WEB DESIGN
It's likely to be your most important touchpoint. One of the first things your customers will see. Getting it right is paramount. From visual identity, to user experience, to technical functionality, your website has to knock their socks off.
Improve your brand and promise to your audience. A lot of websites just shout about what they offer, often in a sea of noise with other people shouting similar things.
In our view, good web design should always start with your audience. Give them the best experience, advice and content, and use branding to make a deeper connection.
WHY GET A NEW WEBSITE?
Great web design can improve your brand, engage with your audience, impact your team and help grow your business.
Creating engaging content and using online marketing to connect that killer content with your perfect audience can radically change your organisation, help achieve your goals and build great relationships.
With a good foundation of SEO (search engine optimisation), your website content can grow your audience through organic search. If your website, content and branding are on point, those new audiences might choose to stick with you.
Additional functionality such as animation, event booking, live chat and augmented reality can transform a simple website into a marketing tool that will change the way your customers interact with you.
A good website should primarily serve your customers, but a great website can also revolutionise your business and help your team. It can help manage and convert enquiries, recruit the best talent, build communities and become a central pillar in your technical stack.
HOW DOES A WEBSITE PROJECT WORK?
Read our blog to learn about how we run our website projects from start to finish.
We always start with audiences and users (what's the difference?). Why? Because your website exists for them. It can be easy to forget this and design a website for yourself, but that won't connect with or function for the people who really matter.
We create use cases, which detail every expectation and need your website's users have. MOSCOW analysis allows us to focus on the most important use cases.
From here we are able to develop the UX (user experience) to satisfy each "must have" use case. We do this work in a design environment before we start coding, because it's much easier to tweak the design than it is to rewrite the code.
Then the designers hand over to the developers, who create the website in a staging environment using the chosen platform. After a phase of testing, we set the site live.
Matt
He / him; yellow. Creative jack-of-all-trades, Matt is "dangerously knowledgeable" in almost every facet of marketing. His favourite field is branding, and he loves developing inspiring, daring brand identities for organisations who are ready to do something different. But he's equally talented at front end web development and developing digital strategies. He's also the front man and guitarist in local parody heavy metal outfit Evil Scarecrow, plus a huge fan of music, eating in nice restaurants, and going on holiday.
Sylvia
She / her. Sylvia is our SEO expert and resident vampire. By optimising content for search results, she can help bring more quality traffic to your site. From her darkened lair, Sylvia also dabbles in web design and front end development, and she combines her talents to produce high-performance websites. She also loves heavy metal, the arts, comedy and vegan cooking.
Paul
He / him. Paul is a tech lover. One of Rusty Monkey’s developers, he spends a lot of time playing with gadgets, and loves trying to fix broken tech. He’s an eco nut. Loves nature. Amateur triathlete, and an even more amateur musician. Plays too many computer games. He dreams of living in a futuristic utopia where we all get on and have a lovely time. Be excellent to each other.
Russ
He / him. A dev guru, Russ has been playing with tech and building websites for longer than most of us can remember. He loves to weave together intricate systems in the background that create a seamless and beautifully functioning user experience. As our Financial Director, Russ is also in charge of important things like sending out invoices and buying selotape. A fan of real ales, three-course lunches, and networking events in exotic locations, you are just as likely to find him listening to heavy metal in a muddy field as you are hobnobbing with ecommerce execs in Singapore.
Moly
He / him. Moly has been a project manager for 20 years. He used to work in IT and business analysis, but more recently he's been enjoying digital marketing and agile transformation. The way to Moly's heart is through a Kanban board.
Moly is a music fan, classic car nerd and he loves to travel. He used to be in the Scouts and enjoys being in the mountains. His hobby is running a small electronic music festival at his old University in Bradford. If you've ever wanted to plan a road trip or go to a festival, Moly has probably got a Trello board kit list ready to go!
Tom
He / him. Tom is a pioneer of technical solutions and unrivalled "edge case thinker". If you have a problem, chances are he saw it coming, and can write some code to fix it. As Technical Director, he oversees all the nerdy work we do, as well as getting beard-deep in the coding of advanced web and app development projects. Powered by the Raspberry Pi in his pocket and genetically descended from a cat, Tom is a 3D printing, statistic loving, real ale drinking, blimp drawing legend.
FEATURED PROJECTS
Some selected projects. Browse our portfolio for more.
Web Design - NEP
NEP are committed to helping households reduce carbon emissions and cut energy bills. We worked with them to develop an interactive animated portal that allows homeowners to evaluate their current energy usage and find ways to run a more sustainable home. The website is fun and informative, and generates data the user can take away and implement in real life.
WEB DESIGN SERVICES
We're excited to work with you to create an awesome new website. Fill out this form and we'll get back to you in a jiffy. Worried about your data? We’ll treat it well. Take it out for dinner, buy it flowers. Read our privacy policy.
DISCOVERY WORKSHOP
You think you need a new website, but you don't have a web brief or a scoping document. You're not sure where to start or what will work best for you.
This is a great starting point for any web design project. Starting at just £3000 we can help you determine everything you need to build a killer web brief. This initial cost can potentially save you significantly in the long run.
SCOPING PROJECT
You need to understand exactly what you need before you invest in a web developer. You have some complex requirements that you need to be able to communicate.
Some larger organisations and SMEs can have many moving parts when considering web design. Our scoping project can help untangle the spaghetti and create a clear technical roadmap. This consists of:
Organisational review. We’ll interview your team and start building a scope from the perspective of the business
Audience and users workshop. A one day event, with lunch! We’ll get your main stakeholders together with our Technical and UX team and build out your audience and users.
Build a use case board and run MoSCoW to determine your phase 1 build.
