Web Development Agency in Manchester
Your website may have the looks, but if it’s riddled with development bugs, useless code and malfunctioning links and buttons, then it simply won’t convert. Good looks can only get you so far, but if potential customers can’t use your website properly, what incentive is there to continue their journey, or worse, come back for more? Our team of expert developers can take your static designs and develop a fully-functioning, interactive and user-friendly website that responds at every opportunity.
Why You Need Our ‘Web Dev’ Team
Your website should be more than just an online brochure. It should create leads, drive sales and encourage repeat visits. Otherwise, really, what’s the point? You could offer the best products and services in the business, or create content that regularly captivates your audience, but if your customers can’t fill out your enquiry form or easily pay for your must-have merchandise, then your website is only hindering your aims and reputation. In fact, 94% of consumers judge a website based on its navigation, responsiveness and design, being unlikely to revisit a site that appears untrustworthy or unprofessional.
At Embryo, we’ve seen the success our development projects have had in increasing website traffic, generating leads and boosting business growth. We place your goals at the heart of everything we do and our development strategies showcase this. Whether we add layered navigation for shopping efficiency, create a ‘live chat’ feature to improve customer service or design and develop a whole new website, you’ll see results that will make a real difference to your brand.
What Do Our Processes Involve?
We’ll be your development specialists, managing every step from sitemap and wireframe creation to implementing content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento and Umbraco that bring your website to life. After reviewing your current website and discussing your objectives, audience and competitors, we’ll define your new website’s technical scope, sitemap and architecture. Using static designs that place your branding at the forefront, we’ll create visuals such as the home page, buttons, call to action (CTA’s) and photography and ensure you’re happy with the final designs.
We’ll then set up your CMS, inserting our fantastic designs and configuring needed plugins and code such as JavaScript, PHP, HTML, .net and CSS for a fully responsive and scalable website. We then populate your website with content and assets and optimise them for SEO purposes to get your wonderful website found. Before going live, we’ll test website performance on various devices and browsers and teach you how to use your CMS for effective operation.
What Makes Us Different?
We don’t use websites like Wix or Squarespace. We integrate CMS systems and adapt them for each project, placing bespoke design, functionality and the customer journey at the forefront.
We can create applications that compliment your website, giving your customers something unique and fun to interact with.
Everything we create is mobile-friendly, ensuring your website works well when your audience are on the go.
Our web developers follow a strategic process, with proven successes in markets spanning insurance, cosmetic surgery, kitchens, and housing for example.
Whatever your goal, your website will be built with that in mind.
Quick, Clean And Convenient Access
If you have a well-developed website, you’re letting people pop in to have a look for what they need whenever they want, at their own convenience. In this era, bowing to customer convenience is paramount. Increasingly, your customer is going to turn down visiting a physical location for simply getting what they need online. That’s why your website is so important, and it’s only going to become more so in the years to come. Having a website that has been designed to help people get what they want quickly and easily without confusing them is going to net you a bigger audience, more results, and help you stay ahead of the competition.
Your website is the most credible platform your company has to communicate with your audience. With excellent web design, you can promote your services in just a few clicks to a massive global audience. Proper website management and design are capable of gaining massive improvement in business and results in a short space of time, with a huge audience. Having good web development ties in with your company’s performance in all aspects of digital marketing. When it comes to your content, the old saying ‘content is king’ still applies. With good web development, you control your users’ experience, manage your content relevancy and can improve your rate of conversion.
Leaving a Positive Lasting Impression
Being a web developer is a bit like playing bass – the better you are at it, the fewer people notice you. It’s all the behind-the-scenes stuff. A good web dev works hard to make sure that users have a clean, enjoyable and productive visit without ever once thinking about the mechanics or navigability of your site.
A well-designed, clean and informative website is going to set you apart and leave a lasting impression on your visitors. That’s what it’s all about – trying to stick in your visitors’ minds and increasing brand recognition and awareness. Good websites prioritise the user experience. You want your site to be visually engaging while providing authoritative content and information, and you need people to easily move around from one page to another. A frustrated user is going to lose patience and leave your website. Good web development makes sure this never happens.
