Outsource website design and benefit from loads of skills, support and expert insights that will make your website work harder.

To get the website performance your business deserves, it’s important to check it accurately reflects your brand. In this blog, we look at how you can make your website work harder by ensuring every page and product is on-brand.

What is a brand?

A brand is the character of your business. What does it look like? What does its voice sound like? Who are its community and how do you talk to them? Is it fierce, strong, gentle, quirky, challenging, supportive, straightforward, creative…or something else?

When you know what your brand is, it’s very important to make it resonate in every area of your marketing. When your branding is consistent, it helps your customers relate to your business, products and services. Consistent branding also means that they feel as much at home and part of your community when they’re on your website as when they’re looking at your Instagram or attending one of your events. These factors are likely to strengthen customer loyalty and increase conversions.

How do I make my brand work on my website?

Appearance

A good designer or branding expert will always share their work with you in a format that you can use yourself or pass onto other marketing experts.  If your designer has given you a specific colour palette and an inspiring logo, make sure you’re using them on your website. Remember to use exact colours – there are lots of shades, but only one or two accurately reflect your brand.

Check each page of your website, especially if they were made at different times or had input from different people.

Photos, pictures and images

Make sure that all the photos are similar – if your look is black and white, don’t let a colour photo creep in. Think about your target market too and check they’re reflected in the photos. Are they families? If so, check your pictures for gardens, children and pets. Corporate clients? Include images of suits and laptops. Of course, those are generalisations but it’s a good idea to think about who you’re trying to connect with.

Tone of voice

Tone of voice matters too: this is how you talk to your potential customers. Think about how you want to describe your business, and what words will resonate with your target market and get them on your side.

For example, if you offer a very traditional product, consider describing it as “classic” rather than “old-fashioned.” If your business is very cool and up-to-the-minute, use the latest trends in language and metaphor. 

If buying your products would be a practical decision for your customers rather than an emotional one, you don’t necessarily need to describe what you sell as “amazing,” “fantastic” or any other hyperbole. Stick to telling people what it does.

There are lots of adjustments you can make to the language on your website to make sure it is consistent with the rest of your brand. And if writing isn’t your forte, consider outsourcing to a copywriter.

Consistent branding across other media

Now your website is on-brand, it’s time to check it against your other media. That logo that appears on your website – is it also on your business cards? Your social media? Your flyers?

Are the images you share on Facebook and Instagram aligned with the ones you share on your website? Is the language you use online the same as the language on your signage and printed collateral?

Check that a potential customer or client has the same experience of your business, wherever they encounter it.

Make your website work harder

When we align our websites with the rest of our brand, we inspire confidence in our potential customers and drive more conversions. Sometimes, strengthening the branding on a website is just a matter of a few tweaks. If that’s the case, it’s well worth investing a small amount of time and money to have them put right – you should see a fantastic return on your investment.

Outsource website design

If your online presence would benefit from outsourced web design, Get Ahead would love to help! Our team of web designers, developers, graphic designers, copywriters and SEO experts are all standing by to create the fantastic website your business deserves. Contact your local regional director to find out more.

PS – you can find our on-brand news and creative output on Instagram!

Outsource website development to increase traffic and drive conversions.

Every twenty-first century business needs a website. But is your website really working for you? Or could it be doing more? In this blog, we talk to our web developer Jennie about ways to make your website work to grow your business.

Why is a basic website not enough?

Jennie: A basic website is often false economy. If you’re going to invest time and money in having a website – whether you make it yourself or outsource website development – you might as well invest a little more and make it work for your business. Your website could be helping your business to build its reputation, or actively driving growth by providing downloads or an online version of your core business.

My website doesn’t interact with a booking platform. Do I need to start a new website from scratch?

Jennie: No, you don’t need to start again. A great thing about a website is that it’s an evolving, organic business asset. It’s really easy to make changes like adding a booking platform, ecommerce software or any other features.

These features will help your business to deliver its products and services online – it’s well worth using them to enhance your website and grow your business.

What else can I do with my website to improve user experience and increase conversions?

Jennie: Sharing website content on your social media is a great way to show Google and potential customers that you’re a credible business. Posting blogs and web pages to your social channels is excellent for increasing your visibility and creating ways for your customers to interact with you.

Many businesses create downloadable and gated content. Quality content enables you to share your expertise, while also strengthening your relationship with a potential customer. For example, if you write an ebook with your top tips for succeeding in your sector, you can make it available to download in return for the web visitor joining your mailing list. Once on your mailing list, you can communicate with them regularly, building your relationship and gradually encouraging them to buy your product or service.


Navigation is also a crucial aspect of user experience that can significantly impact how users interact with your website – make sure it works on mobiles and tablets as well as computers.  A simple, intuitive navigation menu with clear, descriptive labels shows users exactly what to expect when they click. Try to think like a visitor to your website and organise your content in a logical way that makes it easy for someone to get the product or service you offer.

A good website should also be optimised for search engines so Google can easily find it. Check out our SEO infographic here.

How much content should I share on my website?

Jennie: This is a common question. It can be hard to decide whether you should demonstrate how much you know by sharing your expertise, or keep it to yourself so your clients can’t manage without you.

However, in reality, there will always be people who choose to do something themselves to save money. And there will always be people who know that paying an expert like you to do or provide something will have the best results. This is why you never need to worry about how much inside knowledge you share.

