In the world of technology, with competition all around, everyone wants to make money with proper guidance in business. For example, generating more business, turning leads into conversions, investing in technology to gain more exposure.

Word of mouth is the best way of marketing and building your business and the definition of word of mouth with an introduction of an interactive website, social media & more… Today’s customers recommend a product, service or a business to their friends & family via social media, email, pictures, videos, etc. It is extremely crucial to have a presence on the web now than ever because if you don’t, you are not visible. Your website is your brand, your image! A good website leaves a lasting impression on the customer but at the same time, a bad one is the last time you will see that customer. So, the million dollar question is, “how much loss would my business bear with a badly designed website?”

THINKING OVER IT?

Well, remember your website should be able to grab viewers, engage them, generate traffic, generate business, create brand awareness and ultimately help in bringing in the dollars. 

We have made a list of top 14 things to consider while designing a site:

DOMAIN

Select a name that people would remember and more importantly, whether you would use .com, .net or a local domain like .ky for the Cayman Islands or .ca for Canada. Remember while selecting a name, Search Engines love to have keywords in the domain name hence, think wisely.

HOSTING

While getting your website hosted, make sure you choose a reliable, secured & trusted one and check for how much room/space you would need. Hosting in unsecured places may result in data loss, hacking, downtime & more… Search Engines love the hosting to be fast, secure and reputable. Decide whether you need standard or dedicated or VPS hosting based on the amount of traffic you expect.

TECHNOLOGY

You need to know and understand what technology is used to create your website. Your site speed, responsiveness and effectiveness will be dependent on the fact that modern technology is leveraged to get the best results for you. Make sure you are up-to-date with the technology being used while developing the website. For example: HTML5, CSS3, PHP, JQuery, JavaScript, etc.

PURPOSE

Be clear on what your vision & purpose is on building the site. Do you want to sell products or just display information on your services? Once you have clarity on the purpose you can lock-down on your requirements.

BRANDING

Any marketing you do should follow your branding and hence, the website is no different. Make sure you have consistent fonts, colors & images used.

TARGET MARKET

Considering what your business type is, you need to know who you audiences are, accordingly you could build up your content, site pages, layout, etc. to attract them.

PLATFORM

It is crucial to understand what platforms are used by your viewers or prospects and how you want to reach to them, for e.g. do you need a full mobile site and a mobile app or do you just need a responsive website that works well on all devices?

INDUSTRY & COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

Analyze what your industry is doing and how your competitors are using the web technology.  This will help you set a benchmark and in locking down your requirements.

SITEMAP

Getting clarity on the list of pages or page names is what will help you create a great layout, scalable content strategy & effective marketing strategy. Remember when you write content, think about what your customers want, what they are searching for and based on that formulate your page list. A sitemap is a clear idea which represents the structure and navigation of the HTML pages in the website. As in, organize the order of the pages which would lead the browser to the particular landing page.

WEBSITE CONTENT

For your visitors to last long on your website, it needs to be engaging & strong and be  informative with appropriate content. The type of content like the language, pictures, videos, placing, etc. have great influence on how fast or slow the website will load. Remember, the web is the WEB of searchable data. Any content you place will directly or indirectly help you. The key in writing content is being Unique as duplicating won’t do good. Insert keywords as search engines will show this to customers who are searching & to be less descriptive & more animated. Feel free to include charts, images, diagrams to the content as users nowadays are highly visual.

DESIGN

Looks matter. Hence, a good website should be simple, yet professional. Make sure you are responsive and leverage technologies like Parallax Designs, Creative Scrollers & more… These days LESS=MORE, minimalistic and flat designs are in.

CONVERSIONS

The goal of any piece of marketing you do is to generate more leads & business and this will only be possible by providing conversion buttons like Learn More, Call Us, Request-a-Quote, etc.

IMAGES

Like it’s said “ the first impression is the last impression” choose images carefully as it would create a great impact for anyone visiting your website and so, you want it to be good and memorable. Make sure your images are tagged properly as search engines cannot read images but, can read image tags.

EASY TO NAVIGATE

Make sure the website when being created is easy-to-navigate for anyone browsing and they could easily find what they are looking for.

CHOOSE THE RIGHT PARTNER

It is crucial to choose the correct partner to develop your website. If you have a developer in-house, it’s  good to use them but if not, please do not use your friends or family as that won’t help. Hire a professional designer/developer as it’s worth it.

GOOD & EFFECTIVE WEBSITES AREN’T  CHEAP. BUT WHEN THEY ARE WELL DONE ESPECIALLY  CUSTOM-MADE, THE BENEFIT TO YOUR BUSINESS IS SIGNIFICANT AND PERCEPTIBLE