Introduction
Are you planning on building a website for your business? There are a few things you should consider before designing a website.
A website is a great tool to help expand your business and get more customers. It enables you to show what products or services your business offers. You can also decide how you want to portray your business in a way that builds credibility online with your customers.
Below we have listed five important things to know before designing a website.
1. Figure out the purpose of your website
This is the first and most important thing on this list. You can’t start building a site or having someone build your site if you don’t know your website’s purpose. It’s like having a map with no destination. You need to figure out the purpose of your website so that you can determine how to get there.
Before we get started, ask yourself these questions:
- What types of products or services will you sell on your website?
- What is your business’s mission statement?
- What are the core values of your business?
- What makes you better than the competition?
- What are your goals for the website?
The more clarity you have on your website goals for your business, the easier it will be to design.
2. Define your target market
Figuring out your target market is essential to the success of your site online. It’s hard to build a site when you don’t know who will be going on it and what information, product, or service they want to find. Knowing who your target customers are will make it a lot easier to create content and develop the layout of your site.
Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer. Maybe even create a journey map. What is your customer’s journey from deciding to look for a service or product to purchasing it? Why would they want to come to your site over the competitions?
3. Establish your brand
Your website represents the identity of your business. So it is essential to figure out your branding thoroughly before designing a website. Your branding can attract people to your site or can scare them away.
Here’s a list of what branding entails:
- Logo
- Color Palette
- Imagery
- Design Style
- Font
- Brand Positioning
- Mission Statement of Your Business
The design of your logo plays a huge part in the identity of your business. It will be something that your customers will recognize as your brand. So make sure that the design is memorable and well thought out.
When visitors come to your site, they should be able to quickly understand what your website is about and if it is helpful to them. And on every page they go on, your brand should be consistently present. This is a part of building trust with customers. Consistency builds trust, while inconsistency breeds distrust.
4. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Before designing a website, you should know that SEO is an essential part of building your business’s success online. Simply building a website and putting it online will not get people to come to you. You will need to do SEO if you ever want your website to rank.
Making sure your site is optimized means compressing images, adding focus keywords, making your site speed fast, using the correct heading tags (H1, H2, H3), good UI/UX design, and more.
The key to successful SEO is to make a plan, stick to it, measure it, and then change your tactic if needed. There are a lot of different techniques you can use to get your site ranking higher on Google. See what works for your business and use that.
5. Make a blog with consistent posts
For the most part, blogs are now for educating visitors who come to your website. Consistent, well-written blog articles can help you rank higher on Google and get more people to visit your site.
It’s important to write engaging and informative blog posts consistently (2-3 times a month) that also follow SEO guidelines. This will help get your blog post past the huge amount of other posts on Google. In addition, having a blog will allow you to become a credible and trustworthy source of information for potential customers.
6. Costs to start and run a website
A common question asked before designing a website is how much does it cost to build and run? Honestly, it entirely depends on what you want for the website and who does the design and development.
You can build it yourself and just pay for yearly hosting, domain name, and any other premium plugins or features you need. Yearly hosting and domain are around $150 and up, plus the amount of time you need to learn how to make the website with design and development.
Even using a theme, if you want to customize it or add features, it will take a bit of learning, so if you have the time, then it works great. Or you can hire someone, whether that be a web design agency or a freelancer on Fiverr or Upwork.
Hiring a web design agency means paying more, but what you put in is what you get out of it. So if you pay more to hire an agency that knows how to create a strategy, develop a Search Engine Optimized site, and produce results that increase sales, it’s usually worth it. Another benefit is that you are getting what you pay for. A premium price comes with premium service. Whereas with Upwork, Fiverr, or any freelancer, you may spend less money but get something that will not bring in customers or rank in Google.
Conclusion
Building a website comes with many different tasks and challenges, but once you get it up and running, the results can be incredible. Hopefully, this list has given you a few things to think about before designing a website for your business.
If you have questions about designing a website or want to hire a web design agency, please feel free to reach out to us. We would love to talk with you and answer all your questions.
