Modern Website Design: What to Avoid!

Everyone has a high-end brand they keep an eye on, whether it’s clothes, shoes, sportswear or games.

And if that brand is well out of your price range, you simply wait for the sales, right?

Sales bring the price down to your level, whilst the quality remains high… You just have to be patient.

But it's not the same with website designs - you might unknowingly pay full price for a really dated design. 

Nobody wants to pay through the nose for a website that looks like it just time-travelled from 1992.

So let’s take a crash course on website trends to turn you into a seasoned, steely-eyed pro.

The Evolution of Website Design

The first website was published in 1991 (23 years ago unbelievably!) and back then websites looked a lot like Word documents, without the images;

An In-Depth Look at Vital Hike's Latest Website Project: Luxury Blinds Direct

Luxury Blinds Direct has a new website!
Visit it here: www.luxuryblindsdirect.co.uk

The popular online photo blinds creation website has been running for a few years, but in the past year we have been working closely with the Luxury Blinds Direct team in order to redesign the website from the ground up.

And all of the team here at Vital Hike are very proud of the new website, which went live just eight days ago on Tuesday 14^th October!

Take a look at the new homepage below.

The project was a major redesign of their existing website, which you can see below in grey.

Straight away you can see we stripped it back and swapped the steely grey for a cleaner and brighter white. But more about the design later…

Why Did the Website Need a Redesign?

What is Web Hosting & How Does it Affect Your Website?

Web hosting is often overlooked until the last minute, and then a new website-owner gets a bit bamboozled by all the hosting options out there.

But it’s actually quite straightforward; think of your website as a house.

When you get your new “house”, you will need to rent some land to put your house on.

The land you rent is “hosting” your house.

So web hosting is essentially rental space on the World Wide Web for your shiny new website!

That was easy, wasn’t it?

But What About All The Different Types of Hosting Plans?

There are a few different ways to host your website online.

We’ll focus in on the two main ones; shared hosting and dedicated hosting.

Content Organisation: More Than Just a Party Trick

So you finally got around to creating a website for your business.

But you have so much you want your website to say… How do you separate it all out?

Don’t panic.

This is a good starting point.

SEO: The Mystery Revealed

SEO is mysterious.

Search Engine Optimisation essentially means ‘Making your website more effective on Google’.

Although SEO work doesn’t solely focus on Google, if you’re doing well on Google, you’re generally doing well across the board.

Need proof? In 2013, Google went offline for 5 minutes and overall web traffic dropped 40%... Globally. 

As of March 2014, comScore reports that Google commanded 67.5% of the search engine market, with the next highest being Microsoft sites at 18.6%.