only 3.74?
That means if one of your Facebook friends shares any of your content on Facebook, and one of their friends does too, and so on, you can potentially reach anyone else on Facebook in as little as 4 clicks of a button!
That is any of 1.23 billion people worldwide! And with 1.8 million items shared or ‘liked’ on Facebook every minute, it’s not difficult to see how content can ‘trend’ online.
As social media’s use has sky-rocketed in recent years, websites and businesses are clamouring to gain presence on these social media outlets, and for good reason too! It's something you really can no longer afford to ignore.
Today, Social Media is a massive part of web design and development.
As well as integration within the main body of a website, Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook offer the ability to host applications (Apps) within their systems to carry out various features.
This is where AWD can help. Over the years since Social Media became popular, we have developed a number of Social Media apps for a wide variety of customers. As we are extremely proficient in web development and the programming languages that are use, we use those skills in building your social media application
These Apps can be as small as one page features, or can act like a website within. All social media sites are developed using Open Source languages and all offer integration methods into PHP, the very language we use. Facebook itself is actually developed and programmed in PHP.
FACEBOOK APPS
Facebook apps are probably the most common type of Social Media App. Using the SDK (Software Development Kit) that Facebook provide, it opens up a huge array of features that we can develop for your Social Media campaign.
Facebook apps can work in one of two ways. The first is to host a website within the Facebook system.
Doing this means that readers never have to leave Facebook to interact with your application. Your app can in addition, interact with the persons Facebook account, access information and pass it on to your application or website.
The other main type of Facebook App is to work on a more data driven approach. Your website acts like a normal website but the app part of the site grabs information from people’s Facebook accounts such as their age, interests, likes and many more.
TWITTER APPS
Twitter Apps work in a slightly different way. They are more focused at interacting using tweets, re-tweeting or adding favourites. These apps take place on your website but can then carry out these functions. At this current time, Twitter does not allow for Applications to run within but this may change in future.
Social media apps are great for one off campaigns to accompany your website. These can be for a wide variety of different reasons including seasonal promotions such as Christmas or Easter when accompanying an e-commerce site for example.
Many sites that are not e-commerce related could also benefit of using Facebook apps too. Engage with customers.
Imagine if you run a bar or restaurant and have an event to promote. You can easily engage with your customers by means of a competition or other reward driven incentive.
If you're looking to attract customers to your site then you can promote your social media app directly on Facebook using the advertising medium that is offered. As the app sits directly within Facebook the customer never has to actually leave Facebook.
AWD can not only develop your app to your exact requirements but we cash handle all the promotion for you by means of Pay Per click.
From the first setup of your social media app, we will take you right through to completion and beyond that with tracking and statistical information on your app.
