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So you’re considering setting up a website, but you are stuck on how to go about the process. Starting your personal or brands’ website is never an easy task. There are many factors you need to consider to start a site that goes on to make a meaningful impact. You’ll have to strategize on the website’s designing, development costs, its content, among other factors for great results.
First, let’s briefly explore the value of professional websites for your brands.
- It helps to attract new business leads while retaining existing customers
- It adds your brand’s credibility
- It facilitates easier access to your potential customers
- It’s a quick and affordable marketing avenue
- It helps you to leverage new global opportunities
- It helps you to collect and analyze valuable customer data
- It acts as a 24/7 self-service customer support center
Now, here are the prime considerations to ensure you start a promising website.
1. Defining Purpose
Take your time to create an effective strategy for the planned website. You should start by asking yourself, ‘what is the main purpose or goal of this website?’ Once you’ve identified your site’s purpose, your halfway home. Always ensure you have a clearly laid out roadmap of what you want the new website to showcase to the world. Step back and reflect on your brand’s vision and core values. That allows you to work out a clear message to your future web visitors.
2. Targeting Audiences
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After laying out a concrete foundation, consider the exact needs and wants of your target audiences. Envision yourself as a visitor who’s just landed on your website. Remember those first impressions are of utmost importance to your web visitors. Ideally, you want to have a professional site that both intrigues and informs your target audiences from the word go. Strive for a webpage that provides unique solutions to the intended target audiences for assured success.
3. Create Sitemaps
Think about how you’ll map out your upcoming site. This stage calls on you to ponder on the best pages to include on your website. You can use software to sketch out the different categories and sections on your planned site. A properly planned sitemap serves to enhance the overall user experiences for your visitors.
4. Engaging Content
Optimal content blends in a mixture of engaging text content, videos, and quality images. Top-notch content compels your visitors to spend more time at your site. The more time spent on your pages, the better your chances of winning them over. Stellar SEO-friendly content gives your site a favorable ranking, and that means improved ROI for your business or brand.
Great content demonstrates that you’re an authority in the chosen niche as well. You can hire SEO professionals to guide you in making sure that your site’s content is SEO-friendly.
5. Site Navigation
Ensure your site’s pages communicate a clear objective. Create your site using simple and easy-to-navigate wireframes to avoid confusing the sites’ audiences. Simple pages tend to convert faster than complicated ones.
6. Stellar Design
Emphasize your website design to make a splashing digital impact. Go with a visually appealing yet simple design to draw in your web visitors. It’s imperative to have a consistent design throughout your websites to give them a professional appeal.
7. Functionality Matters
Your site’s functionality speaks volumes about your businesses’ credibility and overall professionalism. A functional site has a well-organized schema and it’s remarkably easy to navigate, too. Consult widely to figure out the best shopping carts, marketing systems, and email auto-responders to integrate with your upcoming site.
8. Test Your Websites
Before your site goes live, have it thoroughly tested. Testing allows you to anticipate your visitor’s challenges and come up with fine solutions. Apart from testing the site’s functionality, you should carefully go over the shared message to confirm that it resonates positively with your future visitors.
9. Use Google Analytics
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By this stage, your website is already live and running. Make use of Google analytics tools to learn your web visitor’s behaviors. Analytics allow you to access vital information like, the specific pages attracting the most traffic, and the page’s bounce rates. The analytics data guides you in tweaking these pages for improved conversions.
You can also find various software that you can use besides Google Analytics. You just have to learn about them and read reliable reviews from other website owners. Pick out the best analytics tool for your site and the one that you’ll be most comfortable using.
10. Perform Split Testing
Split testing involves you making minute, albeit profound changes to your live pages. Split tests like changing your pages URL’s, button colors, header navigations, video titles, and image tags can significantly improve your site’s overall engagement and performances.
11. Domain and Host Selection
Ideally, you’re interested in having a catchy and memorable domain name for your upcoming sites. Your website’s domain name should be relevant to your brand’s message for assured success. Always go with a simple domain name that aligns with your brand’s identity to capture more web visitors. Choose a dependable, trusted, and 100% secure hosting company to avoid frustrating and costly experiences later on.
12. Content Management System (CMS)
Choose a strong CMS to support your site’s backend activities. The site’s backend is the cornerstone of your entire operation. Integrate a robust CMS to your websites to allow for seamless website customization. Go with CMS’s like WordPress for your blogs and Magento for editing the backends of your eCommerce websites.
13. Page Load Times
Modern web users have become accustomed to frequenting sites that load in a matter of seconds. Therefore, if your pages take a fraction of a second longer to load than your main competitors’ sites, your visitors will disappear. Before launching, ensure you test and retest the page load times to avoid disenfranchising your audiences.
14. Compatible Sites
In today’s digital space, it’s imperative that you launch a site that’s fully compatible with all the popular Internet browsers. A professional website has to be 100% responsive to all viewers whether they’re on Google Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, or Firefox.
15. Mobile-Friendly Sites
It’s important you put up mobile-friendly sites as many web browsers currently use smart-phones. Smart brands tend to have a distinct mobile-friendly site to capitalize on this valuable traffic source.
16. Social Media Plugins
An ideal website needs to integrate popular social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and so forth. Every website has to have these social media connections to allow the audiences to share your content. Add social media buttons to keep your customers in the loop regarding your latest offerings.
17. Secure Your Sites
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Web visitors are very concerned about their online security, nowadays. Secure your sites by introducing security measures like captcha tests and SSL certificates. These security protocols not only protect your web audiences, but they also protect your valuable website investment from potential malware and hacking.
In Conclusion
Make use of these 17 guidelines when starting your brand’s websites for a splashing digital impact. Use these pointers to greatly enhance your visitors’ user experiences as you increase your brand recognition and ROIs.
