A website that works for you.
Picture: Adobe Firefly (AI)
Web design
Over 90% of all web pages receive zero visits via search engines. Are your website’s pages among them?
Fancy a website that works for you?
A website that doesn’t just look pretty, but toils away for you around the clock?
- Don’t leave things to chance – make it easier for search engines to find, read and understand your website, so they can show it your target audience
- Devote yourself to your daily business – save time and spare your nerves
“Every business needs a website! Now, how do I get one as cheap as possible?”
That’s what you probably asked yourself back then.
Whether you knocked something together yourself or hired one of those ‘cheap websites for local businesses’ people, the process was probably something like this:
- Choose an eyecatching template
- Upload your logo and a few nice photos
- Off the top of your head, write some texts about what you do
- Add some slideshows and other things that move about
- Click the publish button
Later that day, you were as tense as world politics during Trump’s misrule. You made yourself a cup of tea, plonked yourself down in front of the computer and, fingers twitching with anticipation, had a nosey at the analytics tool you added without knowing the legal implications.
Nothing.
Two hours later:
”Wow, who on earth in China is interested in my business in Dullsville-on-Sea?”
The following day:
“This is more like it – somebody local. Ah, that would have been Anna in accounts.”
Until, eventually:
“That website was a waste of time and money! It looks OK, but doesn’t bring me any customers. Do the competition have any more luck with their websites?”
Whether made with one of those pagebuilders, WordPress or a conventional content management system – without a strategy and system, your website is unlikely to bring you much.
At best, pure chance decides whether or not your website gets any traffic. And this traffic is often the wrong people in the wrong locations coming for the wrong reasons. In the worst case, your website is ignored as much as those sect members handing out flyers in the pedestrian zone on Saturdays.
“Is it somehow possible to bring the right people to my website? People who are interested in my products and services? Future delighted customers?”
Yes.
Because with a strategy, system and a glutton’s portion of patience, your website could be a customer recruiting sergeant. Prospective customers gradually trundle in via search engines and get to know your products or services – and some of them then contact you.
For years, I was just like you.
I’ve been creating websites since 1999, but for over 20 years I did so without the right strategies. Oops.
I planned and structured them purely as I thought best. And things generally worked out OK for my creative customers back then, as most of them were known to some degree or other. People who knew of them knew how to find them.
My own website attracted as little attention as the small print on your home insurance policy. Although it generated enquires and work, this happened with the regularity of the appearance of Halley’s comet.
But everything changed in 2019, when I landed on a copywriter’s website.
“What?! You find out what your target audience is searching for online, and write about that?! And then your ideal customers find you, just like that?!”
That was a massive revelation.
Me at A&E later:
“Ouch! Yeah, I fell off my chair reading an article about online marketing!”
But it’s logical, when you think about it.
Because when you’re searching for something online, you want to see the most relevant results, don’t you? And so does your target audience.
Fired up with this knowledge, I devoured everything sensible I could on the subject. And after a few attempts and a load of patience, achieved first results.
One Friday dinnertime (for southerners: lunchtime) I was preparing vegetable spring rolls and checked emails on my phone as I fried them. And one from a complete stranger whooshed in.
It read more like a marriage proposal than a business enquiry. (Spoiler: no, we’re not married.)
An amazing feeling. I was high as an astronaut on E.
Nor only proof all this worked, but a textbook example of what I’d learned. A customer who was part of my target audience and perfect for me.
Fancy a website that toils around the clock for you and your business? A website that works for you?
Whether prospective customers find your business online – and become actual customers – is best not left to chance.
Your new website planned, structured and written to make it easy for search engines to read and understand it. When they know what you’re offering whom, they can show it your target audience, where appropriate.
Analysis of your current situation – so I can see where we’re starting from:
- Analyse your current website
- Ask you the right questions, so I know what you’re offering whom – and why
- Competitor analysis
Plan your new website – lay the foundations upon which everything else is built:
- Based on the data established in step 1, determine your new website’s structure
- Keyword research – what are your potential customers searching for? Where do you have a chance of appearing in the results?
