Frequently Asked Questions
Read over our FAQs to find out more about Cutting Edge Web Design and the high quality services we provide.
Click on the categories below to learn more about the following topics:
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing can be described as utilising the internet to market products or services. It is often referred to as online marketing. Digital marketing is a way of introducing people to your business, engaging with them and convincing them to buy from you.
Some examples of digital marketing include email marketing, search engine marketing, content marketing, pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing and blogging.
Are websites still relevant?
Absolutely! Although social media has come along and given businesses another avenue through which to market their products and / or services online, websites are still incredibly powerful and can generate amazing results for businesses if designed and search engine optimised properly, and if they are brimming with high quality content.
If created and configured correctly, a website has the potential to send large amounts of targeted traffic, qualified leads and enquiries to your business. A high quality website has the power to really kickstart and turbo charge your business.
Plus, unlike a business page on Facebook or Instagram, which is actually owned by those particular social media platforms and not the individual business listed; a website can truly be owned and controlled by a business, which is a much more secure and valuable asset in the long term.
Why choose Cutting Edge Web Design?
At Cutting Edge Web Design, we have a true passion for creating beautiful, unique, handcrafted websites that not only look amazing, but that also generate qualified leads and deliver amazing results!
We really love what we do, and we love helping local businesses market their wonderful services online, get more customers, grow their businesses and experience even more success! We enjoy supporting local businesses and we believe that the more successful businesses there are in our local community, the better.
We take the utmost pride and care in our work, and we also love to give excellent service and go the extra mile to help our clients. When we first begin a project with a client we always take the time to sit down with them and learn about their business, their particular industry, and their needs and goals for their website. We take the time to listen each step of the way and we are never too busy to answer any questions that come up. We go above and beyond to make your website stand out amongst the crowd online and to get you the best results possible for your business.
We actually come from a background in international relations, so we really enjoy getting to know people and we are friendly, personable and easy to communicate with. We also live locally on the Gold Coast and are business owners ourselves, so we understand the local business environment, and of course Aussie culture.
In fact, we own and operate a number of our own online businesses and we regularly purchase websites, build websites, renovate and manage websites for our own portfolio. You can rest assured that if we are doing this work every day for our own business websites, we produce high quality work that delivers the best results possible.
When you work with Cutting Edge Web Design, we treat your website with extreme care and attention to detail, just like it was our own. We see your website as one of our website babies that we want to nurture and see grow and yield awesome results for you and your business.
Every one of our Cutting Edge websites are:
- Well researched and tailored to each of our clients’ unique businesses
- Professionally designed and carefully mapped out for user experience, conversions and sales
- Expertly search engine optimised
- Connected to social media
- Secured from hacking and regularly backed up.
What is a CMS?
CMS stands for “Content Management System”.
A content management system (CMS) is a software application or group of related programs that manage the creation, editing, organisation and publishing of digital content. Content management systems are often used for the management of website content. They allow users to create and publish their content on the web.
WordPress is our CMS of choice. We choose to use WordPress to manage the websites in our care because it is quick and smooth to use. It allows us to update and technically manage our websites without any fuss, so we can spend more time focussing on marketing your business effectively and enhancing search engine optimisation to get your website ranking highly.
In addition, WordPress itself is very user friendly. This means that if you choose to take care of your website instead of utilising our ongoing Website Maintenance and SEO Services, we can easily show you how to use WordPress if you are not familiar with the platform. This will allow you to add content to your website and keep it maintained and updated without having to learn how to code.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is a program that runs a website and gives it functionality. It is a completely customisable content management system. WordPress is actually the most widely used website platform in the world, and powers all types of websites, from large and complex ones, to simple blogs and online stores.
We love WordPress because the way it is designed naturally lends itself to SEO (search engine optimisation), which Google loves. And if Google loves it, they are more likely to rank your website higher in their search engine rankings.
We also love WordPress because it is a dynamic software, which means it can look different each time your website loads, depending on the settings you use. This is excellent for adding content to a website and keeping it relevant, fresh and interesting for visitors and for Google. Plus, it also makes it easy to scale up your website, so that when your business grows, your website can be easily expanded too.
What is the difference between WIX, Square Space, Weebly and WordPress?
It is common for small businesses to begin with a website built on a platform such as WIX, Weebly or Square Space. These are all proprietary platforms. With these kinds of proprietary platforms you are basically married to them and cannot move your website to another hosting provider if you choose to. In addition, if for example, one of these proprietary platforms were to go out of business, you are unfortunately unable to move your website to another hosting company and continue on as if nothing happened. Your website could be offline for a long period of time, or worst case scenario, your website’s data may be unrecoverable. This is definitely not a good business risk.
