Web Development And Design

Website Development And Design

Whether you are an established business, or just starting out, ensuring your website is a stand out can be critical to your success. There is so much that goes into creating a winning website but before any in-depth content creation is undertaken, you need the foundation of your site to be exceptional. This is where website development and design come in.

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EFOUR DIGITAL MARKETING WEB DEV Quick Links

Website Dev And Design

Web Dev VS Web Design

Choosing a Developer

Why EFOUR?

What To Expect

FAQs

The Importance Of Website Development And Design

While you build your site to advertise what you do and what you offer, in reality, a website is more for your customers and clients than it is for you. The user experience and appeal of your site goes a long way towards generating more business; after all, it is the biggest first impression you stand to make.

How do you create an outstanding website? Great website development and design is achieved by focusing on six core elements:

A Winning Homepage

Did you know most visitors to your site will form an impression within milliseconds of landing on your homepage? Your homepage should make it clear who you are, what you do and why the visitor should choose you. The design should be clear and uncluttered, with the focus on the core information.

Clear Contact Information

Aside from being an essential part of converting traffic to leads and sales, contact information builds trust with your visitors. Giving detailed and multiple ways in which site visitors can contact your business helps relay your professionalism and legitimacy as a genuine company.

Visual Appeal and Ease of Navigation

Ensuring your page is enticing and looks great is important, but this doesn’t mean crowding too much onto every page. Focus on quality content and a good mix of visual media such as photos and videos as this will help visitors remember you. Make all this content easily accessible through simple, clear navigational menus – failure to do this will cause visitors to give up on your site and go elsewhere.

Effective Calls To Action

So you have great traffic, but what do you want these visitors to do while on your site? A call to action helps customers take that next step and engage with you. This could be done via an invitation to sign a newsletter, contact us button, create a membership, and more. If you do not provide these opportunities for visitors to take action, it’s likely they’ll continue browsing and visit another website instead.

Suitable For Mobile Use

More than half of all web users now navigate from their mobile devices. If your website is not built with this user experience in mind, you stand to lose a huge proportion of your intended audience. Ensuring the functionality of your site includes programming for mobile use means checking its usability across a range of devices for loading speed, aesthetics, and compatibility with various screen sizes.

Search Engine Optimisation

Building SEO into your website from the outset is one of the best ways to ensure it achieves maximum visibility. Creating a site around the core principles of SEO means that search engines are going to index your site correctly and boost your rankings in returned search results.

Web Design Online Technology Working Office Concept

The Difference Between Web Development and Web Design

So you’ve decided to build or re-do your website, do you choose a web developer or a web designer, or do you need both? Website development and design are not interchangeable, they each perform a specific and important role in the creation of your website.

A web designer works to transform your ideas into visually appealing layouts and essentially create the blueprint of your site or web application.

They are focused on selecting colour palettes, fonts, the layout, and generating an overall theme for your site that prioritises the user experience. They may use professional software programs rather than code to create mock-ups or prototypes of your website to revise in advance of the site build.

Web developers take these ideas and build them into a fully functional website through the use of code. Developers are focused on back end development and how your site functions, more than its style or how it looks. They work on the creation and maintenance of websites, keeping them online, linked to a server, and free of glitches.

At EFOUR, our team are experts in both specialties, making the entire process less confusing and more streamlined.

Through your website, your doors are open 24/7 and accessible to a global audience, so you need to make it count.

Grow your client base with the right website design

The Process - What To Expect

When you engage a web developer and web designer for your website, you may be wondering what comes next. The process for website development and design may differ slightly depending on your timeline but should be somewhat similar to the following outline:

Outlining The Vision

This is primarily focused on you as a business owner and what you hope your site will achieve. It is helpful to ask yourself some key questions when outlining your vision as this will help you create focus.

Ask yourself, who is your target market? Who else might you want to reach? What is your purpose or position as a business? What do you think your visitors want to see and what do you want them to see? What action are you hoping they will take after visiting your site?

