Web Design Derby

If you are looking for a web design agency based near Derby, then you have come to the right place. Fast Forward is a friendly, professional and experienced corporate web design company. We are based at Staunton Harold, just south of Derby and have worked with many businesses of all sizes in Derby.

Fast Forward can help with any of your web design in Derby needs. We have worked with many different types of business, from one-man start-ups to multinational organisations.

Websites range from simple brochure-style sites that promote a company and encourage site visitors to get in touch, through to complex content management systems and e-commerce online stores.

Web Design East Midlands

A well-designed web site is essential. In many ways, it is better to have no website than to have a badly developed one. How often have you seen a website and then thought badly about the company?

It is essential, therefore, to go to a quality web site developer. Yes, you can get a website for free. Alternatively you can ask a relation or friend who is “good with computers.” Eventually though, unless you are very lucky, you will find that your website is putting people off rather than attracting them.

Fast Forward is a web design East Midlands business who can help you with your online requirements.

Joomla Development

Joomla is the world’s leading open-source content management system. In most cases, Fast Forward uses Joomla web design to create a site.

What is Joomla?

Joomla is a system developed by literally thousands of contributors all around the world. They are constantly on the look out for how to improve the software and how to make it more secure. As a result, upgrades are constantly provided – don’t worry though, Fast Forward will upgrade your site free of charge and you won’t even know it has been done.

What Benefits Does Joomla Provide?

What does this do for users, however? The most obvious benefit is that owners of a Joomla website are able to update their own content. Using a simple login, they are able to change text and pictures at will.

This ability can be limited as far as you like. Many businesses have lots of people with web rights. However, they may want to limit users to certain sections or stop these editors from changing font styles, colours or sizes. Joomla makes all of this possible.

Magento E-Commerce Developer

Fast Forward provides e-commerce design using the Magento system. Magento is rapidly becoming the leading e-commerce platform and, we think, it is the best system out there.

Who Are Magento?

Magento has been developed by an American company called Varien. They provide three levels for the software – the third level being free of charge. This level is adequate for the vast majority of businesses. It is only when you are a very large multinational retailer that you would need a higher level.

Varien have recently been bought out recently by eBay, producing what they call the X-Commerce system. It is yet to be seen what effect this will have, but web developers worldwide have been assured that the free Magento system will remain in place.

What Does Magento Provide?

Magento provides a very easy, but highly effective, method of managing an online store. It is constantly being updated to provide more functionality and there are thousands of extensions available to make it even more powerful.

A few highlights of its functionality include:

Mobile versions of site – visitors on an iPhone see a lighter, simpler version of the site to regular PC visitors;
Related Products – there is the ability to upsell and cross-sell much like on Amazon (“You may also be interested in…”)
Easy stock management – stock is automatically updated and alerts sent to store owners when levels run low.

In fact, any feature that you see on leading sites like Amazon are probably available.

Fast Forward are the Midlands’ leading Magento e-commerce web developers, so please get in touch for a discussion of how we can help. We are happy to provide pay-monthly or commission based deals if that is what you would like.

Website Design Midlands

Fast Forward carries out website design across the Midlands. We are based in Leicestershire, so we are perfectly located for working with Midlands-based businesses. Our office is at Staunton Harold, Leicestershire – right on the border of Derbyshire and Leicestershire. We are in the heart of the Midlands and have worked with businesses UK-wide, but with particular emphasis on Midlands web design.

Melbourne, Ticknall and South Derbyshire

The South Derbyshire and North West Leicestershire region is largely rural, spreading across the Trent Valley and National Forest. Melbourne is a small market town / large village lying in South Derbyshire, a few miles west of East Midlands Airport. Melbourne has a mix of modern businesses and old picturesque locations, including Melbourne Hall. It was the home of travel pioneer Thomas Cook.

The area has a scattering of villages. Notable among these is Ticknall, which is the gateway to the National Trust stately home of Calke Abbey. Ticknall is well worth a visit, as much for its three excellent pubs as for the wonderful walking and lovely properties. Other surrounding villages include Breedon-on-the-Hill (notable for the dramatic Breedon church which sits on the side of half a hill), Wilson, Swarkestone, Barrow-on-Trent, Kings Newton and Isley Walton.

Ashby-de-la-Zouch and North-West Leicestershire

Just down the road is the village of Smisby, which is just within the South Derbyshire border. Smisby is in fact just under a mile from the market town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire. The town is famous for two key things – firstly it is the setting for Walter Scott’s classic tale of chivalry Ivanhoe. Secondly it is the fictional home of teenage diarist Adrian Mole.

Woodville, Swadlincote and Bretby

Leading away from the Ticknall area, is a succession of adjoining locations. The village of Hartshorne leads onto Woodville. This in turn meets Swadlincote at the famous local landmark the Clock Garage. Swadlincote is the administrative capital of South Derbyshire and the largest local town. Between Swadlincote and Burton-on-Trent are Midway and Bretby.

Repton, Capital of Mercia

North of the area is the historic capital of Mercia, Repton. The village is famous as much for its historical past as its public school – where such figures as Roald Dahl and Jeremy Clarkson were educated. Repton is surrounded by the villages of Willington, Newton Solney, Milton and Foremarke.

Search Engine Optimisation Derby

Having a website is all well and good, but it is not much use if people can not find it. It would be like building a shop and then not putting any signs outside to let people know what you sell (or indeed that you even are a shop).

Search engine optimisation is the big thing in the online world – and rightly so.

However, search engine optimisation is also a murky world and full of disreputable businesses. There are two particular bugbears:

Many search engine optimisation companies are sending out Spam emails – often from a Gmail address. Would you really use these?
Many search engine optimisation agencies use “tricks” to get sites to the top of Google rankings. This is known as Black-Hat SEO and is very inadvisable. Such tricks include having lots of white text on a white background or hiding text under images. If Google does now know about the trick in question yet, they will soon and your site will be blacklisted. It will cease to appear in any search results until you fix the issue and grovel for a long time. It does happen and the size of a business is no barrier – it happened a few years ago to BMW.

If you are looking for a search engine optimisation Derby business, then please get in touch to see how we can help.

Finding a Search Engine Optimisation Niche

The main problem for smaller companies is that of budget. Imagine that your website is for a hotel. How can you compete with the multi-national companies who market hotels and have their own in-house search engine optimisation team? There is little hope that you will get onto Page 1 of Google for the word “hotel”.

However, you may do better to optimise your site to “budget hotel near beach in Palma”.

The key to finding excellent niche keywords is to compare:

How many people are searching for a particular phrase?
How many competing websites are there for that phrase?

This is the most important aspect of search engine optimisation

Finding a Search Engine Optimisation Agency

There are a lot of myths about search engine optimisation (SEO). How can you be sure that an agency that you choose knows what they are doing? At i-webs, we think that there are two sure-fire ways:

How is their own website doing? Type “search engine optimisation” into Google and see that agency gets on. It is probably the most competitive market out there – if an SEO company can get to the top of such a tough market, then they can probably help.
See how their clients are doing – ask for some examples and then see if you find them in a search.

So, if you are looking for a search engine optimisation Derby agency or web design in the Midlands, then please get in touch.