WordPress on the other hand, is an open source platform. This means that there are many programmers who constantly create themes, plugins and provide support for WordPress. If your website is created using WordPress, this also means that if you are unhappy with your separate hosting company, you can move it to another hosting provider quickly and easily. Additionally, giving your website an entire makeover is easy to do in this flexible, open source environment. WordPress simply allows you the control and flexibility that small businesses require.
How long does it take to design and build a website?
As we spend a good amount of time researching your business, your industry and your competitors, and each one of our websites is carefully designed for maximum performance, it generally takes us around 6 weeks to design and build your website. Exact timing does vary slightly depending on the size and complexity of the website we are building.
If you need your website completed by a certain date, please let us know at our first consultation and we will work within your timeframe, depending on our other projects at the time.
Click here for more details about our professional Website Design Services.
What pages will be included in my Website Design Package?
In all of the websites we build and redesign we include the following pages:
– Home page
– About Us page
– Contact Us page
– Terms and Conditions page
– Privacy Policy page
In our Gold and Platinum Website Design and Maintenance Packages we also include additional pages to better describe your business and engage with potential customers, and to get faster results in the search engine rankings.
Click here to learn more about our professional Website Design Services.
Will my website be unique?
Your website will definitely be unique. Each one of our websites are carefully and joyfully custom designed. And, we tailor every one of our Cutting Edge websites to suit each individual business we work with.
Following our intial Website Strategy Consultation where we get to know more about you and your business, we will prepare a website Site Map and a Business Website Plan for us to follow.
Our Site Map outlines the content and layout of your website, including each of the pages, articles and keywords we plan to use and the order in which they will be added to your site. Our Business Website Plan is where we detail the nitty gritty of your business and what we need to highlight on your website – things such as your unique selling proposition (USP), your business branding, promotions that you are currently running and more. We then include these details on your website to help it receive warm and targeted traffic, and then we encourage visitors to take the action you want them to take.
Our websites are simple, beautiful, clear and uncluttered. They are also easy for visitors to navigate around and are designed specifically to produce a high rate of customer conversions.
For more information about our high quality Website Design Services click here.
Why do I need an “About Us” page on my website?
It is incredibly important to include an About Us page on your website. We include one on every website we build.
This is because people generally buy from others that they know, like and trust. Your About Us page is the perfect opportunity for you to tell your story and connect with your audience, to help them relate to you, trust you and want to do business with you.
On all of our websites we tend to find that visitors generally spend a lot of their time looking at the About Us page, to get a better idea of who is behind the business they are researching and whether they can trust them. So, we need to make this page easy for visitors to find, eye catching for them to look at, and engaging for them to read!
In addition, your About Us page is also a great opportunity to show Google and other search engines that you are a real and trustworthy business. If Google can see that your business is legitimate and can be trusted, it will rank your website more highly in its search engine rankings, and you will most likely get more traffic to your site.
Which website package do I need?
This really depends on what you want to achieve through your business website.
If you are simply needing a new website that will make your business look more professional and show potential customers how they can contact you, one of our Website Design and Maintenance Packages would suit you.
Do you already have a business website, but it’s a bit outdated or not performing at its best? We offer Website Redesign Services that could be a great fit for you.
Do you need help with managing and maintaining your website or getting it to rank better in the search engines? Our range of ongoing Website Maintenance and SEO Packages for existing websites could work well for you.
Or, is your ultimate goal to grow your business quickly through a brand new website, in order to beat your competitors and dominate your niche? Then we recommend combining one of our Website Design Packages with one of our monthly Website Maintenance and SEO Packages to turbo charge your results.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you need some personalised advice about which package could work best for you and your business.
For a complete outline of our range of high quality Business Website Packages, click here.
After my website is complete can any more changes be made?
During the process of designing and creating your website, numerous revisions are included in our Website Design and Website Redesign Packages. Once we both agree that your website is complete and we hand it over to you, we will no longer make any changes. You will then have full control of your website and it will be up to you to keep it maintained and updated.
However, if you choose to utilise one of our ongoing Website Maintenance and SEO Packages, we will work on your website regularly each month. If you need something revised or added to your website just let us know and we will happily take care of it for you.
If you decide not to avail of one of our ongoing website packages, then any additional changes that we make to your website after completion will incur an extra fee.
Will I own my website?
Yes. Once complete, you will have full ownership of your website.
We will transfer your website’s domain name and hosting account to you and we will give you all of the necessary log in details in order to access and manage your domain name, hosting account and your website.
Even if you choose to utilise our ongoing Website Maintenance and SEO Services you will still own your website. We will just manage, maintain and update your site for you.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation.
A search engine is a place where you go on the internet to search for information by typing in or speaking out (for example, to Siri on your mobile phone) a question or keywords related to your query.
Search engines include such platforms as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Google is the biggest search engine of them all. Google and the other search engines are trying to bring up the best results for people when they come to search for something.
