Web Design

Fast, amazing websites, at realistic prices.

Let’s face it, your website should be the window to your business. It is perhaps the single most important marketing tool at your disposal, and if designed correctly can generate you a lot of business, but if designed poorly, without skill and careful consideration, it can greatly impede your future success.

Yes, we can build you any type and size site having worked in the industry for over two decades, but over the past few years we’ve specialised in supporting new businesses or new marketing initiatives with beautifully designed, highly effective, easy to manage, secure, competition beating websites, that don’t take months to launch (with some live and getting business inside two weeks), and don’t break the bank in getting there. ‍

Consider, most web design companies are just that, web designers, with no thought into how the website should actually make money - to them that’s the client’s issue, not theirs. They’re generally there just to build the site and to charge you ongoing fees for maintenance and security updates (for a considerable time thereafter!). Some will also ‘try’ and ‘have a go’ at marketing the site, offering SEO, PPC, Social Media Management, and the like, but unfortunately a good proportion of these will (1) either do it badly because it’s not in their skill-set or (2) will off-load it onto another company, so then the customer has to deal with and pay two companies to operate their website (and this doesn’t even consider the additional management of a content creator if you don’t want to produce the most difficult part of the site - the words and images - yourself).

That’s where we’re very different. We’re foremost digital marketeers and growth hackers. Our passion is making sure your website beats your competitors and ultimately makes you a lot more money than them. We’re experts in design, content creation, SEO, PPC and Social Media, and as such our websites are purposefully designed and built around these fundamental areas of digital marketing.

To understand how we do this and to know more please feel free to continue reading below, or contact one of the team to discuss your requirements.

Web Design - The Window To Your Business

We hate to bring it up but websites have been around for a long time now and as a result everyone knows a friend or family member that tells you they can pull you one together at a low cost, usually working on the side of their day job, saving you a fortune having to go to an actual web design company. However time and time again we see these fail (in addition to having taken forever to complete and causing a rift in the friendship or family connection), mainly because of a lack of skill and knowledge and/or the very fact that it is a ‘side-project’ for these people so they just don’t have the time to maintain them or fulfil new requests, particularly when your business grows. Ultimately these types of people - generally having started with good intentions - unfortunately waste your time and money and paradoxically don’t even save you on the website costs as unbeknownst to most, website agencies (like ours) don’t have to be expensive, particularly for those that are just starting out and require something relatively small and simple to generate customer interest and business.

Cheap ‘Favour’ Sites And Why To Avoid.

We hate to say it, but there’s less of a need for web designers nowadays, and this is only getting worse as the internet progresses. For those of you not in the know, there’s now a quickly escalating low-code movement, that essentially is making website developer’s skills essentially redundant, meaning agencies like ours can significantly reduce the number of staff and technological overhead, and thus be more agile and provide greater value to our clients by taking advantage of these technologies.

Yes, your website (and brand) does need to look great and work correctly, that’s a given, but your budget shouldn’t be taken up by the resulting and often expensive support requests, ongoing maintenance and security of the site. That’s where low-code comes into play (we’re experts in Webflow, Wix, Airtable and low-code connectors like n8n). It provides us the tools to get your website setup quickly, correctly and looking great, whilst providing you the tools to easily manage, update and operate your website without the need for us (even though we’re always there if and when you need us), in a secure and highly optimised server environment, that virtually nullifies website hacks or downtime, but importantly lets us concentrate on the important stuff; marketing your website and making you money.

Low-Code and Automation - Websites No Longer Need To Be Difficult To Create.

There’s many low-code tools out there (and not just for website creation), but we concentrate on Webflow for the higher value sites and Wix for our budget conscious customers and start-ups.

“So if I can create a website so easily why do I need you”? you may ask. Well, like everything, nothing’s ever that easy, but for proof in the pudding, why not try creating a site at Webflow or Wix, but before you do consider the following (1) you’ll need to learn how to use the platforms and the intricacies and nuances that are prevalent within them, (2) you’ll have to plan the site layout, navigation and design - all based around the principles of good digital marketing and attracting customers, (3) ensure you’ve got some good designs (unless you’re happy with stock templates), (4) create the never-ending and mind-numbing content whilst ensuring it’s not content for contents sake, but actually drives traffic and makes your customers want to buy - note 99% of clients considerably delay launch because of this, and (5) configure your domain for final site launch. In short, a ‘mammoth’ task.

If Creating Websites Are So Easy Now, Why Do We Need You?

“But why don’t you use the better known CMS’s like WordPress or Drupal''? you may ask. Yes, these CMS’s are more dominant in the marketplace, but as we explained above, they require a significantly greater resource in the form of developers, servers & related technologies, and most importantly updates & maintenance (WordPress being the most targeted CMS for bots and hackers). With the new low-code technologies there’s just no real need for traditional CMS’s unless you require a website with complex functionality (or that’s the only technology the agency you’ve approached knows and uses!).