- Reformulate and restructure your existing website texts, to present your services as appealingly as possible
Design your new website:
- Based on your existing corporate identity, if you have one, to ensure consistent communication
- Visually appealing, modern and positive user experience
Create your new website:
- Implement website design in the robust content management system Contao
- No pagebuilder ballast – fast loading times for positive user experience and happy search engines, making them more willing to reward you
- Insert your new content – Tina the trainee breathes a sigh of relief
- On-page and technical SEO, so search engines find your site easier to read, understand and classify – and can show it to the right people, in the right circumstances
Maintain your new website, so you can concentrate on your daily business – the thing you’re actually interested in:
- Regular backups (frequency by agreement) – save copies of your website files and database, so it can be quickly back online in the event of emergency
- Install system updates and extension updates – ensure your website software remains safe, secure and up to date
- Sniff out dead links – improve user experience and make search engines happy
- Content updates according to fair use policy (scope upon agreement) – no need for you to learn anything new: you can carry on drilling house walls or people’s teeth (or whatever it is you do for a living)
- Invoiced as a monthly flat rate. Plannable outgoings for you and your purse or wallet.
Why Contao?
- Powerful, flexible content management system that grows along with your business
- Created in Europe with the legal framework here in mind – data protection isn’t some half-hearted add-on
- Open source and strong community – free from US corporations
- Proven in practice since 2006 – excellent choice for business websites and used by thousands of them
- Lots of common functions possible without the need for tonnes of third-party extensions…
- …Which also means fewer attack surfaces for hackers
- Yet a wide range of extensions for a wide variety of use cases
- Plannable maintenance and updates – the service life and support period for each software version set out in the release plan – maximum transparency and peace of mind
I’m Paul Jackson, a European of British origin whose body is in Germany, but whose mind is still lingering in Sheffield. I help customers in the UK and in the German-speaking countries.
I’m not a typical designer, developer or editor, but rather, someone who plans and implements projects from beginning to end. Interdisciplinary working at the interface of design, technology and words – for more than 25 years.
A one-person team with agency thinking – without the agency overheads. Digital solutions that don’t simply just work, but are well thought out – in terms of design, technology and content.
- Eye for design
- Understanding of user experience (UX)
- (Mostly front-end) developer
- SEO (search engine optimisation) and instinct for content
- Way with the written word
- Understanding of data protection etc
- Integrated thinking – I join the dots where others say: “Dots? What dots?”
Websites that doesn’t just look pretty, but built with strategy and system to toil around the clock for you.
- Websites created since 1999
- Up to five-figure page views per month
- Customer website: Four-figure page views increased by 360%
- Customer website: Monthly page views increased from negligible to three-figure
- One of my own websites: 25 keywords on page 1 of Google – enquiries and orders
- One of my own websites: A top 3 spot on Google in the USA – three-figure monthly page views
- One of my own websites: Indexed by Google within two hours, first visit on day three, three-figure page views for a niche topic, above-average dwell time
This is for you if:
- You’ve outgrown your starter website like your childhood bedroom and now want a website that achieves more than just occupying bits and bytes on the server
- You’re prepared to invest in the future of your business – but without an agency budget
- You prefer everything from one source, rather than having to work with umpteen freelancers
- You’d rather concentrate on your actual work than waste time with website updates and maintenance
This ISN’T for you if:
- You’ve already got marketing, SEO and copywriting expertise. If your marketing person did their work well, your website has long been visible and bringing you enquiries. The best results are possible if all this is new to you
- Your main decision-making criterium is your budget – you’d prefer to spend as little as possible (and remain stuck where you are) than invest in the future of your business
- SEO is a matter of life and death for your business: whether you occupy first or second spot decides whether you earn or lose thousands
- You know exactly what pages and content you want and just need someone to implement it for you, on the basis that the customer is always right
- “Forget the analyses and plans – just build me a website!”
- “I haven’t got time to answer loads of questions – just build me a website!”
- “I want WordPress, Wix or whatever, as I’ve heard it’s good”
from €/£ mid-4-figure*
* Not including VAT. I’m in Germany. VAT according to applicable laws, which also depend on your location.
COMING SOON: Invoicing and payments accepted in GBP for customers in the UK.
This rough price of €/£ mid-4-figure serves as a guide, as the search engine data and the performance of your competitors determine the size and structure of your new website. I’ll give you a fixed price in my quotation.
If you’re an executive headhunter and your new website helps you place just one manager, you’ve recouped your investment.
The same if you only design and landscape one garden or sell and install five washing machines.
Maintaining your Contao website – as imperative as brushing your teeth
For the price of a coffee on the way to work every day, your website remains safe, secure and up to date, so it can continue working for you.
