#256 – Alex Price – WordPress

WordPress With Alex Price WordPress Agency founder, Alex Price joins us on The Next 100 Days Podcast to discuss his leading enterprise. He also takes a look at Finely Fettled's WordPress website which was made by host, Graham Arrowsmith When Did You Start The Business? Alex began freelancing since he was 16 years old which was very simple and basic. Jumping forward, his WordPress agency got registered as a limited company around 6 years ago. From there, he hired his first full-time employee in 2015. Its been a very rewarding journey for Alex overall, working with a range of different clients. Lots of ups and downs but fortunately more ups overall. The Agency now has 25 employees with a range of skill sets. Alex describes his agency as an enterprise delivery of WordPress. Delivering WordPress into places where somebody's company is under scrutiny, security, speed, SEO, or sometimes all of them. http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/where-it-started.mp4 These days, 93 Digital works with a lot of technology clients who are big fast-growing software businesses. They also do a lot of work with charities and publishers. They are the main three sectors 93 work with. Reviewing Finely Fettled (https://finelyfettled.co.uk) Alex begins by saying there's a lot of nice things on Graham's website and has a few tips that the listeners can also reflect on. The one thing that struck him when looking around was that it's personal in a really positive way. Graham uses pictures of himself and audio clips on the homepage. The majority of the text is written in first person which immediately gives people a feel for Graham on a personal level. As a query, Alex suggests a welcome video on the homepage would make things more welcoming, especially with COVID this year, it's nice to get a human side across to prospects. http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/homepage.mp4   Branding Branding wise, Alex thought Graham's use of imagery really jumped out to him. On the Finely Fettled homepage, Graham has a big splashback which he recently created by using a variety of smaller images of wealthy affluent related things. WordPress expert, Alex, thinks it quickly reflects the tag line of "Marketing to the Affluent" and it starts to give people a feel of what the business is about. This use of banding across the site stays consistent which is key. http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/images.mp4   Something to think about for Graham is to keep the consistency and look at using higher resolution pictures as Price noticed some could be better. Compressing Images Like Graham states, many of us will be thinking the same thing when creating our own websites. We are aware of the general guidance of keeping the file size down to a level that doesn't slow down the load speed of the page. This is something Graham struggles with a lot. Finding a way to use high resolution pictures without affecting the website's load speed.  Alex says that there are certain file formats that can press better than others like using a GIF or PNG. When you compress these formats, it doesn't affect the visuality of the picture, unlike a JPEG where the quality drops. http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/image-optimizing.mp4 Anything above 85 Google recommends, but the file size does grow significantly. Alex says it's all about finding the in-between. Where the quality is good enough but also makes the site load fast enough. It's definitely a complex area but you can get plugins on WordPress that can optimize images too. As The London WordPress Agency, 93digital craft digital platforms that empower marketing & content teams to achieve success using the most popular CMS in the world: WordPress. If you would like to get in touch with Alex or take a look at his website, click here. Want to take a look at Graham's website that Alex discusses in this week's podcast?