"Help! Can you fix my broken website?" 😓

In early December, we were contacted by a local business undertaking garden machinery repairs & maintenance, and also sales. John at J C Services had asked for web design recommendations on a Facebook page and worked with somebody based on price, and without checking their portfolio.

He quickly realised he wasn't happy with the standard of work, and so finished the project with the current designer and came to us for help.

We never judge another designer's work as everyone has their own styles and preferences, as well as different types of business they like working with. You don't know the client's requests, or the budget offered. Upon investigation however, I realised the website wasn't complete, wasn't optimised for mobile, and also had no search engine optimisation - not just design problems. Uh oh!

The new design we created for JC Services

Taking into account that the client had already paid a designer once, we quoted just for the amount of time we needed to finish the website to a good standard and said we'd re-think if we needed more time. Turns out, John was super easy to work with, so the project moved along quickly!

I couldn't help but adjust the design, as I felt the current look wasn't modern or user-friendly enough to attract new sales. Although I didn't undertake a full re-design by any means, I'm now much happier with the fact it'll get him new leads. He also needed an online products section to advertise his machinery for sale, something he'd thought of since the website had gone live. I was very happy to add this for him and I also trained him how to add new machinery himself.

The new Testimonials page we created, including the Best Of St Neots widget

As standard I believe that all websites should be optimised for mobile (as most users are mobile nowadays) and basic search engine optimisation should be implemented - even on smaller projects. What's the point of a website if no-one has a chance of finding it?

I finished all this off and received the final feedback from John. We then trained him to manage his products, and also amend his content. This does open up the whole design and allows the customer to change it, but we're always around by email if they have any problems.

He was very pleased and was complimenting our work the whole way through the project. In reality, it was a simple project but it's a great example of making sure you check a designer's work before you sign up!

Some cool icons we found and images of his machinery

Proof that a nice website can be developed for any budget!

For more information, contact us at hello@onlinedesigns.uk.