How to create a GREAT website
The difference between a not so great and a great website begins with the ‘pre-website’ stage.
Investing time into planning and developing a strategy for your website is one of the most effective ways to set you up for website success.
When you are forming your website strategy, there are two key stakeholders to consider:
1. You or your business
2. Your audience or target market
A great website caters to the needs of BOTH.
So how do we do that?
For you / your business
Be clear on your business objectives (e.g. increase revenue this year / expand services)
Know your website objectives (These often align with your business objectives but can also differ or be more specific - e.g. increase online sales, streamline processes to create more time to implement or support new services, market new services, increase email subscriptions to sell new services etc)
For your audience / target market
Identifying your audience (you may have more than one audience e.g. consumers who buy direct from your site and wholesalers / stockists)
Identify what each of your audiences are seeking and what they’re likely to want when visiting your site
Identify how they’re likely to engage with your website (typically each audience or demographic will behave differently and respond differently when browsing online. Try to get inside the mind of who you’re targeting and how you can meet their need)
Being armed with this information means you’re not just creating a website for the sake of it. You can see the real value and purpose of your website. And, when you use this info to inform how you create your website, it can truly become a valuable asset for you and your business.
So, once we have the information that forms our website strategy, how do we then create this valuable website that caters for your needs as well as your audience's?
Whilst there are many tricks of the trade that a web designer can help you with, here’s a few tips that you can do to get you started on creating a great website for your business:
1. Make sure your website is user friendly
Ensure your site is mobile compatible, has clear navigation (site menu), has no large images that take forever to load. Make sure all functionality works and that links aren’t broken.
2. Let the visitor know you’ve got what they need - quickly, clearly and easily
Make sure you use headings and sub headings to break up content to make it quick and easy for your site visitors to find the info they need. Don’t weigh down your site with lots of unnecessary content - people online are fickle and if you make it too hard for them they’ll click back to the search results. Take the time to ensure your content is written well with no typos, and that it’s accurate & up to date.
3. It needs to look professional
Again check for typos and make sure everything is formatting properly. Make sure you use good quality, professional looking images. I highly recommend doing a business photoshoot as images can really make all the difference.
4. Optimise for conversions
Clearly and strategically place call to actions based on your website / business conversions (e.g. call / enquire now button, buy now button, enquiry form, link to another part of the website etc) make it really easy for your site visitor to do what you want them to do.
5. Ensure you have effective ongoing management
Once you have a great website, it’s really important to maintain it so it stays great. Make sure info on the site remains accurate and up to date. If you’ve made a change to a service offering make sure your site reflects that. Have new business hours? update your site. Adding fresh content on your site also shows you’re not stagnant and adding content regularly can also help your website to rank organically in search engines too. Engaging a professional to manage your site, takes this task off your to do list and you have peace of mind that your site is in good hands.
6. Optimised for search
There is no point in having a great website if no one can find it. You need to get people to know you exist and be enticed to ‘walk in the door’. Below I’ve included some tips on optimising your website.
This all being said, it kinda goers without saying that you have to have the motivation, desire, time and tech smarts to implement all this. This is where I step in.
Many business owners simply don’t want to add website creator to their list of business owner hats. And whilst these tips are a good starting point, there’s alot more that goes into creating a well performing site.
If you’re keen to hand ball the website stuff so someone who actually likes to do this kinda thing and also has nearly 20 years of experience doing web things… well, you know what to do!
