Andrew at Bees Creative Content

09/07/2024

Building the site for Bake My Day Upton was a real labour of love. The coffee, cake and food there are incredible and I am very pleased about how well it's been received by the team and the customers alike.

The Bake My Day site is a perfect example of the "page to website" service I offer – turning a business FB page into a website with very little work needed by the business owner. The whole thing can be started and finished within a week.

Interested in finding out more? Just write "yes" in the comments and I'll be in touch.

We love our new website here at Bake My Day! It’s full of pictures (mostly of our cakes, obviously!) and information about us – including our opening times, menus and contact details.

Thanks Andrew at Bees Creative Content (https://www.facebook.com/beescreativecontent) for building the site and making lots of helpful suggestions about what should be on it.

We hope you like it as much as we do!

https://bakemydayupton.co.uk/

20/05/2024

Why bother turning your page into a website?

It's a reasonable question. Here's one answer.

If you want people who don't know you exist to find you online (e.g. by typing in "Accountants in Wirral") then you really need a website.

Why? Because when people search for a service, they don't tend to use Facebook – they tend to use Google.

And if you search "Accountants in Wirral" on Google (or "Solicitors in Wirral"), do you know how many pages come up?

That's right. None.

There are reasons for that – reasons I haven't got space to go into in a Facebook post.

So I've written about it in a blog, which you can read at https://beeswebsites.co.uk/professional-website-design/

If you'd like to chat about turning your page into a website, write "yes" in the comments and I'll be in touch.

17/05/2024

Are you a small business owner with a page but no website?

Have you had "website" on your to-do list for longer than you care to remember but just can't face the hassle involved?

Would you like to change that – with the minimum of effort?

pages are great – they're free, easy to use, and it seems like everybody's on Facebook or Instagram these days.

But if you're a small business owner, then a website will massively increase your chances of bringing in new clients.

Why? Here are three reasons.

1. Not everyone's on social media. Without a website, you are missing out on huge numbers of potential clients.
2. More people search on Google than Facebook. A website offers you limitless opportunities to increase your chances of being found by those people.
3. A website can be customised to match your brand, giving you a professional look which will appeal to your customers and potential clients.
If you do have a page for your business but no website and you'd like to change that, get in touch. Send me a message or write "Yes" in the comments.

And if you'd like to know what the results can look like, visit the new Bake My Day Upton website.

It was built entirely from information on their page, was completed in less than a week, and is now live at bakemydayupton.co.uk/

Have a great weekend everyone!

19/04/2024

Are you a small business owner with a page but no website?

Have you had "website" on your to-do list for longer than you care to remember but just can't face the hassle involved?

Would you like to change that – with the minimum of effort?

pages are great – they're free, easy to use, and it seems like everybody's on Facebook or Instagram these days.

But if you're a small business owner, then a website will massively increase your chances of bringing in new clients.

Why? Here are three reasons.

1. Not everyone's on social media. Without a website, you are missing out on huge numbers of potential clients.

2. More people search on Google than Facebook. A website offers you limitless opportunities to increase your chances of being found by those people.

3. A website can be customised to match your brand, giving you a professional look which will appeal to your customers and potential clients.

If you do have a page for your business but no website and you'd like to change that, get in touch. Send me a message or write "Yes" in the comments.

And if you'd like to know what the results can look like, visit the new Bake My Day Upton website.

It was built entirely from information on their page, was completed in less than a week, and is now live at bakemydayupton.co.uk/

Have a great weekend everyone!

22/03/2024

March's Place of the Month is Ndola, the second city of Zambia.

Ndola is home to the most expensive women's footballer in the world, Racheal Kundananji, who joined San Jose-based Bay FC last month for £620,000 at the age of 23.

The Zambia striker started her career in her hometown, scoring 21 goals in 18 games as a 17-year-old to help power Indeni Roses to the league title in 2019.

Billing itself as "the friendly city", Ndola is the industrial and commercial centre of the Copperbelt, Zambia's copper-mining region, and capital of Copperbelt Province.

It's just six miles from the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo and home to Zambia's first modern stadium, the Levy Mwanawasa Stadium.

Are you a fan of women's football?
Have you ever been to Zambia?

🇿🇲

21/03/2024

Website tip no.6 is Use two or a maximum of three typefaces.

Typefaces are slightly different to fonts. For example, Helvetica is a typeface containing lots of different fonts – Helvetica Light, Helvetica Thin, Medium, Bold, Regular and so on.

