Nothing is more important in marketing than a quality website, the “door opener” to your business.
Thousands of pre-built website templates make creating a website in a content management system (CMS), such as WordPress, easy – if all you want is a simple, off-the-shelf website that looks professional enough to get your business started online quickly and inexpensively.
But to stand out from your competitors, however, you need a website that’s as unique as you are.
Your website reflects your business, your products, your services, and ultimately your brand. Therefore, it is important that it is visually appealing, polished, and professional. Offer an uncluttered layout with high-quality photos and graphics, and present high-quality content.
It’s equally important that the website loads quickly for your potential customers. Speed on mobile devices is an important ranking factor in search engines.
ou should stick to web standards when creating it. The error-free content is very important – test regularly for problems with speed or functionality.
Every single page should always load quickly and be responsive from the layout, because every page could be the first or even the only impression of a potential customer. Defective, slow or poorly constructed areas are more likely to motivate your visitors to leave the website.
The website must be built in a user-friendly way – information you are looking for must be found quickly.A clear, logical navigation structure should be built. A search function (the classic magnifying glass) helps users get to their results faster.
Your website must look and function well on any device, desktop, tablet and smartphone. The growth of mobile and tablet devices is constantly increasing, and you don’t know which devices your next visitor will use. Different browsers should also be tested, especially the display on Apple devices is sometimes slightly different from PC and Android. Optimizing speed and other factors for mobile devices is also a crucial ranking factor with Google.
Be concise, interesting and new. Use language that makes sense to your audience – avoid jargon, corporate-speak and acronyms. Explain your “why.” Visitors have a short attention span: write correctly, be concise, relevant, and update regularly. (Some tips can be found here.) Blogs and social media updates are important additions to point out new content that will keep visitors coming back and support SEO strategy.
New information should be discussed and acted upon at least once a month. Information for blogs can also be pre-produced for a few weeks.
Make it easy for your website users to get in touch with you, and offer multiple ways to contact you: Phone, email, social media and specially designed contact form, which is easy to use though.
A Google Maps link is an additional option to find your business.
All of this information should be highly visible, preferably permanently in a fixed location on the website, and always quickly accessible.
You want your website users to contact you. Just like here on our site, you should use the so-called “Call to Action Buttons” to motivate visitors to contact you.
This can also be associated with downloading information pages for customers, etc., or signing up for a newsletter.
If you want to know more about the layout, navigation, content of a website and much more, please arrange a – free of charge – online presentation.
