Creating a business website can be a daunting task. The 10 steps outlined in this article cover the main points you should be thinking about when creating a website in order to really meet the needs of your business.
With these tips in mind, you should be able to create a good-looking website that not only meets the demands of your customers, but goes above and beyond their expectations.
1. Be clear about what the brand stands for
Many business owners often mistakenly think of design as the first challenge when creating a website. However, you first need to be clear about what your brand stands for. Only then you can you decide how best to communicate this.
2. Present relevant, engaging, and shareable content
Good content will help you in a multitude of ways – driving traffic to your site, improving your search ranking, improving PR. Yet many businesses often neglect the creation and maintenance of quality content for their websites.
3. Make sure the website works well on smartphones and tablets
A recent study conducted by Google found that 72% of mobile users state that it’s important to them that websites are mobile-friendly, yet 96% have visited a site that doesn’t work well on their device. That’s a lot of customers that you could be missing out on, so think mobile first and you won’t go far wrong.
4. Make sure you can be contacted easily
It’s absolutely imperative that essential information users need – phone number, map, directions – is easily accessible on the site, especially on a mobile site. This might sound really obvious, but a shocking number of business websites either lack important information or make it difficult to find.
5. Get a decent hosting provider
If your site goes down during a sale, or if your customers cannot order the product they want at the price they demand, it can have a huge impact on your bottom line. Consumers are not forgiving and one slip up is all that is required for a loss of business. A solid server is something that small businesses often consider as an afterthought, but it can be disastrous should the website fail to load at a business critical moment.
6. Keep things simple
It only takes a split second for a consumer to make up his or her mind about your business. One bad experience and a snap decision will be made: they don’t like your business and they won’t use it again. So you must be sure to keep the end user in mind at all times. Although exciting, dazzling websites may be what you think you want, simplicity will probably go further towards actually meeting your business needs.
Think about what will encourage the user to navigate around the site. That will almost always lead you to reduce clutter and simplify the site.
7. Protect your website
If your website is taking credit card details, processing payments or even holding onto customer data, security has to be a high priority. PCI DSS compliance is just one of the compulsory regulations you need to be able to prove adherence to – unless you fancy crippling fines. More generally, protect your website from hackers by ensuring that you have some form of firewall on your site and that it has a backup and disaster recovery plan.
8. Make payment easy
E-commerce is quickly becoming accepted as a standard form of commerce with online shopping no longer shunned as it once was. Sites like Amazon, with free delivery/returns and ‘one click’ payment methods, have brought e-commerce into the mainstream, but their efficiency and professionalism means customers now expect the same high standards on all e-commerce sites.
9. Generate leads and initiate a response from your audience
Too many websites give away interesting information and content for free, without even so much as requesting a user’s e-mail address. Small businesses especially need to do all they can to generate leads and initiate a response from their audience.
Using short forms (or one-question polls, to gather data from a user before giving them content) are a great way for businesses to build up a user (and potential customer) profile from the website.
10. See what is working
Once a business has launched its website, the work doesn’t stop. Ongoing analysis is critical for a business, as it allows you to see what is working to achieve the business goals.
Are the calls to action providing the data needed? Is the SEO driving the right users to the site? If not, analytics will give you the tools to change this and improve the performance of the website.
Edward Solomon has over 30 years’ experience in project management, technical education, computer networking, web design and development and is a Digital Business Consultant for PENNInk Productions Ltd.
