If you’re in the process of setting up a website for your own business, there are a few crucial things to consider. Getting people to visit and revisit your site isn’t rocket science, but it’s not easy either. We’ve put together a short guide to help you make your business website a resounding success.
1. Choose the best domain name
When you Google a company, the first thing you look for is their domain name. Your domain name should be as short as possible and simple enough to make it memorable to consumers.
2. Clarify your objectives for your website before you develop it
The ultimate purpose of your website is obvious. Establish your brand, attract customers, and boost profits.
The type of company you own should also get taken into account. Do you want to sell products or services online, or do you want to develop an online presence that drives consumers to your brick-and-mortar business?
When you decide on your objectives, you can start tailoring your site so it’ll help you to achieve your goals.
3. Identify customer needs – and meet them
Every prosperous business owes its success to being able to meet its customers’ needs.
It’s simple. If consumers don’t find what they want and/or need, they’re going to leave. This is tied to the above point. Your goals and objectives must take customers’ needs into account. It’s all very well to design a website with beautiful graphics, but unless it gives customers what they want, the aesthetic appeal will go to waste.
Meeting your customers’ needs includes having a good user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design. User-friendly interfaces, easily visible contact information, and ease of access are three crucial elements when it comes to pleasing customers.
4. Keep your branding strong and consistent throughout your website
Brand recognition, brand awareness and brand loyalty are the Holy Grail of the business world.
Just like a physical store, a website should be developed and curated in a way that shows off your brand and makes it more memorable. Your online presence should align with your offline one.
When you put your website together, it should use colours, patterns, and typography that match your existing brand’s appearance.
5. Find the right hosting provider
Even the best-designed website has technical glitches from time to time, no matter which host you use. When these become frequent, however, frustrated customers might just leave your brand, never to return. If you have recurrent website problems, your business will acquire a reputation of being unreliable and hard to reach.
Your host is responsible for preventing those breakdowns, which are a lot more damaging than you might think. There are a few possible solutions. Make sure that your IP address and server location are as close as possible, which decreases the chance of slow loading of content. Another option is using a dedicated SEO hosting company.
There are great online tools like GTmetrix that you can use to check the speed of your site and make sure it’s accessible.
6. Use SEO smartly
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is part and parcel of doing business online these days. While having a relevant domain name is important, SEO is a hugely powerful tool to drive traffic to your business website. You should address this during your site’s initial construction, alongside the element of user experience (UX).
Good SEO isn’t simply using the same few keywords as often as possible in your site’s content, which is why it’s a good idea to employ an SEO specialist.
The overall appearance of your site also plays a part in this, as people browsing prefer to read short snippets rather than walls of text. A copywriter who is an expert in SEO can produce website content that uses keywords cleverly and strategically.
7. Make your content count
The quality of content on your business website plays a big role in attracting and keeping the attention of customers.
Creating relevant and engaging content goes hand in hand with SEO. It’s not only what you write, however, but how much. People online seem to be more distractible than ever. On every social media platform, the focus has shifted to short “bytes” of information that take seconds, not minutes, to read.
8. Know your concepts: traffic, conversion, CTA, bounce rate…
Most businesses will employ a web designer to build their websites but that’s no excuse to remain ignorant. It’s important to have a basic grasp on the concepts of traffic and conversion especially.
Using SEO and spending money on digital marketing can attract more people to your site (increasing the traffic), but your ultimate goal is to get them engaged. You need to “convert” them from passive viewers into active customers.
Your conversion rate is the percentage of browsers who end up buying goods or services from your business. Understanding these concepts can help you pinpoint what’s working on your site, and what isn’t.
9. Maintain and update your website regularly
It’s all very well designing a stellar website, but unless you pay it regular attention it’s going to become stale very quickly. People who visit business websites don’t only want quality content and service, but up-to-date information about new products or services and fresh, relevant articles.
Another crucial part of maintaining your business website is protecting it from hackers, avoiding broken links and ensuring that it continues to be accessible on all browsers and devices. A web developer should ideally perform this maintenance.
10. Make your business website mobile-friendly
Although statistics show that more people buy products and services on mobile or tablet devices rather than desktops or PCs, it should be a priority to make your business website mobile-friendly. Research has also shown that American adults spend an average of more than 5 hours on their mobile phones every day and a mobile optimised site also boosts your SEO efforts.
The Takeaway
The future of business is online, which is why having a great website is so important.
Creating and maintaining a site can seem daunting, but it is certainly achievable. Keep these ten points in mind as you go, and don’t hesitate to get professional feedback.