Building an effective website for your business will be one of the most important aspects of starting a business in today’s climate. More people than ever are online, and there are so many ways in which you can expose your business to the world. Today we will look at getting you ready to build an effective business website. As a web design company Melbourne, we have worked with hundreds of business websites. Here are 10 tips to help you get started as soon as possible.
1. Check out your competitors
First things first. Let’s get you a base template. Looking at how people have their websites set up is a great way to begin. Look at some competitor websites and see which ones stand out to you design wise. Having this design detail in mind provides you with a canvas to work on. You can implement all the pages you would like; you can see what the most important information is, and you can work on optimising your content once you have given the first draft a look over in its completion. Doing this with a web design company is super easy as it requires one to two meetings to get some information from you, and the rest is being implemented until the first draft is ready.
2. Have a goal in mind
Having a goal is going to be key to getting your website singing the right tune. Your goal will help inform what kind of content you focus on, on your homepage, and the links you will embed on your call-to-action buttons. Your goal is important to recognise if you wish to begin digital marketing and wish to use your website to get a greater return on investment.
3. Have optimisation in mind
Optimising your website is going to be one of the most important parts having your website. This is because things change in the online world. Google may adjust its algorithm to be friendlier to certain plugins or devices. For instance, there has been a rise in mobile users across the years, as a result, having a website optimised for mobile means that you will be rewarded by Google in terms of your rankings. If you are with a web design company, they make sure your user-interface is geared toward the most up-to-date information regarding algorithm changes and requirements.
4. Get a good domain name
Something to be on the hunt for is a good domain name. You will need one that is easy to spell, short as possible, and uses a .com/.com.au domain extension. Having these three elements makes it easy for people to not get confused when searching for you. It is important as well to avoid numbers or hyphens. Keeping your name broad is also going to assist in future proofing yourself. Research domain useability, has the name been taken? If so, what are your backups? The key overall is to make it catchy and broad reaching.
5. Have good tech support
For your hosting, and for your security, having a good website will be improved by having a website that is on a good hosting plan, and has a good hosting provider. For instance, Castle Jackson will take care of your hosting as part of your given plan, and on top of that provide the tech support to address any issues that come up.
6. Have a good CMS
A CMS or content management system is a program designed to create and manage digital content. A good CMS is relatively easy to use, and can maintain your site well. WordPress is the most popular CMS and is used very widely. It has great flexibility and ease-of-us. Not to mention, this CMS is very well known about and there are tonnes of tutorials online that can help you understand it better. The other benefit of WordPress is that it has a tonne of plugins available, either free or paid to meet any requirements you might need for your site.
7. Using a good e-commerce platform
If you are looking to sell your products on your new website, it is important to consider the types of e-commerce platforms you will be using. Shopify and WooCommerce are two of the most popular platforms and you or your website company shouldn’t have too much trouble with the setup of this. Using either of these is going to benefit you with turning a profit through your online store.
8. Get your SEO ready
SEO or search engine optimisation is something that will affect you without realising it is affecting you. SEO is basically about ensuring your website’s design and content are competitive enough to get you ranking highly on Google. SEO is an ongoing process and doesn’t happen overnight, so it is important to recognise that the practice of SEO is about getting you ranking better on Google against other sites with similar content. If done well, you will have large amounts of free/organic website traffic.
9. Prepare your blogging cap
So, to get you ranking well and to get you moving, one important aspect of having a website is about getting that website seen. Blogging is a great way to help that process occur. Blogging is a great way to use keywords that touch on your businesses’ speciality, it helps you show up under the search terms you want, and it also provides you with a bunch of resources you can give to friends and future customers when discussing a topic related to your business. These blog posts can be used to update people on the goings on, or can be fun anecdotes about your business, overall they help you produce more content than the blog themselves, like creating a podcast about an article, or an Instagram post about your article.
10. Make sure to maintain your site
Now that you have built a site, you’re posting content, and you have a good footing with everything, you need to make sure this site does not get left behind. Your site is there for as long as the internet will be and making sure that you maintain and back up your website is super important. Making sure you check Google Analytics data is going to be important to identifying how good your site is. Checking on your security to make sure you don’t get hacked is important and split-testing content is going to be great for identifying if another way of presenting your information gets you more conversions.
In conclusion, these 10 tips are in no way a step-by-step guide, but they are important aspects to consider when entering the website development world. You can get a great ROI and a great user-experience if you have goals and create with the user in mind. Take these principles into your web making process or into a meeting with a Web Design Company.