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a collaborative period where you work alongside your web designer to educate them about your company. They will guide you through what that might look like by offering suggestions or solutions to help you achieve this.

Researching the competition forms a critical part of the brainstorming stage. Research allows you to define your point of difference and work towards a unique site and value proposition that appeals to your target audience.

Planning

The literal drawing board stage! During this stage, a plan for your site will be prepared. This plan should include details of some web content, the narrative of the site, a schematic or wireframe of what the site will look like, and a site map.

Make sure you spend time with your web developer reviewing the details of your new site. Remember, the digital world is vast and competition is fierce, if you don’t like something or want to discuss a new idea, now is the time!

Design

With no coding required for website design, the design process should be a simple and uncomplicated step. Your web designer will take the details from the planning stage and build on that to deliver you a mock-up of what you might expect your site to look like.

It is important to not get ahead of yourself, so ensure you give this step the necessary attention. This is the time to focus on the appearance of your website, and how the user interface will function when launched to the internet. You can focus on the development later.

Develop

Once your design and content details are approved, your website can start to be built using code and specialty software. Coding for websites is intricate and detailed. Building a great website that meets usability and design goals takes time and significant skill to achieve and this may include specialised coding.

It is important the previous steps have been done well and offer as much detail and clarity as possible. This can help expedite your website’s creation and prevent any issues for your web developer.

Launch

Once the coding and subsequent testing of your site are completed your site is ready to launch! The value of having skilled developers in your corner is that post-launch, you can continue to add to your site. This keeps it active with valuable content while being safely stored on the server.

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Choosing A Web Designer And Developer

Web development and web design are fields that are jam-packed with “experts”. Despite this, finding a team that genuinely cares about your business and works hard to build you an exceptional website is not always easy.

To ensure you are going to be happy with the results of your investment in web development and design, you should:

Determine what type of website you need

The needs of an e-commerce platform are vastly different to that of a tradesperson selling professional services. Your design and development team should be experienced with your chosen site type and have examples to show you.

Choose Your Team Carefully

Select a team you would be happy to continue working with beyond the launch of your site and that has the capacity to offer this. Changing technology support down the line is both stressful and expensive.

Additionally, ensure you feel comfortable and confident with your chosen web designer and web developer – a great working relationship is essential to achieving optimal outcomes.

Know Your Budget

Set your budget and decide how much support you feel you will need. Websites are not a set-and-forget scenario! They require ongoing maintenance and, as far as search engines are concerned, a static website is not one to rank well. Adding fresh content and updating is not only great for your SEO but your visitors as well.

Be sure you factor these ongoing costs into your budget and check that what you want is achievable within it. There is no point in spending your entire budget on the initial web design and development and then having nothing left for its upkeep or hosting.

Focus On The Details

Choose web designers and developers that offer outstanding attention to detail and demonstrate a genuine passion for their job. It’s the little details that will make your site stand out and its creator’s experience will show.

Your website development and design team should know your vision and goals. Make sure you feel comfortable that they can deliver and work to your specifications.

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Why Trust EFOUR With Your Web Design And Development

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No matter how amazing your site is, if your website development and design do not account for SEO, you’re limiting its chance to be seen and deliver the results you hope for.

Why Trust Us With Your Web Design And Development?

At EFOUR we offer a multi-skilled team capable of delivering a truly exceptional website. We specialise in website development and web design while also being experts in digital marketing. This enables us to create a truly outstanding website for your business that works as hard as you do at generating leads and delivering increased profitability.

We have years of experience creating and delivering websites to both small and large businesses that not only meet but exceed expectations. Our web designers and web developers are experienced, highly skilled and genuinely interested in supporting your business to flourish through an exceptional website.

We understand the importance of intelligent, functional web design and web development and enjoy working collaboratively with businesses to create their website as well as offering ongoing professional tech support.