You might only use one typeface on your website – for example, if you did use Helvetica, you could use Bold for most of your headlines and Medium or regular for your body text. That's great because the fonts all tie in together nicely and give a uniform feel to your site.

However, many people like to have a different typeface for their headings – maybe a playful one like Love Ya Like A Sister, Chelsea Market or Abril Fatface (three of my favourites!) or an eye-catching one like Creepster.

That's fine, but you'll need a different, simpler font for your body text. Something like Lato, Poppins, Roboto or Open Sans.

So that's two typefaces. Great.

You can add a third in if you really need to – just make sure you use it sparingly and not just randomly when you feel like it. Any more than three will leave your site looking like a school project.

Realistically, if you choose a typeface with multiple fonts (Roboto is particularly good for this) then you won't need a third typeface – you can add in a different font from the same family without losing the consistency all good websites need.

If you're looking for a new website, or you'd like your old one to be given a fresh lick of paint, get in touch. I'd love to have a chat.

19/03/2024

This week's Wondrous Word is Soporific.

Meaning "tending to induce drowsiness or sleep", like many of our words it comes from Latin – specifically the word "sopor" which means sleep.

Hopefully this post won't have had too soporific an effect on you. If so I apologise!

23/02/2024

Just because I want to, every month or so I'm going to post about an LP or a book or a TV show that I absolutely love.

It won't have any link to anything that's happening at the moment, it's just a post of unashamed self-indulgence.

My first one is an LP – Taylor Swift's 2014 classic '1989'.

'1989' was the first TS album I ever heard. It marked her total departure from country music and it's astoundingly good, one of the greatest pop LPs anyone has ever made in my humble opinion.

Every tune is an absolute belter, the first three tracks (Welcome to New York followed by Blank Space followed by the peerless Style) open the album in jaw-dropping style and the final song, New Romantics, is as good as anything else on the whole LP.

We had it on repeat in the car during most of 2015 and I still love listening to it today. It's SO good.

21/02/2024

This week's Website Tip is Ask Your Friends For Their Opinions.

When you've finished the first draft of your site – or your web designer has – send a link to your friends and ask them to have a look.

Ask them to comment on how easy it is to navigate, how it looks on their device (they will all have different size computers and mobiles), whether the text is readable in terms of size and legibility, whether the words read well and explain what you do clearly, whether they liked it overall and anything else.

Most importantly of all, ask them to be honest and make sure they know you won't be offended if they point out things they don't like.

Feedback from friends is really helpful because if they can't find something you would want them to find, they will be able to tell you.

If there are spelling mistakes or services that aren't explained clearly, they will be able to tell you.

These things are hard to find yourself because you know where everything is and what all the services are.

(P.S. If it's a big site, you might want to offer them a gift of some kind for their time.)

20/02/2024

This week's Wondrous Word is the adjective Mellifluous.

Meaning "pleasingly smooth and musical to hear", Mellifluous isn't a word you hear used much, but, in the name of being different, why not try to shoehorn it into a conversation this week?

"I wouldn't exactly call Bob Dylan's voice mellifluous, Doris, would you? He may have been around for donkey's years and an influence on everyone from The Beatles to Bruce Springsteen, but he's no Mariah Carey in the warbling stakes."

15/02/2024

This week's Website Tip is an important one.

Whatever you're using your website for – selling stuff or providing information – keeping a uniform style throughout is of paramount importance.

That means design, colour and typeface.

The design of your site tells people a lot about how professional you are and also helps them recognise your style, so that next time they see something with your branding on it they will recognise it as yours.

In today's image, for example, you can see Bees Creative Content's new logo and typeface, and from now on that will be on everything that goes out in our name. The website will follow suit shortly).

If you have a website which varies in design from page to page, it makes for a much less pleasant online experience and the whole site comes across like the work of someone who either can't make their mind up, sees their site as a personal sketchbook or who doesn't take their site or their business very seriously. And if they don't, then why should your visitors?

14/02/2024

Since it's Valentine's Day today, I thought I'd post something vaguely love-related.

It's also the first in an irregular but ongoing "True or False" series. Here goes.

All four Beatles (John, Paul, George and Ringo) married non-English women. True or false?

UPDATE: True. All four except John have been married to Brits and Americans. John married Yoko Ono after his divorce from Cynthia, George married Olivia Arias following his divorce from Patti, Paul married Linda Eastman, then Brit Heather Mills before his marriage to current wife Nancy Shevell; Ringo married Barbara Bach after his divorce from Maureen.