5 Tips to Create a Website For Your Business
Creating a website for your business has many benefits including being able to promote what you offer and attract new customers 24/7. While it is now much easier to build a website without having coding skills, it is not always easy to know where to begin. Here are some key things to consider to help you get started.
1. Develop a clear website structure
Whether you are creating a website from scratch or developing an existing business website it is important to have a clear website structure.
The main navigation structure should be easy for visitors to use and find the information they want. If a potential customer visited your website and it is not easy to navigate and find what they want, then they are not going to hang around for long.
By writing a marketing strategy that identifies the needs and wants of your target audience you will be able to use it to develop your website around the requirements of your customers.
Sketching out your website structure listing all the pages will give you an idea of how easy your site will be to navigate. You can then decide on the main top-level navigation and identify the internal pages and where they fit within the structure.
This exercise is also useful to help start thinking about the content you will need to develop and identify any pages that are not actually relevant.
2. Create content relevant to your customers
By understanding your customers’ needs and wants you can develop website content that is relevant.
This is important because essentially search engines like Google work by attempting to provide people with links to content that are relevant to what they have searched for.
So, it makes sense to write your website content in relation to what you know customers want and are searching for. This has always been the cornerstone of effective marketing, providing a solution to your customers’ needs.
That said, there are several other Search Engine Optimisation techniques that can be used to help your website get found, however, it is essential to start by providing good quality, relevant content that meets your customers needs.
3. Website builder or website designer?
Gone are the days that you need to have coding skills to build a website. There are now a wide range of website builder platforms that make it easy to build a website using ready-made templates.
Depending on the complexity of your website and the time you have available, creating your own website is more than achievable.
Open-source platforms such as WordPress are another good option to build a great looking website. WordPress is generally a little more complex than using a website builder platform such as Wix or Squarespace where much of the complex work is taken care of.
Using a website designer has the benefit of having a site tailored to your requirements. A website designer can advise and help you along the way with recommendations to get the best from your website. This service obviously comes at a cost but has the benefit of saving you time.
To decide on the platform to use to build a website think about what you want your website to do now and in the future. Then identify what you can and cannot achieve using a website builder platform and WordPress. Which one offers the flexibility you require?
Ultimately, the decision of whether you want to build a website yourself or engage a website designer will come down to your budget and the time you have available.
4. Consider how mobile friendly your website is
One thing that will greatly enhance the usability of your website is how responsive and mobile friendly it is.
With advances in technology to satisfy the desire for our ever-increasing need to be mobile more and more users search the web using smartphones.
It is therefore important that your website is mobile friendly and allows users to navigate easily on whatever device they use.
In addition, Google has started to penalise websites that are not optimized for mobile devices.
So, if you want to improve your chances of being ranked higher by Google it is vital that you consider the usability of your website on mobile devices.
5. Review, monitor and measure
Creating a website for your business should be viewed as an investment. As such, it should be reviewed, monitored, and measured to ensure it is up to date and functioning correctly.
If you bought a delivery vehicle for your business, it would receive regular maintenance and servicing to keep it running efficiently. Your website should be viewed in much the same way. It is an asset that requires on-going attention to function correctly.
Free tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console can be used to provide useful insights about who visits your site, where they came from, which pages they visit and whether there are any errors on your website that require fixing.
Setting time aside to review your website insights will help you identify key KPI’s to track performance. This could be number of page visits, number of users and ultimately conversions.
By ensuring your website is operating effectively and updated with relevant content on a regular basis will help improve your online presence.
Need help with your marketing?
PGW Creative Consultancy can provide your business with advice and support.
Get in touch to arrange a free online marketing consultation or email: hello@pgwcreative.co.uk