Bear in mind that your potential clients and customers don’t necessarily need to know all the detail of what you do. For example, I don’t write excited social media posts about new WordPress plugins. I care because they help me make better websites, but I know my followers don’t! My followers would much rather see a link to a website I’ve worked on that looks good and works well.

“How long should my content be?” is another frequently asked question. Long content (1000+ words) is good for SEO, but your ultimate goal should be converting a person, not an algorithm. Don’t write so much that they get bored! Instead, try for “just enough” which is about 500 words. Remember too that you can provide basic info on your main web pages and use your blog to go into more depth.

Outsource website development to Get Ahead

If you think your website could be working harder, Get Ahead can help! Web developers like Jennie love helping business owners get better results from their websites. They’re full of practical ideas that really make a difference. Contact your local regional director to find out more.

 

As we prepare for the shutdown of Universal Analytics at the end of June 2023, it’s important that business owners are ready for the new analytics programme, Google Analytics 4. Our new Google Analytics 4 migration services are here to help, but it’s useful to have your own understanding too. 

What is Google Analytics 4?

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google’s analytics software. If you have a retail business, you probably use Google Analytics already. It’s a data collection tool that with monitoring, visualisation, reporting and interpretation features. These help users to track their customers, look at trends and decide where to focus their energies. 

GA4 comes with a variety of new features. For example, its developers have improved the display to make big data more user-friendly. They’ve enhanced the online privacy to make it compliant with current laws and best practice. They’ve developed additional user groups so you can track customer behaviour more accurately. And they’ve created the capability to combine data from your apps and websites in once place, so you can see a more complete picture. Fantastic. 

Why does GA4 matter?

The first thing to say is that the current Analytics platform, Universal Analytics, will disappear at the end of June and be replaced by GA4. If you haven’t migrated by then, your analytics data will be lost. 

But the change in Analytics platforms is also an opportunity. If you haven’t used Google Analytics seriously yet, the advent of GA4 is a good time to start. Savvy business owners look at their web data regularly and build up a picture of their online performance. They can feed this information into their broader strategy to maximise their chances of success. This is a great habit to get into – one which can really help you grow your business. 

Unfortunately, it’s not always as simple as just opening up GA4 and seeing everything you need to know. The new platform is there to help you, but you need to understand its capabilities before you start. With good understanding, you can review and interpret the data it gives you, and use your findings to good effect.

Google Analytics 4 migration services from Get Ahead

There is a lot of responsibility when you’re running a business. We know that there are many fantastic businesses out there who are so busy providing their core services that they don’t have time to look analyse data. Data analysis is not everyone’s strength – we’re always meeting business owners who know they should be looking at it but keep returning to the tasks they’re good at instead. 

If the arrival of GA4 is the catalyst you need to start reviewing web data and acting on the results, Get Ahead are here to help. Our data experts love helping business owners get more from their websites. We’ve put together three packages so you can choose the right level of support for your needs. These packages range from migration and compliance checking to detailed training and improved SEO. 

To find out more about our packages, check out our summary here.

To find out more about our data experts and web developers, visit our team page here.

Outsource web design and benefit from a fresh pair of eyes, expert knowledge and a quick turnaround.


The internet revolutionised the way we do business, but it has also raised the bar in marketing. Now every website needs a website, and every website needs maintaining. Fortunately, our web experts are here to help! They’ve pooled their three favourite ideas for improving your website without going back to the drawing board. Here are some little changes that could make a big difference.

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Many business owners know they need a new website, but feel daunted at the prospect of starting from scratch. Fortunately, our experienced web designers are here to help. Our web experts will see you safely through the whole process, keeping you on track and delivering results you’ll love.

When you’re updating your website or starting a new one from scratch, you’ll usually end up working with a team of our virtual experts, made up of marketing managers, copywriters, graphic designers and web designers. We can also work alongside your in-house team or preferred freelancers.

In this blog, we look at how web design works in practice.

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Good web design is important because your business website is an online reflection of your business. To be effective, its design, content and functionality all need to work well and look professional.

Let’s take a closer look at our top five reasons why good web design is important.

Why is good web design important?

Good web design is important for lots of reasons. Here are our top five:

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IT breaches are nearly always serious. No business can afford to compromise data security or risk losing trade because of a computer virus.

In this blog, we look at some of the ways businesses of all sizes can protect their computer systems from hacking, data breaches and other problems. Some of these responsibilities are for management; others are good habits that everyone should get into.

IT responsibilities for management

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Get Ahead exists to provide back-office support for busy businesses. Since our foundation in 2010, we’ve supported a wide variety of businesses, including web and digital agencies. As an agency ourselves, we understand the importance of a consistent culture throughout the organisation, even when the work is delivered remotely.

In this blog, we look at what kind of work digital agencies might choose to outsource and how it could benefit the business as a whole.

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Regular clients and followers of our blog will know that Get Ahead are business outsourcing experts, providing support to organisations of all sizes. But did you know we can also help you deliver your client work? Our web agency clients find white labelling a particular advantage, with Get Ahead’s virtual experts stepping in to deliver work like:

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You’ve fulfilled your dream of working for yourself and being your own boss. This is great news – we’re thrilled for you! But we also know that working alone can be tough. This applies to people in many professions, but particularly business coaches and life coaches, who give so much support to others that they sometimes neglect their own businesses.

In this blog, we look at ways to make working for yourself as fruitful and efficient as your business deserves.

The advantages of working for yourself

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