As a local, family-owned business ourselves, we understand the importance of delivering affordable, professional, and reliable web development and design. We are invested in your success and love getting to know business owners in Queensland and Australia-wide.

To learn more about our web design and development services or any other services such as digital marketing, contact our friendly team today on 1300 263 806.

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Some of the results you can expect

IT Services Brisbane

PRODUCTS
NEW WEBSITE
GROWTH ACCELERATE PLUS

Brisbane

24 months ago, IT Services Brisbane had one part time employee with Director Hollie O’Byrne working full time. After 18 months working with EFOUR they are a 10 man team and looking to expand through Australia.

500%

Increase in revenue

20x

Return on marketing investment

80%

Increase in visibility

Enable Exercise

PRODUCTS
GBP LOCAL EXPANSION

Sydney

Enable Exercise engaged EFOUR Digital marketing to provide Managed Google Business Profile services. Within 2 months of starting Enable Exercise had an increase of 300% in Leads and have recently had to change business locations to accomodate their growth in their team.

325%

Increase in Leads

7x

Return on marketing investment

210%

Increase in Google Maps Visibility

Critical Care

PRODUCTS
GBP LOCAL ACTIVATION
NEW WEBSITE

Brisbane

Critical Care initially engaged EFOUR to provide Google Business Profile management. This turned into a new website build and Google Profile management. This has resulted in 400% increase in leads.

410%

Increase in leads

15x

Return on marketing investment

230%

Increase in Google Maps Visibility

Some recent websites we’ve built

Russell's Garage Doors

IT Services Brisbane

Direct Focus Solutions

Locations we service

Testimonials

“Hey Damen – The vast majority of times you receive an email from me is because either (a) I need something or (b) something’s wrong.

So this time I’m emailing you because something is right! And I want to give you some proof of the great training you offered on navigating the back end of the website.

Our old website included a link to download a free eBook that I had written called “Discover Your Life’s True Purpose” and the download was linked to an “ebook signup” list in Mail Poet.

We decided that we did not want this to be part of our new website as we wanted to keep the focus more on coach training.

However, over the last few days I had been thinking that it would still be good offer this resource on the “Nero News” that we send out from time to time via EDM. However, I also wanted people to sign up to the ebook list, so I could monitor how many were responding.

So I….

Uploaded the e book into the media library
Created a new Ninja form called “download e-book and linked the e-book and added Mail Poet signup and linked it to the e-book signup list .
Created a new page called e book sign-up and added an image of the ebook plus a heading and the ninja form. I published the page, but didn’t add to the menu because I don’t want the page on the front end of the website.

So now it’s all ready to do be inserted as a link in the promo for it in the next Neuro News!

Mate, I really don’t see myself as tech savvy at all, but I manage to work all this out because you showed me enough to do so. So thanks heaps! 😊”

Mark Setch

Director of Training Neurocoaching Australia

“If you need a great looking website, that gets you results, you can’t go past EFOUR. They know what they are talking about and follow through, at an affordable price. Their after sales service is also second to none. Do yourself a favour and give this team a call.”

Sharon Capizzi

Owner, She's Sew Creative, Sydney

“The EFOUR team have been absolutely fantastic to deal with in the development of our new site. We are most appreciative of their patience when working through our endless last-minute alterations in the lead-up to the launch.

They never missed a beat and I look forward to working with them again.”

Sean Ryan

Marketing and Digital Engagement Manager, BGW Group, Brisbane

“IT Services Brisbane recently EFOUR Digital Marketing to create a new website, including SEO, for our company. Their expertise in web design and SEO was outstanding, every member of the team provided exceptional service and all followed through.

What stood out, was the process from concept to delivery was very structured and results-focused. We felt listened to, whilst also being provided clear and concise recommendations.

Our website has already more than paid for itself. We have increased market share far more than we thought possible in our identified target suburbs.

If you are looking to increase your business exposure and can handle the extra workload that will come from the increased exposure, I highly recommend speaking to the team EFOUR.”

