Web design and development for Belfast businesses

WordPress suits a team that publishes often and wants to edit most of the site itself. Its plugin choice gives you flexibility, though someone needs to keep it updated for security. A custom-coded site in Next.js suits a business that wants fast pages and a design without template limits. Plan for a developer to make structural changes, even if your team has an editor for everyday content.

A hosted builder such as Wix, Squarespace or Webflow suits a small site you want to run alone. You give up some control over code and speed, and moving away later can mean rebuilding. A headless setup gives you a custom front end and a separate editor for heavier publishing, but adds parts to host and maintain.

Start with the editing work. Tell us who will update pages, how often they publish and who will handle changes to the site structure. We recommend WordPress or a custom Next.js build after understanding how your team works, and build in the chosen platform.

For a UK limited company, we set up space on the website for the registered number, registered office address, place of registration and the fact that it is a limited company. Have those details ready for the build.

Agree an accessibility target in the brief. Organisations providing services through a website must make reasonable adjustments for disabled people; we use the agreed target when planning and designing the pages. WCAG provides A, AA and AAA levels.

If statistics-only cookies are used without consent, we set up clear information about them and an easy way for visitors to object.

Bring what you have and identify who holds the rest.

• A goal for the site, such as quote requests or calls, and the person who handles each enquiry.
• Your services or products, ranked by their importance to the business.
• Websites you like and dislike, with a short reason for each choice.
• Real photos of your team, premises and finished work; arrange a shoot ahead of time if needed.
• A folder of case studies, testimonials, certifications and client logos you have permission to show.
• Login details for the domain, hosting, email, analytics and Search Console, or the name of the person who holds them.

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  Designing around placeholder text

  Bring real headings and paragraphs into the layouts early, so changes in length do not disrupt finished-looking pages.

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  Copying every old or competitor page

  Choose the service pages visitors need and your team can keep current.

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  Leaving search setup until launch

  Include page titles and a sitemap in the build, and check that a development indexing block has been removed.

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  Letting someone else register your domain or hosting

  Hold the accounts in your business name and grant the people building the site access.