WordPress already powers about one third of the world's websites and for most online start-ups and small businesses, it's the smartest and most convenient website platform. Here are five reasons why WordPress is highly likely to continue dominating the market in 2020.

1. WordPress's amazing eCommerce platform will keep developing

As it stands, WordPress is a popular option for eCommerce businesses because it's powerful, easy to use and flexible. For 2020, WordPress has developed new eCommerce-dedicated themes, offering more market-driven design and a greater range of facilities, including easier personalised shopping and enhanced mobile shopping.

2. WordPress is ahead of design trends

Adventurous fonts and web designs are predicted for this year. Think bold colour schemes, fractured headings and hand-drawn graphics. Unlike less savvy website platforms, WordPress is already onto them. A quick flick through their current themes makes that clear, and new themes are continually being added.

3. WordPress understands that video is crucial

Ask any expert in digital marketing in Canberra or beyond about how to promote an online business, and one of the first words to cross their lips will be video. In 2020, its influence will keep growing. WordPress is a step head, with the development of video headers, which are now a feature of several themes.

4. WordPress gets the importance of virtual reality

More and more internet users want to experience virtual reality, even when conducting every day activities like shopping. WordPress has this covered in 2020, as it can support virtual reality, as well as 360-degree photos and videos.

5. WordPress, combined with professional web design, will reign supreme

As WordPress becomes more sophisticated, so does web design in Canberra and around the world. It's true that you can build your own site, but so can thousands of other businesses. To ensure your website stands out in 2020 and to minimise tech-related hassles, employ the skills of a professional web designer and web developer.

Find out more

If you're looking for outstanding WordPress design in Canberra and surrounds in 2020, then drop us a line. We'll help you create a site that'll take your business from go to woah.

WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) used today for everything from blogs, to online stores, to company websites, and online forums. But with so many DIY website builders, such as Wix and SiteBuilder.com available to us today, why is WordPress still one of our top picks for creating a website?

Fully customisable and flexible

In WordPress, you have full control over what you want your website to look like. There are thousands of customisable themes to choose from, but you can also have a completely new design built from scratch complete with your company branding. Website builders often just have a drag and drop function with set elements allowing less creativity, but with WordPress, the sky’s the limit.

Your digital marketing business, online store, blog, or company website doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s and it can function exactly like you imagined. There are unlimited options with WordPress—it’s no wonder that it <a href="https://w3techs.com/">powers more than a quarter of all websites</a>.

More support available

A lot of website builders have only been around for a few years, but WordPress has been going strong since 2003, so most web developers know this CMS like the back of their hand. It’s not hard to find a developer who will be able to set up your WordPress design or help you if you run into any problems once your site is up and running. WordPress also offers online customer support and endless community support forums.

50,000+ plugins

There is an overwhelming number of plugins available for your WordPress site. If there is something you need for your site, such as an online forum, email marketing tools, or tools to help improve your SEO, chances are there’s a plugin for it already.

Easy to update

Once your WordPress site is up and running, it’s extremely easy to upload content. It’s no secret that publishing regular content to your site is important (to engage users and to help boost your search engine rankings) and it doesn’t get much simpler to do that than through the WordPress editor.

At Canberra Web, we take the hassle out of creating a customised website. We can set up your design in WordPress and get you started so you can easily update your own content. Contact us today to get your site up and running.

If you are planning to sell products online – whether it’s your homemade wares, products you’ve imported from overseas, or items from a local supplier, it pays to do your research and choose an online shop service that suits your needs.

Why you should avoid the freebies

If your online shop design is free, there’s a chance it isn’t that great. As usual, you get what you pay for, and there is normally a reason it’s free – it’s because the quality isn’t as good as the paid versions.

Free online shops might seem convenient but you have little control in the running of your website.

Things like the security of your storefront and the construction of your website are all under the control of the website builder, which can cause you hassles further down the line.

