Our Blog Posts

Google Shopping is a paid advertising service associated with Google Adwords that allows users to compare products between online retailers. In previous years, it was formally known as Google Product Search, Google Products & Froogle. Ironically froogle.com still exists but redirects to Google Shopping. This shopping service was initially marketed as free and allowed on-line retailers to list products free of charge and made revenue from Adwords-based adverts placed at the side of the SERP page. This changed when the entire product was re-branded in 2012 and became what is now Google Shopping, the paid service we now know and love! ...

Over the years Google Adwords (PPC Marketing) has become ever more popular and a necessity for many businesses, particularly those that sell online. But companies often forget the importance and benefit of creating the ideal "landing page experience" for those visiting the site. If the searcher isn't engaged, the dreaded high bounce rate which can be viewed in Google Analytics becomes inevitable. At NW Design we work closely with our PPC clients and help to improve their landing pages, making sure that when potential customers hit the site, they stay there. If you can imagine the person searching for your product/brand/service as a dog follows a scent. Once the dog loses that scent they begin to retrace their steps and start again. In this metaphor, if they don't find your product, they will start to look elsewhere. The web user is following a scent, a solution to a problem or a product so when they hit your landing page the scent will continue or come to a sudden end causing the searcher to go back and look elsewhere. When we customise landing pages, we do so for each Adwords, Adgroup and follow a few simple yet highly important rules. ...

We were recently asked to create a fully responsive website for a new business venture Provenance Food Hall & Restaurant in Westhoughton. Being local we have witnessed a fantastic transformation of what once was the old Toymaster store on Market Street into what is now Provenance Food Hall & Restaurant. ...

Understanding Citations A citation is an online reference which refers to your business's name, address & phone number commonly known in the SEO world as (NAP). Like inbound links to your website, Google have started to use citations to evaluate the online authority of your business. Unlike links, citations don't need to be linked to your business's website in order for Google to credit you for them. So having you NAP listed in plain text on the likes of a free listing on SCOOT is just fine. What we call a partial citation is one which includes only part of your NAP; this could be maybe your name, contact number, or name & address. This is better than nothing at all but it isn't as beneficial as a full citation. A full citation should include your full business's NAP, it doesn't matter how it's listed horizontally or vertically but it "IS" important to be consistent. For your citation to help your business's local SEO it's important that it matches the exact details on your website and Google+ Local Business page. What format you decide to use is irrelevant but what is important is that you pick one format and stick with that. Your NAP needs to be 100% consistent in the name, (abbreviations? Plc?), address (suite number? floor?), and phone number (+44? spaces or no spaces?) used when building citations. ...

We create beautiful brands and marketing material affordable to Schools, FE and Colleges in and around the Northwest. These include a number of services from a simple leaflet, poster, popup stands to prospectus and student handbook design. At NW Design we are extremely proud of the highly creative and distinctive brochures that we produce for our clients. Not only will your school benefit from a professionally designed prospectus but we can also create branded student handbook like the 24 page handbook we recently designed for the Liverpool School of English. This new 24 page student handbook goes hand in hand with the schools prospectus keeping the brand inline between the two pieces of marketing literature. The student handbook consists of the schools curriculum, facilities, student welfare and code of conduct just to name a few. Your schools brand is important and to ensure our design for education remains consistent we can also provide you and your school a full set of brand guidelines outlining simple rules that will help to keep your brand consistent. ...

We have been working with Wigan and Leigh Hospice for a number of years now and they on some absolutely fantastic events to help raise the much needed funds to keep the hospice running. It was great to visit the local Hindley Branch of Royal Bank of Scotland and see our leaflets proudly displayed on their counter. It's great to see all the businesses of Hindley and surrounding areas by helping to support such a great cause. This year the Hospice have come up with something somewhat different to the other high adrenaline events which they run, "The Walk of Memories". Taken from Wigan and Leigh Hospice website the Walk of Memories will consist of the following. "Our Walk of Memories sponsored walk through Pennington Flash Country Park on Sunday, May 3rd. You'll set off at 12noon for a walk through the beautiful grounds and finish by placing a message or a photograph on our Memories Tree in remembrance of a loved one if you wish. Our walk is open to everyone with a choice of a 5K or 10K route so that all the family can get involved. After the walk you'll be able to enjoy a range of refreshments, fairground rides, music and more! All the messages left on our Memory Tree will be collected at the end of the event and will be displayed at the Hospice Garden Party in August. It costs just £10 per adult or £5 per child to take part. A family ticket for two adults and two children is available priced at £25. A minimum sponsorship of £25 per person will apply." ...

Well it's inevitable that the search engine giant Google would finally be using mobile-friendly factors in their search engine results page (SERP) ranking algorithm. Matt Cutts announced a number of years ago that Google would eventually be giving "bonus points" to sites that offered a mobile version in the bid to increase overall user experience. This is just one of the many routes Google has gone down to make the web a better place and more user friendly. ...

A general term for a variety of options for seeing what your file will look like when printed is a called a proof. ...

At NW Design, the family motto goes, and it's a very nice motto too... It's nice to be nice. ...

How do I set my cPanel emails up on my Iphone or Ipad, We get asked this quite often by clients so we thought we'd write a useful article to help you guys get set up. Setting up your iPad or iPhone email with a cPanel based hosting account is a manual process and can be daunting for the non tech savvy, but fortunately it’s fairly easy – although it does require a degree of concentration and patience. Apple have improved the ability to setup Iphone mail with many popular third party services like Google, MS Outlook, Yahoo and AOL to name a few. Sadly they can't cater for every email service that's available, so here's the NW Design guide to setting up your apple device with a typical IMAP cPanel hosting server. If the process below doesn't work then you've almost certainly made a mistake somewhere, or there's a connectivity issue between your phone and cPanel. Just one typo in this section will result in failure so read carefully and good luck! ...

Firstly- We all had to start somewhere; not everyone has an infinite amount of money in the bank and most of the time it’s where do we draw the line between budget and premium quality. Most people we meet have had those cheap business cards that look and feel like they've been printed on the back of a cereal packet, in simple terms they’re downright horrid. What’s worse is when they say printed for free on the back. That to me is a right turn off, and straight away it doesn't say much about one’s business, first impressions do matter. ...

Great to see our feature in the Wigan Observer yesterday about our support from ex Dragons Den star Theo Paphitis and his Small Business Showcase. We're really looking forward to meeting Theo on the 30th January! ...

NW Design bring home the silverware in 2014 as they attend their awards ceremony on Friday the 9th january 2015. ...

Well as 2014 begins to draw to a close, we look back and reminisce on what's been a fabulous year for NW Design. ...

We'd like to send our HUGE thanks to the legendary entrepreneur, businessman and former Dragons' Den star Theo Paphitis for picking NW Design as a winner of Theo Paphitis #SBS award (Small Business Sunday). ...