Having a beautiful, well-functioning website is the golden standard for every business.
Here are the top ten things to consider before you start up your website:
1. Have a clear purpose
When you look at a website, the first two most important things are to know what the website is for and what the visitor is meant to do within the website. When arriving on a landing page, there should be no confusion for your visitors, but a clear image of your business in website form and the functionality to make sure that those visitors are able to navigate through it with ease.
2. Create a simple website address
It is vital that people can find your website easily and with as few clicks as possible. Your website address should involve your business name so that even if your customers don’t know the address exactly they can Google search it and it pops up immediately. Always remember – Keep it simple!
3. Make your website a strong reflection of your brand
Anything belonging to your business should be evident from a mile away! What we mean by this is that your brand image should envelop everything you do for your business so your customers recognise anything from your business cards to your website straight away. Your brand includes all visuals that reflect your business’ professionalism in an aesthetic way, from your logo to your colours, fonts and imagery/graphics. Your whole website should reflect your brand and that branding should be consistent for every single page and element.
4. Create simple and effective navigation
Website menus come in all different shapes and sizes, from drop-down, scroll-triggered, hamburger and the list goes on. In the end, the most important part of your website’s menu is to effortlessly take your visitor through your site in a simple and intuitive way, from design to the way your menu items are ordered.
5. Ensure you’re easy to contact
It is very important to ensure that people can find a way to contact you easily via your website. Any point of contact is a potential sale, which is the essential part of your business. Make sure the “contact us” page or email icon is well in view on every page of your website and that you have offered many forms for them to reach you; eg, email, phone, mobile, website form.
6. Include effective and well-placed calls to action
In a similar way to the first point, creating a call to action should tell your visitor what to do and, if possible, what they’ll get out of doing it. For example, a mechanic might have a call to action like “Have the best mechanics on the Gold Coast service your car by scheduling an appointment with us today.” – This example shows people exactly what to do through the site and what they will get out of it. By clicking here they are going to have a reputable and highly-regarded mechanic service their car.
Placing calls to action throughout your website and its content in a strategic way is a brilliant and effective way to increase conversions without being too intrusive to the site design itself. It is all about balance as you don’t want to overwhelm your visitor with anything too flashy or overbearing.
7. Always remember the mobile experience
Approximately half of all web traffic is mobile traffic. While your site might look good on a desktop computer, if it looks unappealing on a mobile device then that is what 50% of your audience will see. Don’t neglect your mobile website version as it is very easy to lose potential customers if your site lacks a good user experience. When your designer creates you website, make sure that it is a responsive website, which means it will look good and perform well on any device, from computer, laptop, tablet or mobile phone.
8. Provide fascinating content
People respond most positively when they are given something useful, so make sure your website does exactly that! It is through content that your website will gain traffic, whether via search engines, social media or advertising.
Providing valuable information that will stay with your visitors even when they have left your website is the best form of content! As another point, don’t just post content for the sake of posting content and don’t post once and let it stagnate. Keep your content up-to-date and relevant to your audience. It should be informative and optimized for search engines to find.
Think carefully about what your ideal customer would want to know about your business and create pages and blog posts around those topics. This way you can keep within the realm of what your business offers people at the same time as creating good SEO content. On the topic of SEO, it is rarely easy and often requires a lot of expertise to understand, which is why many businesses hire a Digital Marketing Manager.
9. Show off those raving reviews
Reviews are more important now than ever! Reviews can make or break whether someone buys your product/service. Every contact with your customers should be the best it can be so their experience is positive enough for them to want to rave about you. Now, once you have collected these reviews, you can then use your website to show them off (in a modest way, of course! 😉 ).
10. Utilise Google Analytics
You can have a well-functioning website without Google Analytics, however we do not recommend it. The beauty behind Google Analytics and their huge reputation is that they give you an unbelievable amount of information about the traffic visiting your website.
Google Analytics includes information from the traffic source to the operating system most used by your visitors and so much more. This way you can learn things like what marketing is working for your business website and how to tailor it to the people visiting it.
Some parts of Google Analytics are very simple, like the setup. However other aspects can be a bit trickier to manage. The data can be overwhelming, but once you have found your way around it (or hired someone to do it for you) you’ll wonder what you ever did without it. And the best part is that Google Analytics is completely free!
We hope these 10 steps have given you everything you need to think about when starting up and building your future website!