Freebies come with a catch

The problem with using free websites is that they have downsides for the free price tag. These downsides include displaying their ads on your website. Even some of the low-cost paid versions of some shopping sites still feature ads.

Not great for SEO

Free online shop fronts, such as WIX, also aren't a great website option if you want users to find your store – they aren’t optimised for search well and so your business could get lost in the online noise.

Design options are limited

Because you don’t have control over the HTML on your WIX website, your design options are limited too. You also can’t link apps and plugins to the site, like you can with other better website building options.

Why other options are better

If you decide to go with websites such as WordPress, which you can host yourself, you will have much more control over your storefront. This control includes being able to dictate the HTML code that is used to create your shop front. The free sites like WIX don’t give you these options.

So if you want to remain in control of your online shop, it’s best to go with options such as WordPress and Joomla to build your site. We find these website building options are great for keeping a corporate blog too, as all the blog functions are already built into the structure of the websites.

Shop fronts that work well

We build lots of online shops using Magento, Open Cart, Mojo Shop and Woo Commerce because we find these companies give us the most options we need for shop front creation.

Are you looking to build an online shop? Then get in contact with our friendly staff today and we will show you how we can assist with your WordPress design in Canberra.

How to make your website more functional

While having a website design that is unique and contemporary is important to attract your online audiences attention, if your site is difficult to navigate it can cause visitors to leave early, otherwise known as a high bounce rate. Unfortunately, this may result in loss of sales, especially if you have an e-commerce website, because the longer your audience spends on your site often increases your chances for sales opportunities.

When you have a website built, it's important to incorporate features that make it functional and easy to navigate. To assist you in this process, we've highlighted some of the things to consider.

Timely loading speed

There's nothing worse than having to wait ages for a website to load. A vital factor in having a functional website is ensuring your site loads quickly. In fact, when surveyed, 40% of web users said they would leave a site that took more than 3 seconds to load. If your customer or user is left waiting, you'll often find they won't bother staying unless they desperately want the products or services you sell.

Page linking

By adding links between pages you can make your website more functional, so your online audience can navigate it with ease. Often online consumers will want to find out more about products or services, so linking these pages to your contact page means it's a simple and streamlined process for visitors to send an enquiry.

Make it easy for the user to go back

If users have ended up on the wrong page by accident, they will quickly want to go back immediately. An easy way for your customers to trace where their path went wrong or return quickly is with an ever-present drop-down navigation menu or with breadcrumbs, which show the pages a user accessed to get to where they are. Users can easily click on these to get to where they'd like to go, adding more fluency to your web design.

Another tip is to regularly review your links to check for any that aren't working and either fix those links or create page redirects. That will eliminate any instances of users landing on a 404 page, which can result in site abandonment.

These are some of the essential features that will increase your site's functionality. If you need help creating a functional website, our team at Canberra Web have the expertise to assist you. We specialise in building user-friendly, fully responsive websites on a broad range of platforms including WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Open Cart, Mojo Shop and Woo Commerce. Contact ustoday to get started!

There are a whole range of good website builders, but here at Canberra Web we know which ones are the best.

Open Source: WordPress and Joomla

Open source platforms such as WordPress and Joomla offer our clients the best opportunity to create the exact website that they desire. Open source platform means that there are loads of great themes and plug-ins that we can apply to your website. Your website can be fully customisable so that it suits your exact requirements.

WordPress is also always concerned with maintenance and security and updates its platform several times a year, which means that you will also need to update your own WordPress website. This is great, as it means that any rogue bugs are fixed quickly and you can be confident that the latest security measures are in place. Canberra Web can also help you keep your WordPress website up-to-date.

Because of its open source platform, WordPress can be more complicated for the inexperienced website builder. In order to make full use of WordPress, a knowledge of modifying codes really comes in handy. This is where Canberra Web can really help you to get the most out of all the amazing things WordPress has to offer.

Joomla is great because it places plug-ins and extensions as its core features, which increases the performance and flexibility of your website.

