Web design consultancy, website builds & cheap web design

The 3 main job types we get asked about a lot at kc web design ltd are web design consultancy, website design and builds on content management systems such as WordPress and Expression Engine and cheap web design. We work on projects in all of these areas and they all have their own unique processes and pricing.

Web design consultancy

Web design consultancy usually involves high level research and design and less coding than other types of projects. We do a lot of web design consultancy work for well known brands, such as Fujitsu, that requires a lot of research, planning, wire-framing and UI design. Working closely with business owners within Fujitsu we redesign large sections of the UK website to improve user flow, call-to-action engagement and navigation as well as making the design more engaging and unique for specific sections of the site. We’re currently involved in a project to make the careers section more engaging and less masculine feeling by introducing different design elements to make the overall feel of the page more enticing to female job applicants. kc web design ltd have also made huge improvements to the Fujitsu UK contact process which has improved communication to the correct departments by over 70%.

For prices of our web design consultancy please contact us.

Website design and builds on content management systems

A lot of the projects we work on are basic web design and build projects. These normally consist of a period of research and planning then a design stage followed by coding and building the website. These days we usually build our websites utilising content management systems such as WordPress and Expression Engine unless the client specifically doesn’t need access to change content. But thats very rare these days.

Most of these sites are for small to medium size businesses although we do build large corporate sites using Expression Engine (for example the Geocel website) as it’s a very good scalable CMS that works well for large complex sites.

We also now build most of our commerce solutions using WordPress and the brilliant Woocommerce plugin. E-commerce websites are a little more complex than basic brochure type sites and so the costs are higher and development times longer.

If you would like a website built on WordPress or Expression engine or need an e-commerce website please contact us for pricing.

Cheap web design

At kc web design ltd we get asked a lot about cheap web design. Although we no longer do cheap web design we do try and support local businesses that want to get started with a website but we also know that in this world you get what you pay for. We’d had a huge amount of people come to us over the years asking us to pick up cheap web design projects that have gone bad for one reason or another. There are a lot of cheap web design providers out there offering very poor services.

In light of this we decided to build a self-build system for people that want cheap web design but also want it to be professional, modern and supported by professional web designers with over 15 years experience in the web design industry. So, we built an online website builder for small businesses called kc-weblite that’s cost effective (only £10 per month including hosting and support), very easy to use, comes with professional web design support and allows you to get a modern, responsive website up and running within a few hours.

 

Geocel/Ronseal responsive website design

Over the past few months we’ve been working with QRBT and Geocel (part of Ronseal) to produce a brand new responsive website design for Geocel to showcase their huge range of building and DIY products.

Objective

To create a modern, responsive website for Geocell to bring the brand up-to-date and allow users to view all of Geocells products.

Goals

To allow users to browse and search all Geocells products and allow merchants to login to see merchant specific offers and product information.

Solution

The website was built using Expression Engine with additional modules to handle the complex structure and layout of the products and categories. Products needed to be shown under different top level headings and in multiple categories to enable the user to quickly find products by brand, usage or product name.

Every product in the range has a huge amount of additional information that the user can access but this information is mainly used by building trade professionals. kc web design kent built a user friendly front end system that was easy for the user to find and download this extra information and an intelligent admin system for Geocel to manage their products quickly and easily.

More and more trades-people are now using mobile devices and the building trade in general in the UK is amazingly quick at taking up mobile technologies so the new website had to be responsive and offer an optimum experience on all mobiles and tablets.

Merchant areas, stockists maps and other features will be added over the coming weeks as the website grows.

 

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Dash – The API Documentation Browser and Code Snippet Manager

I came across Dash – The API Documentation Browser and Code Snippet Manager for OSX – in a tweet the other day and thought it sounded interesting and maybe useful at kc web design kent. At kc web design we work a lot with html, css, WordPress, Expression Engine and all sorts of other code bases like PHP, Jquery, etc at kc web design kent and when forgetting syntax or functions it’s a case of using Google or Stack Overflow to refresh your memory. When I’m using Coda I sometimes use the books to lookup syntax while I’m coding but they don’t always cover everything you need and don’t have the full documentation for things such as WordPress or Expression Engine which we use a lot at kc web design kent.

Dash is a desktop app for the Mac that gives you access to a searchable, offline selection of over 80 API’s. You can download just the ones you need, search for specific words in all documentation and even store your own code snippets and make your own searchable documents. It sits nicely in the menu bar at the top and hides away until you need it. One really nice feature in Dash is when you search it also searches google and Stack Overflow so if it doesn’t find an answer for you in the API documentation then you have the option to see whats there as well. After testing Dash while doing a bit of WordPress dev the other day at kc web design kent I found it extremely useful. It doesn’t always give you what you need when searching but it does make it very easy to look through the documentation without having to search through online codecs and docs.

I’m not sure how useful the snippet manager will be at kc web design – I tend to store all my code snippets directly in Coda so they’re right where I need them – but it could be good for storing large chunks of code for templates and themes.

And, as I’m writing this I’ve just had a notification window pop-up to tell me the WordPress 3.7.1 docs have been updated so it looks like it updates all docs in the background. Bonus!

Expression Engine plugins – GWcode Categories & Low Seg2Cat

At kc web design kent we’ve spent the last few months building a new website for a well known sealants and glues company (Not Unibond, the other one!). It’s a large project and the final website design will allow users to view a lot of products in a lot of different categories. Products can be listed in multiple categories such as products, brands and applications and be shown on the website in lots of different places. To accommodate the large number of categories kc web design kent needed to build a flexible, intuitive navigation system that was easy to find products and easy for the client to administer from the backend. As we were using Expression Engine for the CMS we knew it could handle this type of layout but what we found was that the structure wasn’t so intuitive for the client and the categories started to get very messy and not easy to code flexible navigation systems.