Why you should avoid the popular CMS’s for websites that do not require complex functionality.

- Unlike low-code systems such as Webflow and Wix (which are closed systems), the majority allow a plethora of modules to be developed by external developers along the main CMS which provides additional functionality. For example membership registration or image optimisation (there are thousands of them). There are many issues with this including that many of the modules can be bloated (coded poorly), conflict with other modules, be developed by people that just don't have the time to continue their development, but importantly require continual updating to prevent anyone hacking your site, and if you update you ‘should’ test the update before it goes live and this is a ‘lot’ of work, so many developers/agencies don’t and invariably the website presents issues down the line. Whereas low-code systems such as Webflow and Wix have closed systems which do not allow external developers to contribute code, which means even though this leads to less complex functionality, they only develop what the 99% of people need, and because it’s developed internally this additional functionality runs perfectly and without security holes (also because low-code systems are still gaining popularity, hackers tend not to target them because they are few and far between compared to plethora of Wordpress sites).

- If the website developer or agency does correctly maintain and update the website’s modules then, as explained above, because of the work involved it can prove to be very expensive, and usually is in the form of an expensive monthly service charge.

- Sometimes a CMS itself may require a ‘major’ update. For example when Drupal 7 moved to Drupal 8, most sites (particularly those more complex ones) required full rebuilds! Yes, that essentially meant that if you didn't build the site from scratch again using the latest version of Drupal the site would become unsupported and liable to hacks (in addition to not being able to use your existing modules which all would also need to be redeveloped and upgraded by the individual module developers). We had one such site ourselves and the rebuild/redevelopment cost was £15,000! Closed systems like Webflow and Wix are usually built to be future proof, and updates are minor and continual, thus rarely affect a site that has already been built.

- Many CMS’s are just not that easy to use by the average website client. We’ve had ‘many’ clients that have struggled to upload their own text and images to their Wordpress websites, and so have moved them across to Webflow and Wix just because they’re so much easier to use.

- We know plenty of agencies that develop websites using very different CMS technologies, for example Wordpress for one client and Drupal for another, yet they use the same servers that are only optimised for the one CMS, resulting in reduced performance for the client not using their preferred system! Closed systems like Webflow and Wix use their own optimised systems and thus you’re in safe hands.

- Unfortunately there’s a ‘lot’ of bad developers out there using the major CMS’s. With closed-systems, because by their very nature they’re there to help people produce better websites, it’s actually quite difficult to design and launch a bad website. The worst that could happen would be the design could be poor, but if someone knew they weren’t a great designer, they should have the intelligence to utilise one of the many great templates available to them on the system.

- Unfortunately, particularly in relation to Wordpress, there are now many drag-and-drop style page builder systems that sit over the top of the CMS (usually in the form of another module). We see these being used more and more frequently on websites, with DIVI and Elementor being two very prominent applications. Basically (and we’ll probably now be on the hit list for thousands of website designers now we've said it), these drag-and-drop builders are used by web designers that don’t really know how to code, particularly in terms of styling a page (what the website will ultimately look like) and the result is usually in 99% of cases a very bloated, slow and cumbersome site. It’s a lazy form of coding. Wix is very much the same, but at least Wix has been purposefully built - from the ground-up - for this very reason, so performs extremely well compared to those drag-and-drop Wordpress sites. So before you commission a website ask the developer or agency how they’re going to build the site and if they’ll use anything like DIVI, Elementor, Beaver Builder, or WP Page Builder (there’s many more out there), and if so what they’re going to do to ensure it doesn’t slow down the site. Or ask them, if they’re going to use those why not use a purpose built system like Wix (Webflow on the other hand requires a considerable amount of skill to use and isn’t essentially a drag-and-drop system).

The ‘Traditional’ Content Management Systems (CMS) - Word Press, Drupal And More.

For those of you that do require a website or e-commerce store with some seriously complex functionality we can certainly help you with this and do have expertise in the design, build and launch of Wordpress, Drupal and Magento websites.

Regardless of the technology the website will be built with, the main requirement with any website should be its planning and design (that’s essentially 70% of the work). The build is the easy bit if left to skilled developers who will then follow the plan. We can plan and design your website and then use ‘trusted and approved’ partner agencies to actually code the site. We fully project manage every aspect of the build, and you’ll only ever deal with us Zen DMA. We even have our own optimised servers for each of the technologies once you’re ready to deploy the website.

Essentially, what it means, is that you have the best of both worlds. Us, the marketing experts that plan, design, and manage the site to generate the traffic and enquiries that will make your business the success you expect, and expect coders that will ensure your website is built to the highest standards.

We’re glad you’ve taken the time and interest to get to this point in our Website service page and should you have any questions or an enquiry about a potential project, please do not hesitate to contact us.