Closed Source: Wix

Not all website builders use this open source platform. Wix is a closed source platform, so only their private development team can develop and produce its website building tools, giving you less choice and fewer advanced features compared with WordPress and Joomla. Similarly, if you want something that the Wix App store doesn't have (and these Apps in themselves are often problematic) then adding additional code to the site is extremely difficult. Another big problem is that there is also no way to export your data if you do want to move platforms

Open source platforms like Joomla and WordPress allow Canberra Web to meet all their clients website building needs, ensuring that everyone is happy with the outcome.

3 WordPress plugins we love

So, you have your website all set up and hopefully your visitors are flocking to view your content and purchase from your site. You're getting some great leads and working hard to convert them into customers. If you're not, then your web design may be failing you. But, if you are reaping the rewards of your WordPress design but want to reach for the stars, what's next? 

The World Wide Web is miraculous and the opportunities available to you to enhance your own presence on it are endless. There are a number of tools that can assist you to push the limits of your website and ultimately increase the usability and functionality of your site for your customers. Here's three we think you should try!

1. Zopim Chat

This plugin allows you to chat in real time with visitors on your site! Zopim is one of the most popular online chat plugins for web designers in Canberra as it is cost-effective, provides real-time analytics about your customers and allows you to collect the details of your site visitors, even when you are not around to serve them.

2. Yoast SEO

Yoast is an SEO plugin that can be used by those with little to no prior experience in website development. Yoast alerts you to any areas of your pages and posts that aren't effectively optimised for the greatest search traffic. It also has heaps of tutorials and online courses you can take to help improve your SEO expertise. 

3. StatPress

Finally, the most important aspect of your website should always be your ability to analyse your customers' movements, purchasing habits and favourite pages. StatPress is a WordPress plugin that collects information on search keywords, feeds, browsers and so much more about your customers to help you to use these insights and improve upon your ability to reach your prospective customer base. 

There's so much more that's left to explore in regards to WordPress design in Canberra. By implementing some of these for you, Canberra Web can help get you the ultimate return on your digital investment.

Great websites don’t happen by accident. If you look at the mechanics behind the better websites out there today, you’ll quickly discover that many of them are designed using WordPress. This is the website creation tool of the moment. According to web technology data, upwards of 27% of the web is powered by WordPress. That’s phenomenal!

Who’s using WordPress?

WordPress can shamelessly drop some impressive names. It’s behind many major online news sites, celebrity blogs and company websites. Some famous names include Vogue, Beyoncé, Usain Bolt and Mercedes Benz.

Why do so many people choose WordPress?

There are good reasons as to why WordPress is so popular. It has thousands of free themes – the theme is a kind of packaging that determines the look and feel of your website. WordPress also has thousands of free plugins which allow web builders to add features and functionality. Typical plugins range from spam filters to online stores to statistics data - and far beyond.

Paid themes and plugins are also an option. Again, the array and number of these is bewildering. The advantage of such massive choice is that it gives website designers the freedom to truly customise the websites they create.

Why you need an expert

Because of the staggering range of design options on WordPress, you really need experience and skill to create an intelligent, quality website; one that’s a perfect fit for your business. In the hands of an expert, this can easily be done.

When you enlist the services of a professional website design company, their staff will sit down with you to help define your personal online needs. They will then convert your needs into a quality website. They also have expertise in search engine optimisation so that your target audience can find you online. It’s no use having a stunning website if your name doesn’t come up in search enquiries.

Web design Canberra

Even if WordPress websites are a global force, it makes good sense to work with a web design team that is geographically close to your business. For the best web design Canberra has to offer, choose Canberra Web. We don't just build local websites, we also maintain and update them. We guarantee that your site will evolve and grow with your business.

For a friendly, efficient and cost-effective response to your website requirements, contact Canberra Web today.

