Based in Andover, Hampshire, UK. Serving any business, anywhere. 
07361 830 758 
hello@testvalleydigital.com
Web Development… The Bit That Most People Screw Up
The bit that separates a solid website from a superb website is the development. There has been a lot of misinformation about how websites work and the ways they should be built. Anyone who says code is not useful is either lying, incompetent or both…
All you need to do is right click and select "inspect" to see that every website out there has thousands of lines of code. It always has and it always will.
Now, you have a choice. You can pick a platform like Wix or Squarespace, which, sure, is nice and easy to use, but compromises on code quality, leading to an awful website that is slow and hard for search engines to understand. You can use a platform like WordPress, which can be very effective if you have a lot of time and a strong budget to get things right.But, without either of those things, shortcuts are taken through the use of plugins, which slow websites down, and if they are not kept updated can result in insecurities.
Or, you can choose us...
Doing It Properly First Time
We get it - when you see a website for £200 on Fiverr or when your mate's cousin who "knows a bit about computers" offers to knock something together for a few quid, it's tempting. Really tempting. But here's what actually happens.
You get no leads, low trust, and need to start from scratch because six months down the line, your bargain website is slower than dial-up, looks like it was designed in 2003, and every time you want to change a single word, it's a three-week saga because no one knows what to do.
The cheap option always ends up being the most expensive. You'll spend more money trying to fix a rubbish website than you would have spent getting it built properly in the first place. Then there's the bigger cost, all those potential customers who took one look at your site, assumed you'd gone out of business or that you weren't trustworthy, and wandered off to your competitor. We've seen businesses lose thousands in revenue because they tried to save a few hundred on their website.
That's why we do things differently, the proper way…
How do we build websites?
We build all of our websites in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. You've probably heard of these 3 coding languages, as every website out there uses them. All those fancy page-builder tools from the TV adverts do is build a website that, at the end of it all, compiles down to those three fundamental elements. The main difference with us is that we write all of this code ourselves, in-house, for each and every website that we develop.
Think of it like building a house. What would make a house more sturdy? A computer with some basic instructions, an AI that's had awful training, or a bricklayer with decades of experience, doing every brick by hand? The same goes with websites. If you don't believe us, compare your website to ours on Google PageSpeed Insights. Unless it's been made properly by a developer who knows their stuff, it will likely fall short.
Of course, not everyone has the technical know-how to build, maintain, and edit a custom-coded site going forward. That's why our flagship, "£0 upfront" monthly package couples the website design and development with unlimited edits, meaning your website will always be in good hands.
Why do we talk about speed all the time?
The reason we do things the way that we do is to ensure your website loads quickly. Websites are a number of files, a load of code put together, and served to someone through the internet. You want to make your files as small as you can, without reducing the quality. Most of our webpages are around 2000 - 3000 lines of code, while other platforms see around 12000 lines of code. All of that excess, unnecessary code is stuff that we strip out from our websites, while going to extreme lengths to resize, compress, and optimise every image and icon, while hosting it all on a global network of servers that's closest to your users.
The more code that needs to be loaded, the longer it will take. Therefore, every kilobyte we can save is an extra millisecond or two that your customer doesn't have to wait. A mere 2-second delay in load time can lead to an abandonment rate of up to 87%. People's attention spans and willingness to wait are declining fast, and so you need every little advantage you can get.
The Green PageSpeed Guarantee
A lot of web agencies promise fast websites without anything to back themselves up, resulting in a website that is as fast as a three-legged tortoise climbing up Mount Everest. We set a high bar, guaranteeing 90+ scores on all 4 metrics on Google PageSpeed Insights. It is written into the contract and is something we are very proud of.
Google uses website speed as a ranking factor. If you and a competitor have a similar website with a similar domain authority, they will choose the faster website every time.
The Most Secure Websites On The Internet
A lot of websites out there are about as secure as leaving your front door wide open with a sign saying, "valuables inside, please come and steal them".
A website gets attacked every 39 seconds. Now that's a statistic and a half. Most websites are built with databases, plugins, and layers upon layers of code that create more holes than Swiss cheese.
Every plugin is a potential entry point, every database connection is a vulnerability, and every "easy update" could be the one that breaks everything. Most of these hacks aren't even done by people; bots are constantly on the go, finding websites using common plugins and technologies that can be exploited. For most small businesses, they don't even need a website with a backend. All they need is text and images on a screen, arranged well with good colours and design. All of which is possible with a static website.
A static website is impenetrable. They don't have databases to hack, no plugins to exploit, and no insecure admin panels for criminals to break into. Less stress thinking about your website means more time doing the things you're good at.
Website Accessibility
16 million people in the UK are disabled. That's around 23%, and disabilities can often lead to difficulty accessing websites and other digital media. With only 5.2% of the internet currently accessible to those with disabilities, we are helping small businesses stay on the right side of the law.
Yes, a Lack of Website Accessibility Can Get You In Trouble
If your website is not accessible, you could be breaking the law. Many countries and are taking accessibility more and more seriously, for example:
- United Kingdom: The Equality Act of 2010 encourages businesses to make websites and mobile apps "perceivable, operable, understandable and robust", with a special emphasis on public sector bodies.
- United States: The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has led to thousands of lawsuits, and even more. An inaccessible website has cost American businesses thousands in legal fees, much more than the cost of an accessible website.
- European Union: Any business serving the EU must follow the European Accessibility Act. This means that if you want to sell or promote services in the EU, you need to be accessible to WCAG 2.1 standards.
- Australia: Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, public-facing websites must be accessible.
- Argentina: Law 26,653 requires both public and private websites to be accessible. Pretty simple, no beating around the bush.
What Do You Need to Do to Make Your Website Accessible
- Add alternative text to images so that screen readers can dictate what is being shown to someone who are blind or partially sighted.
- Add ARIA labels to links and buttons that don't have text (a cart icon is meaningless to a screen reader).
- Ensure your website's colours do not clash for those with colour blindness (think green on blue, that won't work)
- Use the correct heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) so that screen readers can understand your website's hierarchy and sections
- Use a logical tab order which follows your menu items so that the website can be navigated using only the TAB and ENTER key.
- Add breadcrumbs that represent the users journey.
- Ensure any text with alterations for emphasis (bold to stand out, or colour for warning) have adjustments to consider those who are blind or partially sighted