Optimising your website for search engines basically means making sure that each of the pages on your website are easy for the search engines to find, read and understand. It is all about ensuring that it is obvious what your website (and your business) is about, and what it is an expert on.
In order to achieve this we need to ensure that the information on your website is easy to find, your content is useful, relevant and unique, and that visitors to your site have a good user experience while they’re there. If your website looks good, is easy to navigate around, and has good content that people want to read or watch, your website is more likely to rank higher in the search engines.
Click here to learn about our high quality SEO Services.
Why is SEO important?
By doing good, high quality SEO (search engine optimisation), we’re helping Google and other search engines give their users the best experience and information possible. Good SEO means having an authoritative, well structured website.
SEO is important because the better your SEO, the higher the pages on your website will rank in the search engines. For example, if you are a dentist on the Gold Coast and someone types “dentist Gold Coast” in to Google, we want your website to be at the top of the list of the search results that appear.
The higher your website’s pages rank in the search engines, the more people will find them and click through to visit your website. The more website visitors you have, the more leads you will get, and the more sales your business will make. Now, that is exciting!
How long does it take for SEO to bring about results?
This is an important question. The answer really depends on the industry and niche that your business is in.
SEO can take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months to even a year to start working. It is a process that requires a little bit of patience. However, once the results start to come they can snowball quite quickly. So, good search engine optimisation is an excellent investment that can help your business immensely.
We generally find that for local businesses it can take about 2 to 3 months to start seeing some results. However, this still depends on the industry you are in and the level of competition you are up against.
If you want to quickly increase your customer base, we recommend also investing in an additional form of marketing for your business during the early stages of your website project. Social media marketing and Google Ads can be an effective way to quickly boost eyes on your business at the start while we are working on establishing your business’ online profile and your website’s SEO. Once we have your website well cemented in to Google and gaining traction, the results should pay off quickly.
Why should I invest in monthly SEO services for my website?
We highly recommend investing in monthly SEO services for your website if you really want your site to come up in the top search engine results and if you want to be competitive in the online space for your industry.
Search engine optimisation is a process that does take time – it doesn’t work instantly. It generally takes a few months in the local business scene to start to bring about results, and then it still needs to be regularly worked on and improved to maintain those results. This is why you need SEO work undertaken on your website each month. Basically, a website that hasn’t been updated or had any SEO work done on it for a while begins to slip and slowly drop in the search engine rankings.
If you want to get to the top of the search results and stay there, your website will need regular SEO work. We have a range of SEO Packages that can help you achieve this. Click here to learn more about our SEO Packages.
Why should I keep my website regularly maintained and updated?
A website is like a car. Both need regular maintenance and tune ups to keep them running smoothly without any issues.
It is vital to keep your website regularly maintained and updated. Software that runs websites, such as WordPress, plugins and security software, are all regularly upgraded and they need to be kept up to date in order to keep your website secure, safe from hackers and without any time offline. If your website goes down because it is left open to hackers, that means a decrease in leads and sales for your business.
Search engines such as Google also love fresh, unique, keyword optimised content. Websites that are kept fresh and that are often updated with new, high quality, search engine optimised content are rewarded with higher search engine rankings.
You may have the time and know-how or one of your staff members might have the skills to do these tasks. If you don’t have the time or confidence to devote to ongoing website maintenance, content creation or regular updates, we are happy to take care of your website’s ongoing management and updates for you.
Click here to learn more about our Website Maintenance and Support Services.
I want more traffic to my website and more quality leads for my business! What do you recommend?
If you want increased traffic to your website and more quality leads for your business we would definitely recommend our Ultimate SEO and Marketing – Expert Website Maintenance and SEO Package. Recommended for highly competitive industries, this is an ongoing monthly package designed to help your website rank highly in the search engines, bring more traffic to your site, and lead more high quality customers to your business.
If you are unhappy with the look and / or feel of your current website, we would also recommend a Website Redesign where we makeover your website to get it looking and performing much better.
What is included in your monthly Website Maintenance and SEO Packages?
Our monthly Website Maintenance and SEO Packages are jam packed with value.
As a priority we make sure that your website remains secure, up to date and regularly backed up. All of our packages include: domain name and hosting management; the updating of your website’s software; daily website backups; constant security monitoring and troubleshooting; email support, and; website training.
If you choose one of our elite packages, these include extra services to improve your website’s search engine rankings. We closely monitor the performance of your website every month and at the beginning of each month we send you a report outlining your website’s statistics for the previous month. This is a detailed report that includes such information as: the number of visitors to your website; how long visitors stayed on your site; which locations they came from; what the most popular pages on your website are; the ranking of your site, and; its current domain authority.