5 important considerations when getting a new website designed

Creating a new website for your business can be exciting, but it is easy to get carried away thinking about every small design detail. There are some basic considerations you need to think carefully about before you brief the designer on what it is you want.

We've explained some of these important considerations below and we hope they’ll help you get the ball rolling on the perfect new design for your company's website.

1. What's reason behind the website?

This might seem obvious, but it is the core consideration for any company’s website and it’s important to portray this purpose clearly to all your website’s visitors. Do you want to get more business through the website? Are you trying to relay important information? Or are you simply trying to entertain an audience? Once you have clearly outlined the needs of your website, you will be able to clearly consider its new and effective design.

2. How do you plan on communicating with your audience?

For nearly all websites, it is vital the content on the page isn’t too cluttered and is easy to read. Remember, online visitors have short attention spans, so you need to quickly grab their attention with a great headline, or use bullet points so they can easily take in the message you are trying to get across.

3. What images will you use?

Images can be a great tool in grabbing your website visitors’ attention. It is important to use clear and high quality images that look professional. If you don’t have any on file, consider purchasing them from stock image sites, as they will really improve the look of your site and make it much more professional than amateur photography would.

4. Will your website be mobile friendly?

These days, most people look at web pages through a variety of devices, from computer screens to mobile phones. If your website is not compatible for mobile with a responsive layout (meaning it automatically changes its size, depending on the screen) then you will miss out on a huge audience. Ensure the website design you choose for your new website is mobile friendly from the start.

5. Is your font easy to read?

It might be tempting to choose a fancy font for your new website but it most cases, the simpler, the better. You want your customers to be able to easily read what you publish on your new site, after all!

We hope these tips will help you to get your new website’s web design in Canberra off the ground.

6 ways to decide: WordPress or Joomla?

So as we race into 2020, it's no longer necessary to recommend getting a great website up and running.

But if you've decided to upgrade, or you're just making those crucial decisions about how to get online in the best possible way, there are plenty of options.

So let's discuss two of the best content management systems (CMS) for creating, editing and publishing your content, and ask yourself the simple question: WordPress or Joomla?

1. Performance
   
   Some believe WordPress is the slower option, and there is some evidence that suggests this is the case. But a well configured WordPress site will perform as well as Joomla! - it just has to be set up right.
   
   
2. Security
   
   If you were judging purely on widespread usage, then WordPress seems like the best bet. There are almost 80 million WordPress sites out there, while comparatively less Joomla! sites have been built.
   But Joomla! also takes security very seriously, with any vulnerabilities that are identified quickly patched up. With both, the key is good configuration and management.
   
   
3. Support
   
   Again, the fact that WordPress is used so widely means that the team has greater resources when you need support. That's great news for novices, due to all the support content and also a bustling community willing to help
   Joomla! users, on the other hand, will also be able to get answers to any questions they have, while these days it's all too easy to hire a professional to affordably sort out your issues.
   
   
4. Potential
   
   Now we're talking about extensions that add functionality, and the plugins available to WordPress users are endless. Sometimes, however, the fact that there are so many makes finding the quality ones more difficult, while Joomla! users report less problems in this area.
   
   
5. Upgrades
   
   WordPress is famously easy to update with the click of a button, but Joomla is also impressive in this area.
   
   
6. Usability
   
   Getting up and running with both CMS options is straightforward, but WordPress really is easy when it comes to managing content - even for the novice user. Joomla is slightly harder to get your head around, but you still don't need any knowledge of complex web languages.

The verdict

If what you're looking to do is to run a blog, a simple news or marketing site, or a small eCommerce store, WordPress is a great option. But Joomla! is perfect for slightly more complex sites that require more flexibility, with the trade-off of trickier usability.

To help you make the decision, Canberra Web are the experts in building both WordPress and Joomla! sites. We've done WordPress designs Canberra clients swear by, but the same is also true for Joomla! - so get in touch today to explore your options.

