Having a business in today’s society without having a coexisting website for online customers to use essentially kicks you right to the back of the profit queue. In the modern day, such an excess of commerce is being done on the internet, and you will be missing out on this completely by not crafting a site of your own. You can open your trade or service to an international market rather than keeping it in one set state or location, so what are you waiting for? Follow these steps to discover how simple it can be to craft a website that wins in no time at all.
A Catchy URL
The very first thing you must consider when building your site is its domain name, or ‘URL’. This stands for Uniform Resource Locator, and defines the words which appear in the users search bar as they browse your website. As there are just so many business pages and blogs online, it’s likely that your initial idea will be already in use, so jot down a few before checking their availability. If you cannot get your business name, it should be a phrase or word which is related to the product or service you provide, potentially using wordplay or alliteration to make it catchy. You need visitors to easily remember your URL, so that in the future they can easily visit again without spending hours scrolling through the thousands of other pages online.
Stick To One Theme
Using one colour scheme and font throughout your website in one of the most important things to consider in terms of aesthetic quality. A page full of random luminous tones and odd text will put even the most reasonable of customers off, as this will not only look bad, but reduce the amount of trust the user has in the authenticity of your site. Start off with one block colour, perhaps a calming blue or a balancing green, and highlight different aspects of each page using the same colour, but in a different shade. Decide upon one clear text that can be read easily, and change only the size or boldness when showing a title or heading. Try to use black or dark coloured text on a much lighter background to make your website accessible for those will sight or reading difficulties such as dyslexia.
Graphics, Images & Videos
If you choose to add any graphics, images or videos onto your website, then be mindful – this will increase its loading time dramatically the more you include. Compressing these files down to their smallest size will help you to avoid this issue, but this of course will have an effect on its overall quality, especially on larger screen sizes. It’s best to keep any gifs or moving graphics to a minimum, as not only do they take up much more space and memory, they will distract your potential customers from what’s really important. Using images to showcase your products or services is completely fine, but try to craft a slideshow option rather than placing them side by side. In terms of accessibility, add alt text to any visual additions – this acts to describe what is going on in each image, as visually impaired users will be able to hover over and listen to the explanation.
Easy Navigation
Your website should have more than one page, as there are likely to be several different features that require their own space. Start off with an initial home page that contains a list of every other page, and work from there: do you need a products page? Previous reviews? Legal terms and conditions? Business contact details? Trying to contain all of this information in the same location will not only look terrible, but also confuse your visitors too. Create a navigation bar which holds the same space on every single page, that contains a route to each different place, as well as back to the home page. Do not use titles that are unrelated to the contents of each page, as this will only make matters worse – just think in simple terms and don’t forget to use contrasting background and text tones.
A Safe Payment Service
If your website contains options for visitors to purchase products or services, you must invest in the highest security payment service. When users trust you with their personal data and money, you take on a huge responsibility to keep it as safe as possible. It’s all too common for rookie website owners to skip this step, and end up in a terrible situation in which hackers or viruses gain unauthorised access to data stores, and steal or compromise sensitive information or money. This can be absolutely debilitating, and leave your business with no option to shut its doors, as well as a potential fine or sentence for not taking appropriate security steps. Luckily, there are several different services that can be outsourced which are well known throughout the online world for being extremely secure and trustworthy, and these big names are recognised by visiting customers meaning they immediately gain a percentage of trust for your website.
Interesting Content
Whether you create a website that posts exclusive blogger content or a business that publishes regular product descriptions and news updates, any text must be interesting and well written. If a user visits your website only to find a whole host of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and badly flowing sentences, they will immediately click the back button and lose all trust and respect for your business. If you don’t think that you have the right skills to write high quality thought provoking and gripping content, there are many specialised people and organisations out there that exist to do this all for you. Don’t sit typing and retyping for hours on end, just do some research into the best content writers available to you and decide upon one which meets your standards to fill your site with great content.
Attracting Customers
Following all of these steps will help you to create the best website possible, yet if you do not take steps to ensure that you can get a large amount of traffic and exposure, you simply will not get any visitors whatsoever. The internet works in a fairly simple way, and luckily it’s quite simple to figure out certain concepts that can help in getting you to the top of every customers search engine before you know it. SEO services exist to help you attract as many customers impossible, and come in many different forms. First of all, begin by identifying the keywords which users search on the internet in order to find a website such as your own, and then include these in several different locations throughout your content on each page. As well as this, you can include links within your text which transports the user from one page to another, or even pay another relevant website to link your business into their content to spread your reach. You can also update your current location to appear on ‘near me’ searches in your local area, but of course some of these services come at quite a high cost.
Mobile Use
There’s bound to be a massive amount of users that visit your site whilst on the go using their mobile device, typically either a smartphone or tablet, and you must accommodate for this. Its naive to believe that the plan and design you have crafted on your laptop or computer will translate perfectly onto a much smaller and different shaped screen without any kind of interference on your behalf, and failing to optimise your site for mobile use will ensure you lose several potential customers every day. It doesn’t take too much effort to change the dimensions to suit a different screen size, and you can even leave this choice up to the user and add an option somewhere on your website which can switch the page from one layout to another.
Advertising
The advertisement aspect of your website is left completely up to you, and depends on the real purpose and goals you have in mind. Including sponsored adverts in any unused white space on your site will help you to generate income even without paying customers, as you essentially ‘rent’ the location out to the highest bidder. You can also add links to other sites within your content too, but of course both of these things can be somewhat irritating for customers and take away their attention from their original reason for visiting.
Creating a winning website has never seemed more achievable when you follow these easy steps with gusto. Start with a catchy URL and stay within one simple theme, keeping large images and videos to a minimum. Focus on quality content and add a simple navigation bar to help users jump from one page to the next. Use a secure payment service to increase customer trust, and don’t forget to invest some time into developing more traffic.