Draw user flows and state diagrams. Very useful if your project is super complicated.
BROCHURE WEB DESIGN
You need a simple website that communicates your values and offerings to the world, a place to refer your customers to, and somewhere to house your content.
This simple build is great for customers that need a web presence and place to describe what they do. It’s mostly a brand portal to say that we exist and a credibility piece.
They can be relatively simple to build under most budgets, but they are not particularly tied to growing the business.
Ordinarily this would be built with WordPress or a headless CMS to allow you to control the content.
WEB DESIGN FOR CONTENT MARKETING
Your main online offering is a wealth of multimedia content. You need a site that's content focused, and that will allow your users to easily find what they need.
This type of project is good for SMEs who want to deliver great content for their audience. If you’re looking at creating lots of online content for your customers then a great headless CMS or the popular WordPress platform could be the solution that you’re looking for.
WEB DESIGN FOR ONLINE MARKETING
You want to drive traffic to your website using SEO and online marketing. Your website is a vital component of your online marketing strategy and needs to function accordingly.
Most organisations are looking for their website to achieve more engagement and grow their business. This is the world we love - helping you achieve your goals through a meaningful website that caters for your customers, your team and your purpose.
MEMBERS AREAS & B2B WEB DESIGN
Your B2B business needs a website with complex functionality to serve your customers' specific needs.
We have a lot of experience of working with B2B businesses, and understand the needs for things like gated content and managing customer accounts. There can be some complexity, as each individual organisation can have very bespoke needs.
For smaller budgets this can sometimes be fulfilled with WordPress, but it has limitations and issues once you add too many 3rd party plug-ins. Decoupled JAMStack solutions and bespoke microservices can build you a more scalable and robust system. We love talking nerdy JAMStack and headless CMS. So if you have no idea what we’re talking about why not get in touch and we’ll organise a chat.
DOMAIN SERVICES
You need help with the technical, behind-the-scenes stuff such as web hosting and email set-up.
We can help you with all of the technical stuff too. We have some great partnerships to help you with domain registration, web hosting and email.
SUPPORT & TECHNICAL RETAINERS
You need ongoing support to ensure your website is safe, secure and fully-functioning.
Maintaining, supporting and protecting your website is paramount. We offer a variety of packages to help keep all of your web technology safe, secure and supported.
TYPICAL WEB DESIGN PROJECT TIMELINE
FAQs
Which web platform is best for me?
Most small start-ups, with limited budget might suit some of the free website builder platforms, more established companies will sometimes prefer popular platforms like WordPress and other organisations might be better suited to a headless CMS or might even need something more heavyweight for ecommerce.
But where to start? There are so many options from ‘free’ to hiring a team of internal developers. Organisations often draw out a site map, perhaps based on a competitor and declare what they want the website to say. Or they will jump to a platform that they are familiar with.
But there is a better way.
Start by valuing the website. It will last a few years and will hopefully achieve something for you. A simple way to value your website is to think of the cost to your organisation if you switch off your site and have nothing.
Then look at the website in 2 ways. How can it help people in your business and how can you make it amazing for your customers.
At Rusty Monkey we want to help organisations make great decisions and build websites that make a difference to them, to their customers and maybe even - the world. To help you out why not download our free web design brief, including a handy guide and inspirational videos.
We can even get involved in the scoping project for you and help you really understand the website need by running some workshops and creating as detailed a scope as you need. It can sometimes even save you budget, help plan phased rollouts and uncover opportunities that you haven’t seen.
What’s the best CMS (content management system)?
We have some favourites that we have a lot of expertise in. But, when it comes to web design, we believe that understanding your needs and helping you find the right solution is the right thing to do.
Some agencies specialise in WordPress (for example) and they will fit you into that mould despite your needs.
That’s not us!
How long does it take to build a good website?
It depends on the size of the build and needs of the organisation. You can get a brochure site rolled out pretty quickly (as fast as one to two weeks). But it’s much better to determine a launch date based on your goals.
Scope, brief and deadline are your three (sometimes conflicting) pillars to a successful launch. Understanding these three things and which are the least flexible is key.
Can I update the website myself?
Most websites will allow to manage your own content via a CMS (content management system). Determining what you need to be able to edit should happen in the scoping phase.
Sometimes it’s important to allow full control. Sometimes it’s better to protect certain elements to keep your design and SEO intact. Sometimes you need different levels of access for different people.
Knowing this all at the start will help get the right platform together!
Can you integrate with other systems?
Yes. Not only that… we (weirdly) love integrating with other systems. Automation and integration has bought such immense value to our customers it’s something that drives our passion for good systems.
Whether you want to tie in with HubSpot (or other CRMs), MailChimp (or another email marketing service), recruitment portals, event management systems, ERPS or a whole host of other nerdy things, then we could be a great partner for you.
How much is a website?
Bzzzzz. Wrong question! You should define your goals and budget and then find a good partner to deliver them.
What is SEO and why is it important?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation. It's the practice of honing a website so that it performs better in organic Google search. This involves identifying key words and phrases that your customers are searching for, or the questions they're asking, and then creating content that satisfies those search intents.
Whether or not SEO is important to you depends on how much you intend to rely on organic search to drive traffic to your website, and how easy it will be to win that traffic. If you have a very niche offering, getting organic traffic might be quite easy.
However, if you operate in a field with some big players, you'll likely never win the organic search war. If this is the case, there are other ways to drive traffic to your site (such as social media advertising and YouTube) that will have more value. In this instance, it may not be worth spending loads of time on SEO, although it's always good to get the fundamentals right.
An online marketing strategy can help you determine the best places to put your time and budget.
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