WordPress powers almost 27% of the internet. For a CMS that started as a humble blogging platform, that's pretty impressive. When it comes to WordPress design, CanberraWeb is well-versed in the workings and the benefits of this CMS.

Here are a few reasons why you should be using WordPress for your website.

Versatility

WordPress is open source software, which means it has thousands of developers contributing code in the form of plugins and extensions. The sheer number of supported plugins makes WordPress one of the most versatile CMSs on the market.

Because the majority of WordPress's extra functionality is added as plugins, WordPress is also a lot leaner than other systems that often include all potential functionality as standard.

Ease of use

WordPress is one of the easiest CMSs on the market to use. This is because its admin interface is designed with users in mind. From its inception in 2003, <a href="https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/resources/the-evolution-of-ui-vs-ux-in-wordpress-web-design">WordPress's interface updates</a> have consistently moved toward a more friendly and intuitive user experience.

What does that mean for you in 2018? A beautifully designed and easily navigated admin interface that will have you updating your content with very little training necessary.

Update from anywhere

WordPress is browser based which means you can update your content or post a blog from any computer with an Internet connection. With the majority of us accessing the Internet on multiple platforms, this feature is more important than ever.

WordPress also has both an Android and iOS app which means you can update your website on the go.

Scale your website with your business

WordPress scales incredibly well. This means you can build your small, starter website in WordPress and rest assured that you can stick with the platform as your business (and your website) grows.

Even if your functionality needs change as your business does, you can add to WordPress' existing functionality with plugins as required.

Get set up with our WordPress design Canberra service

WordPress is versatile and user-friendly with as many (or as few) features as you need. As CMSs go, it's one of the best tools on the market today.

Looking for a WordPress design Canberra specialist? We're a local team of web gurus with a lot of experience building beautiful websites in WordPress. Get in touch today to see how we can help you.

Just how often do you update your website content? Is it once a month? Once a year? Once in… a blue moon? Whatever your frequency, there’s a reason why websites need not only good design but great content. Aside from increasing your client conversion rate, delighting your audience with your witty words and entertaining your email subscribers with relevant news and blog posts – ensuring you continually update your website content lets Google know that your website is well and truly alive and kicking.

Adding and updating quality, engaging content to your website on a frequent basis means that you utilise more keywords, attract more search engine crawlers, increase your online authority and presence and provide your readers something of value. Google considers many factors when it comes to website ranking, but the freshness of a website is absolutely one of them. While updating your website content does not necessarily skyrocket you to the top of Google's results – it is definitely a practice you should get in the habit of doing if you want your website to be as effective as it can be. Here’s the top benefits of keeping your website content fresh:

1) Fresh content equals higher rankings

Frequently updating your website with new web pages, articles and downloads makes the search engines stop and take notice of your website. Based on the quality of your content, you have the opportunity to achieve higher rankings when the search engines crawl your site more frequently.

2) More quality content equals better, high ranking keywords

Publishing fresh content allows the opportunity to publish newer, high ranking keywords that will help your site rank higher in Google. Optimising your articles with the most relevant keywords also drives your traffic and attracts more visitors to your site when they search for services using the selected keyword. Use meta-tags, titles and descriptions, and include your keywords to optimise your content, but don’t forget to write the article naturally and not stuff keywords if you want to rank favourably.

3) Increase your authority

The more valuable and authoritative content you can publish on your website, the more valuable and recognised your business becomes in the eyes of the beholder. When people search for your services, you have a better chance to be viewed as a reliable and trusted expert in your specific niche. When you constantly produce quality content, your customers will become loyal followers – which is ultimately what a business should always strive to achieve.

Three great reasons to keep your content fresh!

You can have a website with a great design, but without great content it can become an epic fail. By combining design with quality content, you provide your website with the best possible chance of rising through the ranks and becoming noticed by potential customers.

Don’t get lost in the crowd. For more information on what fresh content can do for your WordPress design Canberra, give the expert team at Canberra Web a contact today.