Website Design & Development

First impressions really do count; the look and feel of your website reflects on your business, services and products...

Website Design is important!

The first time a person views your website, they will make assumptions about your business and the services that you offer based on your website design.

Your website should look great and be simple to use. The navigation should be obvious, enabling a visitor to find their way around easily. Importantly your website should also contain a clear call to action – what is it that you want a visitor to do? Do you want them to buy something, to fill in a form or just call you? Whatever it is you need to make that clear.

Website design is not just about pretty pictures; yes they do help but how content looks is also very important. You can’t just throw a load of text into your lovely website, you need to break the content into sections and add images to balance the page and make it easy to read.

Strong foundations allow you to prosper

As important as the design is, you have to couple this with a sound site structure. In other words, slightly less visually exciting, but your website will never be a success if you don’t plan it properly and build it using quality code.

99% of the websites built at Sokada use WordPress, including this site. This is a very popular system that includes a fantastic blogging facility, very easy to use content management system and it is flexible enough to allow us to build our websites how we want to.

The marketing benefits of using WordPress make it a simple choice for us. Quite simply if you want to maximise your presence on the internet you should build your website using WordPress.

Being responsive

The days that a potential customer will only look at your website on their desktop computer are now gone. They could now be viewing it on a multitude of devices, including tablets and mobile phones. If your website is responsive it will automatically adjust to the size of the display.

Google published an article in 2015 stating they would start to penalise websites who are not “mobile friendly”. This means that all websites that are responsive will gradually take precedence over non responsive websites. If you want a successful website design you must have a responsive one.

Why Sokada

At Sokada, we work with companies all over the UK. Always nice to put a face to a name but with any web design or marketing, this can be carried out via the telephone, Skype or by email. Based in Heathfield, Sokada mainly work throughout East Sussex, so that we can meet up to chat about design and marketing; however this really is not a prerequisite to working with us, so please call 01435 817226 if you are looking for web designers in Sussex, or fill in our enquiry form and someone will be straight back to you.

We are proud of all the work we’ve done for previous clients and invite anyone considering to work with us to read our reviews located on our Google Business page.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to build a website?

Our current process takes 8-12 weeks but we are happy to work to specific deadlines if you have them. A basic site will normally take us around 9 days to complete; but we are working on multiple sites at the same time so we allocate time within our production process for each site. This also allows time for our clients to look over each stage and give feedback.

Can I change my content when the site is live?

We use WordPress as the foundation of most of our websites and this comes with a very easy to use CMS (Content Management System). We also include free training to show you how to use WordPress and manage the website yourself.

Can I call or visit to discuss my project?

Yes of course, we would love to speak to you. You can call us to talk about it or arrange a time to pop into our office in Heathfield. We like to be very hands on, getting involved is part of what we do and hopefully our passion for our work will encourage you to understand your website and get the most from it.

What is the Website Design process?

We have a four stage development process, Planning, Design, Development and Deployment. At each stage you have the opportunity to give feedback and make adjustments. During the planning stage we set out the schedules for the project; so from the very start of the project you will know when it is due to be completed.

Do you use premade theme templates?

No, we don’t use off the shelf templates, our in house developers create custom, bespoke WordPress themes. This way we create you the website that is right for your business, rather than trying to fit your company into a template made for someone else. This means our sites are leaner and load faster as they don’t have additional bloated code that you don’t need.

How does the payment process work?

We realise that paying for your website is not always easy, it’s an investment. So we spread the costs over the duration of the project. 25% is paid upon agreement, 25% when the designs have been signed off, 40% when we deliver a working draft website and the final payment of 10% when the website is ready to go live. So the cost is usually spread over two to three months.

Can you host my website?

Yes we offer a full hosting server with guaranteed up time and 24/7/365 support. We also include an SSL certificate with all our hosting and managing your sites WordPress updates.

Do I own the code for my website?

Yes all bespoke websites built by Sokada are 100% owned by you; once we have received the final payment the site is yours. It’s also worth understanding that because we build your site using WordPress they are easy to transfer if you do decide to move to a new company in the future.

Why should we use Sokada website design?

We are passionate about what we do, we care about our clients and the projects we work on and we will give you an opinion. We don’t just try and sell you something you don’t need because it makes us more money! Speak to our clients and see what they have said about us, then come and see us…

Do you have any hidden charges after the site is complete?

No, we give a quote for each individual project, not an estimate and the price we quote is the price you pay.

Are your sites mobile optimised?

Yes all of our sites are Responsive, which means they respond to the size of the device that you are viewing it on; displaying the same content correctly within the space available. We will even build in specific requirements.