Building a website isn’t an easy task. You have so many things that you need to think about, and if you make a mistake then you may end up paying for it dearly. If you want to get around that, then here are a few tips that will help you to build your very first business site.
Write your own Content
Before you get started with your site, it’s important that you decide what you want to say. You wouldn’t start a business without having some kind of business plan, so you shouldn’t start a site without a plan either. You know the message of your brand more than anyone else, so don’t be afraid to jot down some ideas or even work with a website designer to find out the overall points that you want to make. When you do this, you can then convey the basic message of your site and you can also make it much easier to work with.
State your Purpose
It’s so important that you make sure the written content of your website isn’t too long or winded. Website visitors don’t want to spend tons of time reading through pages of content, just to find out basic information. For this reason, you need to make sure that the main points are easy to find and that your site is easy to navigate.
Tell Your Customers
Go through your site and read your content as if you were a potential visitor. A lot of businesses focus on telling their customers what they do in general, rather than focusing on what they can do for their customers. You need to be specific when creating your site’s content and you also need to tell your customers exactly what they want to hear within the first 5 minutes.
Call to Action
One way for you to make the goal of your site even clearer would be for you to put a call to action. This tells your customers exactly what you want them to do when they land on your site, and if your business does not have one then you are certainly missing out. Your call to action can be anything, whether it is signing up to a newsletter, buying a product or even contacting your team.
Hierarchy
Almost any business site will include a couple of different pages. You might choose to go with a super simple format, or you may choose to have a lot of different service pages. Either way, you need to work out your page hierarchy before you begin creating the structure of your site and you also need to make sure that each tab is easy to read. If you have a web of pages that are connected to each other then this is great for Google, but your customers may have a hard time finding the pages they need as a result. Hierarchy helps with this, and it also helps you to group your service pages too.
Inspiration
There is absolutely nothing wrong with checking out your competitor sites, so you can get some ideas for how you want your current site to look. This can also give you some ideas of what NOT to do as well, so consider doing this before you start on your build.
DIY
A lot of business owners are strapped for cash and this makes them want to go down the DIY
route when creating their business site. Sure, a lot of people have done this successfully and this is great, but it can be tricky. Your customers don’t really care about the hours you put into creating your site and they also don’t care about how much you have learnt along the way. They just want a great-looking, high-functioning site that is going to give them the experience you are looking for. If you don’t feel as though you can do this then it is always a good idea to hire a website designer. You never know, they may even be able to offer you hosting with free SSL too!
Your Domain
You should always purchase your domain name. Some providers will give you a free one if you create your site through their platform, but this will almost always come with some kind of extension. At the end of the day, your business should always be professional, easy to remember and unique to your brand. If your customers are always having to type in a huge URL that they can barely remember in order to access your site, then you can’t expect them to keep on coming back.
Host
There really are so many hosting options out there. WordPress is great because you can scale it and you can also customise it as well. That being said, it is important that you look into other hosting options so you can see if there is one that is more suited to your requirements. Bigger is not always better, and sometimes the needs of one site will be completely different from the needs of another.
Future Growth
If you plan on growing your business quickly then you need to think carefully before you choose the platform you want. Smaller platforms are great because they give you the chance to keep the cost down but at the end of the day they don’t come with many features. If you want to grow your site in the future then it is well worth taking this into consideration because you may get to the stage where you can’t expand without creating a completely new site.
Design
If you are going to hire someone to work on your very first business site, then you really do need to choose someone who fits the style of your business. One way for you to do this would be for you to look at the sites that you love. Then, find out who is responsible for creating that design. This is easy to do, and it is a great way for you to find someone who is able to meet your requirements.
Project Scale
When you look at website examples, you need to take into account the size and scale of your project. You also need to take into account the design elements that you have as well. You don’t want to choose a designer based on their work with large and corporate brands if you only want your site to be small and basic.
Pre-Made Themes
You might not have the resources needed to run a complete design team, and this is understandable. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have a great site though. There are so many pre-made themes out there for you to choose from and some of them can even be customised as well. This makes it easier than ever for you to get the end result you want without breaking the bank.
Free Themes
You should never really choose a free theme for your site. The main reason for this is because they don’t tend to be as secure and they are also commonly used too. This means that there could be hundreds of businesses who have the same theme as you, and if your customers recognise this then they won’t think of your business as highly.
Show your Face
It always helps to have a photo of the founder, or even of the team on your site. You may want
to make your business look big and this is understandable, but it might not always benefit your site. Sometimes customers want to know if there is a real person behind the screen and they also want to know who they are going to be working with as well. So smile, take a good photo and make sure that your team are happy with the result.
Personal Stories
Another way for you to help your visitors feel more connected to your site is to tell them a story. It’s nice to include a story about yourself, or even why you decided to create the site in the first place. If you started the site because you wanted to help people, or because there was something that you wanted to change about the industry, then it is more than possible for you to do this with the work that you do. For this reason, you should never be afraid to let other people know about your ambitions.
Stock Photography
If you have an overwhelming amount of stock photography on your site, then this won’t be doing you any favours. You need to make a small investment with some very good images. This will help you to stand out and it will also help you to appear more professional. It also stops the same images from being seen a thousand times by your customers on the internet. It’s very cheap to buy photos in this day and age, so don’t be afraid to explore the options that are available to you and don’t be afraid to hunt around either.