Hollie O’Byrne

Director, IT Services Brisbane

“In 2019 we built and commenced operating a small guesthouse. We decided to engage EFOUR Digital Marketing to construct our website. They are an extremely efficient company with excellent communication and are Australian owned and operated, which was important to us.

They also set up out Channel Manager and Property Management System, as well as connecting 4 Online Travel Agencies. This had us up and running in a short amount of time. As we were new to the hospitality business, we could never have completed this in the time EFOUR took to be online and receiving bookings.”

Phil Plasto

Phil Plasto | BnB Owner | Silverdown Guesthouse | Orange, NSW

Our awards & accreditation

2018

2019

2019 & 2020

2019

2020

Frequently Asked Questions

The costs involved in website development and design can vary significantly depending on your needs. Factors such as website type, the skill of your developers and designers, search engine optimisation, and content quality, will all influence the price. The domain name and web hosting (server) are additional costs that can vary also – your chosen team can walk you through the details of this.

The more involved and complex your site, the longer the planning and building will take and therefore the higher the costs. E-commerce platforms, for example, are significantly more involved than websites advertising essential services such as those used by tradespeople.

At EFOUR our goal is to work with clients within their budget, to create a website that is functional, user friendly, and hard working. We tailor our design, development, and marketing services to match your needs, vision, and budget.

There is no rule that says your website must be designed and developed by professionals. You may like to try a user-friendly web application such as WordPress or Wix that gives individuals the tools to create basic websites without the need for skills, such as writing code.

However, while designing and building your own website may save you money in the short term, it’s going to cost you time and money in the long term. You will miss opportunities to optimise your site for the user and SEO digital marketing metrics, while also dealing with the complications of the build itself.

The design and development of your website is an investment in the ongoing success of your business. It is highly recommended to leave it to the experts and use your time to focus on other important aspects of running your business. This helps you reach your goals sooner and ensures your website is contributing to the growth of your business and wowing the user from the outset.

The time and length of a build depends on the complexity and size of the website development. Basic Sites can be produced from between 4-6 weeks. While complex sites including custom coding and SAAS developments can be much longer.

Building websites is a little bit like the old saying “measure twice, cut once”, we take the planning component very serious, and deviations or changes to the plan during the build we avoid as “scope creep” is a sure-fire way to destroy the program and our reputation, neither of which is good for the client our for EFOUR. At the time of the initial scoping, you should be given a timeline.

The design and layout of your site are, in lots of ways, more important than the back-end development handled by the developers. Absolutely, the user experience is important but the design is what captures visitors’ attention in those first few milliseconds, and makes a lasting impression.

The internet has millions of websites, many of them truly outstanding. Web design is one of the best tools you have towards competing with these sites. Leveraging the skills of a web designer and collaborating to bring your vision to life helps make a name for your business. It also helps provide a clear plan for the developers and can expedite the creation of your website.

Ultimately, web designers and web developers work best together. At EFOUR, our team utilises all their expertise in visual appeal, functionality, usability, and coding (including custom coding) to create a winning interface, no matter the client.

While they are categorised as being visual designers, there are some web designers who also possess skills in using complex code to build websites. Many designers however work mostly through graphic design software such as Adobe XD, WordPress, Weebly and others, where an understanding of programming code is less necessary.

An understanding of basic HTML and CSS programming code is very beneficial for designers as this provides insights for them into how a design may or may not work in practice. More and more designers are learning code for this reason, though this does not negate the need for a properly qualified developer.

The ability for a web designer to understand basic code can also expedite the development stage. This is due to them being able to organise design files in a cohesive way and work within ‘best practices’. This makes it easier for a designer and developer to work alongside one another and can lead to even better results for the client.

Unfortunately, we do not allow people to view the work unless it is at agreed milestones. We prefer to have our clients see the finished product and the systems we have put in place.

This is better for you and much better for us.