Your website isn’t like a washing machine that you buy, stuff your jeans and underwear into for ten years and don’t give a further thought. Your website is like your car – it needs regular care and maintenance, otherwise it suddenly stops working (properly).
Because regular system updates don’t just bring improved functions, but also fix bugs and any security vulnerabilities.
If you neglect these, it’s like going to the Lake District for a week and leaving your front door ajar.
Keep your new Contao website secure and up to date – from €/£77* a month.
* Not including VAT. I’m in Germany. VAT according to applicable laws, which also depend on your location.
COMING SOON: Invoicing and payments accepted in GBP for customers in the UK.
Businesses are all different, so this price is intended as a guide for technical maintenance and occasional content updates/additions on a fair use basis: “Our Christmas opening hours”, or to introduce a new member of the team. If you’ll be regularly publishing news: “We’re exhibiting at the Door Handle Expo Dullsville-on-Sea”, we can agree a flat rate to account for this.
Maintenance agreement minimum term: 6 months, after which 1-month notice period.
The maintenance agreement covers the regular small and medium-sized Contao updates. Every four or five years there are larger updates (new major versions), which bring new technologies, additional practical features and countless improvements. At the same time, outdated technology is jettisoned, so your installation can remain lean and efficient. This means that website owners – or more realistically, people like me – have to check everything precisely to gauge the effects this will have on your installation, and act accordingly. Add things, adapt things, swap things and remove things. How comprehensive all this is depends on your website.
Therefore, in common with other Contao developers, I invoice these major version updates separately. Don’t panic – these are all transparently set out in the Contao release plan, along with their support periods, and only come around every four or five years – like general elections.
Other conventional, established CMS such as Typo3 or Drupal work on exactly the same basis. If you have previously only ever used WordPress or pagebuilder systems, this will be new to you.
Over the typical five-year lifetime of a business website, the costs of a Contao website are comparable with those of a WordPress site – just spread differently.
Fancy a website that doesn’t just look pretty, but toils away for you around the clock?
A website that works for you?
SEO is much more than just scattering a few keywords around. It’s part of the foundations upon which everything else is built.
The right time to be thinking about SEO is at the start of your project. Because a successful website is like a well-oiled machine whose perfectly integrated parts interact seamlessly with one another, all having their part to play:
- Website structure
- Page structure
- Content management system
- Web hosting
- Content
- Link structure
- Loading time
- Dwell time and other signals resulting from user behaviour
- And much more
There are plenty of freelancers and agencies who will gratefully take your money and create your website exactly according to your wishes – without implementing even the most basic SEO measures. Because the customer is always right, aren’t they?
But I’d have a bad conscience working like that. Therefore I don’t – even if this means missing out on work and income.
Don’t be like the B2B service provider I know who paid a web agency €10k for a generic Typo3 website that’s completely ignored by search engines. The result? No visitors. Ouch!
It’s understandable everyone wants to be right at the top of the results page, so the telephone glows until Sarah in sales breaks out into a sweat.
At the same time you know whoever promises this is a spammer or scammer.
Because of course search engines such as Google or Bing decide for themselves who occupies which places in the results for which enquiries. And their algorithms for this change as often as Trump’s unhinged utterances.
For good reason:
If YOU are searching for something, you want to see the results that best match your query – not whatever some company wants to put under your nose, and which they possibly paid for. Your target audience is the same.
Some web designers just fill in the meta information and call that SEO. Yes, that’s important, but doesn’t bring anything in and of itself if there’s no strategy behind it or if your website communication is inconsistent.
If I create your website, I do so on a solid basis:
- Keyword research
- Competitor analysis
- Strategy determined
- Website structure
- Website content
- Technical SEO
- On-page SEO
- Fast loading time
- Good user experience
Important: I’m not promising anything and am not liable for anything. But if this topic is new to you, improved search engine performance is likely. Especially if your competitors also don’t have any idea about it.
Yeah, these days, young people interested in design study design, young people interested in web development study web development and young people interested in language(s) study one or more of those.
Interdisciplinary work has gone the way of the dodo. People work in teams and everyone has their own specialism.
But even under the most generous interpretation, I’m no longer a young person. When I was, ‘doing stuff with computers’ WAS a specialism.
And because I’ve been self-employed since the Cretaceous period, I’ve been free to develop how I thought best for me and my customers.
Skills and knowledge in different areas? Use them all to help my customers!