Your company’s website is one of its most important assets. Whether it is an eCommerce site, or purely informational, your website is often a client’s first impression of your business. Because of this, your site essentially operates as an online business card, informing consumers about you and your services. A website that is built properly will also help your rankings in the SERP. Therefore, it’s imperative that you know how to design and build a website that will help your business grow. Here are some tips to get you started!
Determine Your Purpose
Before the building process begins, you need to determine your purpose. What do you want your website to accomplish? Will you be selling products or services? Do you want to inform consumers about whatever topic your company deals with through blogs and videos? Do you want to interact with your customers through the website? Identifying your website’s purpose will help you determine how you should go about building your website.
Identify Popular Themes
You don’t want to appear dated. Websites that look old or outdated often give clients the wrong idea. Even a “retro arcade website” that’s meant to look vintage can still look trendy given the right features.
Take time to look at other websites and identify what sticks out to you. What colors look sharp? What layouts are easy to use? Drawing inspiration from top-performing websites that utilize trendier styles will help your own website look professional and well-kept.
Select A Platform
There are several different platforms that you can utilize to build and customize your website. However, there are a few factors you should consider when making a decision. Some options, like Godaddy, seem like a great idea as you get started, but are difficult to use as aspects of your website get more complex.
WordPress, on the other hand, can be trickier to use at first but offers extensive options with regular updates. Most professional digital marketing agencies tend to gravitate towards WordPress as an option.
If you’re planning on hiring someone to manage your business’s website down the road, you may have to migrate to WordPress from whatever option you started with. However, if you start with WordPress, then your digital marketer can likely join you in realizing your vision for your website without missing a beat.
Focus On Your Brand
Your brand is one of the most important parts of your business. Some of the most successful businesses can be identified by their brand logo or colors alone including Apple, Facebook, Android, Pepsi, etc.
Developing a strong brand will help you reach more customers and increase client retention. To help maximize brand awareness, make sure your brand is a central part of your website. Ways to accomplish this include using your company colors in your website build, including your company’s logo somewhere on the page, and using your slogan to help identify your values.
Create A Content Schedule
Google chooses websites to appear in the search results by analyzing the content on the website. It then categorizes the content and displays it during searches based on relevance. That’s why you don’t get results for vacuum cleaners when you search “sliced bread”, there’s no relevance.
To rank well, you need to produce content that relates to your services and products. For example, if your company sells pet products like dog shampoo, write a series of articles about pet grooming tips, or the best way to wash your dog. This will make your website more relevant and increase your chances of ranking for a wider variety of searches.
Publish And Maintain Your Site
Once your website has been designed and built, it’s time to publish it. When this time comes, it’s necessary to double-check factors that could hurt your domain authority or ability to rank. Internal issues such as broken links, slow loading times, etc. can greatly affect your website.
Once you optimize and publish your website, you’ll need to do routine maintenance. Make sure your keywords are still relevant after a while and that you’re still ranking for target phrases.
One of the best ways to maintain your website is to hire a digital marketing expert. Digital marketers are able to do everything from optimizing existing content to producing new content and strategies that will help expand your company’s online presence. Consider reaching out to a digital marketing agency today to find out what changes can be made to your website to help increase your relevance and online presence.
We Can Help!
Effect Web Agency partners with businesses to help them achieve the maximum results from their digital marketing efforts. Contact Effect for your free web consultation.
