The Benefits of a Bespoke Website
As you can imagine, we have many conversations about websites. Something we are regularly challenged on is whether going with a bespoke Content Management System (CMS) is the right course of action. Hands down, we can easily say “yes”. Let us explain in more detail below.
Syrup is not just for Pancakes
iCandy Design is a digital and marketing agency in Andover, with over 20 years of working in the industry. With the wealth of experience and knowledge within our team, we have explored pretty much every CMS on the market. Over the years we came to realise that no CMS will fully deliver the right outcome, requiring customers to compromise on some aspect of either functionality, design or security. And so, we developed Syrup.
Syrup is a bespoke iCandy Design CMS, which we have designed to be flexible to client requirements, simple to use from an engagement point of view and hard to attack, keeping your website safe from hackers.
You Are in Control
iCandy Design builds websites according to a client’s brief – this includes the look and feel, as well as functionality. Behind that sits Syrup. As a client you have full access to log into Syrup, allowing you to add or change information. We don’t put ourselves between you and the website, as some marketing agencies do. We are always on hand to help, and we can make the changes for you if that’s your preference, but your website is your own, and we make sure that is the case.
Safety is Paramount
Open-source platforms are vulnerable.
3rd party tools, such as plugins, create a pathway for easy access and hackers can cast a wide net with little effort. On average 30,000 new websites suffer from attempted breaches every day.
Many of the website build projects we are asked to get involved in are because clients have been hacked one too many times to feel comfortable and are looking for a secure, resilient set up instead. That’s why they choose iCandy Design.
We know how to integrate business critical systems, the website and web applications into one contained environment, improving security and reducing the threat of cyber attacks.
We Don’t Do Clutter
The reason we love Syrup so much is that it is customised to every individual website we build. Every client has a different layout in their Syrup CMS – it is a fully bespoke CMS set up. We do this because we know that some clients are not as familiar with how CMSs work as we are, so we want the process to be straightforward and simple to use when our clients make changes.
Navigation is intuitive and it takes very few clicks to reach your destination; menu items relate directly to that which is displayed on the website (you don’t need to try and figure out where something is saved); the incorporated WYSIWYG functionality mirrors content from the front end of the website, so you can quickly determine whether you have used the right brand elements. With Syrup CMS you are guided into using specific fonts, sizing, spacing and so on, whilst uploading and resizing images are at the click of a button. There are no redundant fields, everything you see relates to an important part of your website.
A Fast Experience is a Fun Experience
By paring it down to only the information that is actually needed, using Syrup CMS is considerably easier than others found in the market. By removing generic code and unnecessary functionality, we can also make your website load and react more quickly. Considering that 73% of people would abandon a poorly responsive website and go to a competitor, slow websites really are the silent killers for businesses.
Plugins Aren’t the Answer
Many other CMS providers use plugins to allocate additional functionality on top of the core CMS/design template they are using. This sounds great, almost as if you are getting a tailored solution, but the reality is that you are working with something generic enough to suit any website/brand/company - and with that, lots of functionality bloat that you won’t be needing. Bloat that will slow your website. Plugins also need regular updating to maintain security. When this happens, the interface with the off-the-shelf CMS can break down, requiring you to fix newly arising problems.
SEO Functionality is Built-in
Do you remember how we mentioned that Syrup guides you to using specific fonts, layouts, and so on? This is done to improve user experience when your customers land on your website, but to also automatically optimise your website for Search. In Syrup you will see fields that need populating with key information that support best practise SEO.
We are also happy to support with any additional on- or off-page SEO to keep the digital health of your website in top shape.
Responsiveness is a Given
When Google decided mobile-first was the metric by which to judge all websites, having different desktop and mobile sites suddenly became a problem for businesses. We have always built our websites to be responsive, so that there is only one data set, mirrored across a mobile and a desktop view. Your content is automatically optimised for mobile, and therefore optimised to perform at its best in terms of ranking in Search.
Your Brand is Worth Being Unique
Syrup is the sweetener to working with websites. No longer do you have to fear logging in to your CMS. With Syrup, by iCandy Design, it’s simple, straightforward and intuitive to manage your website. You can quickly make the changes necessary and move on to what’s next on your schedule.
Speak to us today to see how we can help.
