How to Build a WordPress Website
I recently ran a free online training for the VACT Community on how to build a WordPress website for under £20. I shared the 8 steps you need to build a website and a heap of strategies that I use when building websites for myself and clients. This is a long post so...
Why Do I Need a Website?
The question of 'why do I need a website' came up this week when I was at the Business Design Centre for the ‘Make it British’ Event. This annual event gathers everyone involved in the making of clothes and homewares, from yarn and cloth manufacturers, machines to sew...
Wix v/s WordPress
You might have seen adverts for Wix Website Building and wondered what’s the difference between Wix and WordPress. They both allow you to build a website without knowing any coding. But which is better? It's a bit like deciding which rabbit hole to go down because it...
What I’m doing about GDPR
As GDPR deadline looms closer (May 25th) there’s been ever increasing advice and alarming stories of what needs to be done. I too have been keeping a keen eye on what’s required as being in the industry of digital marketing I feel it’s my job to make sure me and my...
5 Homepage Hero Mistakes That Really Annoy Me
Homepage Hero Mistakes to Avoid Everyone knows that the website homepage is the first page people see when they visit your site. The homepage hero header area is the name sometimes given to the top most part of the homepage that people see when they first visit...
How to promote your new business without a website
Starting with nothing My previous post said you shouldn't commission a website build or bother building one yourself if you're on a tight budget and/or haven't sold a single product or service yet. I often see new business owners get hung up that they can’t start...
How To Get Better Engagement
What Bar Singers Can Teach us about Better Engagement We’ve been in our bolt hole in Portugal these past two weeks enjoying glorious sunny hot weather. We aim to come here 2-3 times a year to completely switch off and take a break and recharge our batteries. One of...
Why You Don’t Need a Website
The myth a new business 'must' have a website This might seem like a surprising thing for a web designer to say that you don't need a website. Surely I should be advocating that every business must have a website to be taken seriously? Well I do. Most of the time. But...
Your Authentic Voice
How to write for the web Your authentic voice is not just about what you say in person. Your authentic voice has to be reflected in all your online activities - website, blogs, articles, tweets, Facebook posts, newsletters, emails.... everywhere online. This article...
Finding the most effective link type in your email campaigns
Image, button or text link - which works best in email? Knowing an effective link type will help you get and measure more engagement from your email campaigns. It's good practice to provide 3 different link types in your email campaigns to your content - image, text...
How to find search terms your website is found by
Finding Search Terms How useful would it be to find search terms that people are trying to find the services and products you sell? My previous post showed you how to discover what your most popular posts and pages are. This video article is about how to find search...
How to find out your most popular web page
Would you like to know which is your most popular web page or post in your website? When you know which are your most visited blog posts you could decide to write more about the same topic or create a service around that topic. Here's a quick video where I show you...
From Riches to Arrears
In my last post I shared with you why I quit my dress design business to help my dad full-time with his deal with the Americans to help them build faster jet planes for the US Army. If you missed it you can read it here. They had paid him a huge sum of money for his...
Why I Quit Designing Ballroom Dance & Wedding Dresses
Last time... I told you about my early childhood and how I was creative and resourceful. You can read that post here. Making clothes for my dolls led me to making my own clothes, led me to making ballroom dance dresses for my mum. Next I found myself making ballroom...
From Ballroom Dance Dress to Web Designer
Creative and Resourceful I haven't always been a web designer. But I have always been creative and resourceful. When I was little I would create comics for my friends to read and I made clothes for my dolls from scraps of material from my mum's sewing projects. Both...