We closely assess these figures and decide what areas we should focus on for the upcoming month in order to further improve your website. We often do such work as adding new articles to your blog area, adding more information to an existing article to boost its authority in the search engines, uploading new images to your website, working on adding more backlinks to your site, and more.
You can learn more about our range of high quality Website Maintenance and SEO Packages here.
If I have my website renovated will I lose any existing backlinks?
No, we like to keep the backlinks that your website has already built up over time, as this is generally better for search engine optimisation. However, if there is an issue with the quality of your existing backlinks, we will talk with you about any actions we may need to take before going ahead.
Click here to learn more about our professional Website Redesign Services for existing websites.
What is a SSL certificate?
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer.
A SSL certificate encrypts data that a visitor inputs into your website so that it can securely travel from the browser on their computer or mobile device to your website’s server. It’s a bit like putting a letter in a sealed envelope before sending it to somebody in the mail.
Credit cards are one of the most common types of sensitive data that require a SSL certificate to keep them safe from criminals reading and modifying any information transferred.
If you see a padlock symbol at the top of your browser on the left hand side of a website address (URL) that you visit, this means that it has been protected with a SSL certificate. Websites that do not have a SSL certificate will be labelled as “not secure” when you visit them.
All of the websites that we build here at Cutting Edge Web Design include a SSL certificate for added security.
Will my customers’ details remain safe online?
Yes, they will. Whenever we create a website we install a SSL certificate, which provides security for online communications. In addition to this, we also utilise excellent security software on all of the websites that we build, redesign and manage.
This keeps any customers’ details that are collected through your website safe and secure.
What is responsive web design?
Responsive web design is a way of designing websites that makes the pages on a website appear correctly on a variety of devices and screen sizes. It involves building website pages that detect the visitor’s screen size and orientation and modify the layout of the page to suit the particular device being used.
Responsive web design is essentially mobile friendly. No matter what the screen size is, whether a small mobile phone screen, a medium sized tablet screen, or a large laptop or desktop computer screen, the website’s page will show correctly on each device.
Search engines such as Google and people searching the internet on mobile devices love mobile responsive websites! If your website features a responsive web design, it is more likely to rank higher in search engines. This can in turn result in more traffic to your website, better lead generation, higher conversion rates, and increased revenue for your business.
All of the websites we create here at Cutting Edge Web Design are responsive and therefore mobile friendly, which will help you reach more people through your website and achieve better search engine rankings.
Will my website work on mobile devices?
Yes, all of the websites that we design and build are mobile responsive and will work on mobile phones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers.
If you already own a website that is a bit old and does not work on mobile devices, we can renovate your website for you to make it mobile and tablet friendly.
Can you design a logo for me?
Absolutely! A business logo design is included in all of our Website Design and Maintenance Packages.
Will you write the content for my website?
We can write the content for your website if you wish us to. We have a team of trusted, high quality writers who specialise in writing content for websites. Or if you would prefer, you are welcome to provide us with written content.
We always review content to check its quality before it is uploaded to your website. If necessary we will revise content and we always optimise content for Google and other search engines before adding it to your site.
Can I access the hosting account for my website?
Yes. When we build you a new website, we will create a hosting account for you.
If you choose to utilise one of our ongoing Website Maintenance and SEO Packages we will manage this account on your behalf. However, we will still give you all the log in details for your account.
If you choose to take care of maintaining and updating your website yourself upon completion, we will also give you full access to your hosting account.
What payment options do you offer?
Our methods of payment include direct deposit, credit card and PayPal. We also offer payment plan options. We will send you an invoice after each transaction.
For our Website Design and Maintenance Packages we require an initial 20% deposit. Once received we will begin work designing and building your website. We will receive the final investment upon completion of your website. Additionally, we can also work out a monthly investment plan for the remaining payment, which will allow you to gradually pay off your website over a number of months.
Our ongoing Website Maintenance and SEO Packages are a monthly service, and therefore require a monthly investment. We can set up an automatic monthly recurring payment on your credit card, or you can set up a monthly direct deposit with your bank.
Do you offer website training?
Yes, we present website training workshops for local businesses in and around the Gold Coast region.
As a part of our Website Design and Maintenance Packages, and our ongoing Website Maintenance and SEO Packages, we also offer personal website training for you and your business team, to give you the basic skills and know-how to self manage your website if you wish to.
How do I get started?
Contact us here to book in your no obligation FREE Website Strategy Consultation.
Let’s make a time to meet up and chat about your business needs and the goals and vision for your website. We look forward to speaking with you!
Do you need a new website built? Or, do you want to improve your current website?
Book in your no obligation FREE Website Strategy Consultation.
Cutting Edge Web Design specialises in building high quality, lead generating websites for small to medium sized businesses on the Gold Coast from Helensvale to Coolangatta and beyond.