Web Development That Makes Google Happy
We’re an SEO and digital marketing agency. That means that we know just how important on-page SEO is to your longevity and organic search reach. So how is your web development involved?
Improving the visitor experience is a huge part of on-page SEO. If your website is frustrating to navigate with all the information tucked away underneath hours of scrolling, people get frustrated. Then they leave, and your bounce rate goes up. And guess what? Google really doesn’t like that.
Web development affects how you publish your content, and that affects how Google crawls and indexes your site. You can’t really afford to get this wrong. This means that right from the start, your web development is influencing your site’s visibility and rankings.
Sound like a lot of work? Frankly, it is. But we know what we’re doing. For us, web development is one part of the digital marketing process.
Web Development Questions Answered:
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Do you develop sites in PHP?
Yes, WordPress is based on PHP and we predominantly develop WordPress websites. The benefit of using PHP is that it is open-source, which basically means anyone can use it, and contribute to it, and it is continuously being updated and improved.
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Do you use JavaScript and/or jQuery?
Technically jQuery is just a trimmed-down version of Javascript, and yes, we use both. We use them for frameworks, scrolling animations, pop-ups, and basically the parts of the website that move.
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How do you take into account SEO when you are developing a website?
So, considering SEO from a website development side of things is predominantly about site speed. To get a little technical, we make sure that the website loads as quickly as it can by building the website with the cleanest code possible. We also always optimise the images we use, as well as minifying CSS & javascript, minimising redirects, deferring parsing of Javascript, and leveraging browser caching. etc.
Basically, we just make the processes that the website uses as simple and as fast as possible, so that the user sees the site as quickly as possible. Google knows that its users like fast websites, so therefore fast websites rank better. We also work closely with the SEO team to make sure that what Google sees in our website code for each page (usually the awesome content we write) is as high up on the page as possible. For example, we restrict huge menus from being visible in the site code at the top of every page, as this pushes down the great, unique content, and therefore makes it less important.
I could go on and on about this, we make tweaks to our web development process for SEO optimisation each time we develop a website because we are always learning and working with the SEO team to improve our client’s rankings.
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What is front-end web development?
Front-end web development is what is delivered to the user viewing the site. The ‘front end’ is what the user sees and interacts with, the user interface, user experience and user journey. The back end code is the part the user doesn’t see.
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What is open-source web development?
Open source web development is a term which refers to free and open software for all, the source code is made available to everyone. For example, WordPress is open-source. There are huge communities of people who are creating, contributing and testing open-source software.
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UIKit or Bootstrap or another?
They are all just as good as each other but it comes down to personal preference. Personally, I prefer UIKit because it’s light, fast, and gives us everything we need.
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Can you build web tools?
Yes, we’ve built tools like our Embryo Index which pulls data from multiple different sources across the website and also offline data, as well as building tools like calculators or responsive questionnaires on landing pages. Our team are a talented bunch, we can build pretty much any kind of web tool our clients might need.
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How do you take security into account when developing a site?
Security is taken into account in numerous ways, including making sure we have adequate firewall protocols, regularly checking for site vulnerabilities, making sure that WordPress versions and plugins are all up to date, and using consistent and clean coding practices.
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Do you build in SEO features from the off or do this afterwards?
We consider SEO from the conception of the project, all the way through to the launch. Our full website design to development process is geared up around our websites being optimised for search, and that is why we involve our SEO consultants in the process at key points in the project, and also why our web team and SEO teams work do training and learning sessions together regularly to make sure our disciplines are working together to do what is best for our clients.
Why You Should Work With Embryo
We are a thriving full-service digital marketing agency based in Manchester specialising in lead generation, web development, web design, SEO, social media and content marketing. We strategise how best to meet your needs, using the dazzling talent within our office to develop websites that are really something else. Each new project showcases how sensational our work is, and the positive effect this can have on your business. No task is too big. No goal is out of reach. It’s no wonder our clients always want more.
If your website has been experiencing issues, you’d like to expand its capabilities or create a whole new website from scratch, then let’s develop this together.