Expression Engine has a good community and a wealth of plugins so after searching around we came across GWcode Categories. This simple plugin makes it incredibly easy to create complex category navigation systems with Expression Engine and meant that here at kc web design kent we could construct some very flexible templates to deal with products from any number of categories and show relevant nested navigation levels without having to build duplicate templates for each category. The flexibility it gave us has made building this new responsive website much, much easier than using the standard EE tags.

While building the navigation systems we also came across some small issues with using the EE {segment} variable and so after a bit of Googling we came across Low Seg2cat. Again, this simple plugin opened up a world of possibilities and in conjunction with GWcode Categories enabled us to create some very complex templates and category navigation systems.

Finding solutions like the two mentioned above are why here at kc web design kent we love using Expression Engine. Its hugely flexible, has great support, is client friendly and cost effective. If you need a new website built on one of THE best content management systems available then give kc web design kent a call today.

Callagenix website design

kc web design kent were approached by Callagenix back in October 2012 to redesign their current website. Callagenix are a supplier of telecommunication services to businesses and they need to redesign their slightly dated and content heavy website and bring it up to date with a responsive website design. The challenge was to allow the user easy access to the wealth of information on the website but at the same time making it easy for the user to quickly get to information about products and services and allow them to enquire of buy online.

The new website design created by kc web design kent was built on the fantastic Expression Engine and Zurb Foundation with advanced functionality added with bespoke PHP. Plugins were used to enhance the website features and make sure previous blogspot posts could be easily imported. Advanced article tagging for the news section, offsite backups, import and export routines, social media integration and dynamic categories and call to actions were all integrated using Expression Engine. A lot of hard work has been put in to making sure old content was rewritten and external blog posts were integrated into the new website. SEO was a major concern after failings with the previous website and SEO company so content structure was redesigned and advanced SEO integrated into Expression Engine to allow Callagenix staff to produce new pages and articles that would maintain good SEO presence and help improve page rank in organic searches.

The responsive website produced by kc web design kent allows the website to be viewable on all mobile and tablet devices which is very important for a website in a technology based market place. With mobile devices rapidly becoming a large percentage of browsing users its imperative that all modern website designs are tailored to these devices.

After 5 months hard work at kc web design kent the new Callagenix website design went live this week.

 

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Norman Global Logistics

Norman Global Logistics came to kc web design with a very old website that had served them well for nearly 12 years. In web terms, thats a long time and Norman needed to really bring things up to date and provide a website that would give their customer useful information, ways to track consignments, offer a way to pay invoices online and provide shipping tools and news.

We selected KC Web Design to replace our out-dated website with a new design and features that would be of benefit to existing customers and hopefully attract new ones. We needed to purvey a professional image and we are confident the new site has exceeded our expectations. We are very pleased with the outcome and attribute this to the personal attention and advice given by Paul Ledbrook.

Norman needed full control over the content and the ability to add news items as often as they needed so we built the site using Expression Engine which provides a fantastic platform and content management system.

The website design was created to mirror offline branding such as brochures but keep the traditional Norman logo and colours that customers related to. The design was kept simple and clean with focused call to action points and easy navigation menus to access all parts of the website within a few clicks.

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Realms of possibility

If you’d like to break out to fulfil a long term ambition, change career, find a better life balance or just make the most of your precious life then Realms of Possibility may be able to help!

Realms of Possibility wanted a website designer to update their website design and create a whole new look and direction. The principal aim for the website was to appeal to, and interest, new customers encouraging them to make initial contact and provide information on the courses and events available. The website was re-designed with a new look & feel and built on the Expression Engine (EE) platform. We built in social media links to update current clients on new events and made sure the website was designed to appeal to the correct target audience and help with the feeling of endless possibility.

Received some great feedback on my new website! Thanks for all your hard work.

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IMX – International Mail Consolidator

IMX had a requirement to be able to manage its website easily and to have access to additional functionality. It also wished to refresh the look and feel of the website. To achieve this, the existing site needed to be rebuilt onto a content management platform and it was decided that the content management platform would be Expression Engine.

The principal aim for the website was to appeal to, and interest, new customers encouraging them to make initial contact. The website was re-designed with a new look & feel and built on the Expression Engine (EE) platform.

On behalf of IMX I would like to thank KC Web design for a great result on our new website. Our brief has been handled with care and the guidance we have been given has been invaluable. In particular, we found the high level of service and rapid turnaround to be exemplary. We expect to maintain our relationship with your company for the forseeable future.

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Protection and Investment

Protection & Investment Ltd was founded in 1999 and has expanded substantially over the years. It now has 19 Independent Financial Advisers in locations throughout Hampshire, Berkshire and Surrey. Protection & Investment has a very professional, friendly feel and the new website needed to follow these core principles. We created a website that was focused on delivering content to the user. Investment can be tricky to understand so we made sure the website gave clear information in an open and readable format that allowed the user to find the information they needed quickly without having to read through lots of jargon.

SEO was key so we used Expression Engine to create a platform for Protection & Investment to create articles and blog posts. Since launching the site Protection & Investment have rocketed up in the search engine listings and the new website is generating new leads every week.

The service provided by KC Web Design was excellent. They took the time to understand my requirements and objectives and created an excellent website for my business. They have a good knowledge of the IFA market which really showed up in the design of the website which is clean, simple and highly effective. The traffic to my website has increased substantially and it is generating good quality business leads which have more than paid for the initial cost.

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