Medical Web Design

Page speed is a measurement of how fast your webpage loads. Google have recently indicated that page speed is one of the signals they use in their algorithm to rank pages. This means that if you’re running an SEO campaign and your pages are loading slow, your rankings and traffic may be suffering. Not only does it affect your rankings, but it also affects user experience. On average, a user waits around 2-3 seconds for a webpage to load before they decide to leave (and never come back). You only get one chance to make a good first impression, so ensuring that your website loads fast is paramount.

Websites are typically comprised of two key components – the domain name and the website hosting. The domain name refers to address that people use to access your website. For example, the practiceedge website domain name is www.practiceedge.com.au.
Domain names are registered through service providers known as domain registrars, and are typically registered for a period of 1 or 2 years at a time. It’s important to ensure your payment details are up to date with your domain registrar – if you stop paying, the domain may be available for purchase by someone else.

practiceedge can register a domain on your behalf, or can take over management of your existing domain name. If you have an existing domain name but aren’t sure who the registrar is, you can find that information by using a service such as WhoIs. Website hosting, on the other hand, refers to space on a server which holds all of the files, code and information used to make up your website. Quality website hosting is critical to ensure your website remains secure, loads fast, and is online 24/7. Website hosting providers typically charge hosting fees on a monthly or annual basis. practiceedge offer premium Australian-based website hosting.

Still not clear on the difference between domain names and website hosting? Let’s think about it as if we were dealing with a mobile phone and a SIM card. In this scenario, your website hosting would be like a mobile phone – it contains all of the hardware, software and files to function as required. However, without a SIM Card (or in this instance, a domain name), there’s no way for people to reach you.

In general, no, you cannot use pictures that you have found on Google, Pinterest, Facebook etc. Whilst tools such as Google and Pinterest are great for inspiration and providing you with a general idea of the types of images you would like to work with, chances are the images you are looking at are somebody else’s intellectual property. Unless permission for commercial use has been explicitly stated, always assume that images you find online are protected by copyright. Fortunately, there are numerous resources available to provide you with legal, high quality, professional images for use on your website.

All clients of practiceedge can take advantage of our access to the BigStock photo library, included with your new website build or marketing campaign. Alternatively, if you need a great image for a blog post, social media post or email newsletter, there are a number of high-quality image libraries which allow commercial usage without attribution or linkback requirements.

Our favourites are:

• Pexels
• Unsplash
• Canva Photos

All websites will incur ongoing costs for website hosting, domain maintenance, and in some instances, a third-party mail provider. Depending on the required functionality, your website may also need additional subscription-based software. Examples of subscription-based software include advanced eCommerce functionality, appointment booking software, membership portals etc. When planning and discussing your new website, our team will make you aware of any ongoing software costs before implementing them as a chosen solution.

You are. Once we’ve discussed and agreed upon the structure of your new site, it’s your job to start getting together the content that we need to include on each page of your site, including text and images. We recommend you start on this as soon as possible.

Whilst minor changes, corrections and amendments are permitted, we need the content that you’re providing us to be as close to final as possible. Excess content changes or revisions may incur an additional fee.

If writing content isn’t your strong point or you simply don’t have the time, we also offer Copywriting Services for an additional fee, priced upon application. We will, however, still require some guidance and input from you to ensure we’re conveying the right message to your customers.

Yes, you will be given access to be able to perform basic updates to your website such as adding or editing pages, blog posts, projects, image galleries etc. More complex tasks such as template or theme updates may require assistance from the practiceedge team.
Whilst we do build our websites using intuitive, user-friendly page building software that allows pages to be edited without needing to code, a reasonable understanding of page builders and typical website structure and functionality will be required.

If you are engaging in any of our digital marketing services such as SEO, we recommend that you consult with your Campaign Manager before making changes to any pages that could affect your SEO results.

If you’re adding images to your site, don’t forget to resize them for web using a tool such as PicResize. No one likes a slow website! If you would rather let practiceedge take care of any updates you require, just let us know – we offer ad-hoc team support at an hourly rate. For those who require regular or frequent updates, you may want to consider signing up for a WordPress Care Support Plan.