Building your own website can be thoroughly rewarding, especially when you see it go live and the views start to pile in; however, it isn’t going to be just a few clicks and your away.
Yes, there are content management systems with web design a critical feature such as WordPress that offers you an abundance of themes to choose from and adapt, but, what if you want a unique design that built only for you?
In this scenario, you are going to want to think about web development. Whether you choose to use professionals or delve into coding yourself, have a look here at some of the areas you should be considering when taking on the task of developing your website.
What are you looking for?
When setting up a website, it’s often the case that people purely don’t know what they want or are after with the finished product.
This can be the case even more if you are developing it yourself. It’s far too easy to get it wrong and create an unsearchable blog when you’re looking for is an easy to use platform that’s capable of accepting payments or possible bookings.
A regular mistake made right at the beginning of the website design is doing things such as choosing the wrong theme (is using WordPress, Wix, or something similar). It’s worth mentioning that WordPress has two sites to use WordPress.com – acts as a blog and WordPress.org – allows you to upload and use as a CMS and add plugins, things that will enable you to customize functionality and add features as much as you like.
Of course, if you’re not going to be using a tool like WordPress and are going to be designing a web space from scratch, you’re most likely going to need to familiarise yourself with tools such as the Stoplight API toolkit, Laravel framework and other areas like PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and HTML.
What do your customers need?
If you’ve decided to set up a business and that’s the reason for building a website, you need to think about what usages are going to be required by your customers. Some of the areas you could include on a website could be the following pages:
- About: Include all the information about your business, how it was established, what you do, what you can do for your customers, where you’re located etc.
- Home: Include the latest blog posts, features pages, information about sales, etc.
- Contact: Include all the details for how you would expect your customers to contact you.
- FAQ’s: Include a page where you show regular questions and answers that have been asked by previous customers (it can come in handy for reducing customer service costs).
- Product or services: Depending on what your business does, you can include a page service prices or showcase your services and have a quote request area, or you could even have a page that you sell your products from.
It is essential that market research is completed early on in the development stages to ensure you have the right pages and requirements to match the needs of your customers.
Professional help.
If you’re not keen on web development or have no interest in it but still find a need and want an online presence, it may be necessary to seek the help of professionals.
The problem with web development, though is that a lot of people like to claim they are professional at it when, in fact, they have only been competing for small aspects of design.
Because of this, it’s essential to do your research, get more than one quote for your requirements, and always make sure you see examples of work they have previously done.
This should help to prevent you from falling into the trap and getting stung. You should try to make sure you find someone that suits your needs and your budget, and remember the rule that you get what you pay for.
However, paying thousands doesn’t always guarantee the best results.
Domain Name.
This should potentially be one of the first things you think about securing. If you already have a trading business, it may be that you have already done this.
The last thing you want is to be set on a name to find that the domain is no longer available. Have a good think about business names, think creatively and try not to get caught into the trap of coming up with an original business name if you’re not in the position to secure your domain, it could lead to you being disappointed and wasting money in the future.
Read: How to Choose a Best Domain Name for Your Online Business?
There is an array of sites online that allow you to check if a domain is free and will indicate on the cost, it’s a good idea to use one of these when thinking about your business name too.
See explanation to jargon if confused – domain auctions, premium domain names.
Design and content.
How you manage this will probably fall on the size of your business, it may quite possibly be your sole responsibility, especially if you’re a small or start-up business.
You should aim to include relevant and engaging content on your site.
It could work well to scout your competitor’s web pages and see what they are adding and what their customers are interacting with regularly. You will be able to acknowledge and improve on what doesn’t work as well on their sites too.
A big part of your content will rely on factors such as SEO, social media, and email marketing. Just because you’ve built your website doesn’t mean you are going to get instant traffic. This is where using relevant SEO tactics and delving into the world of social media can help a new website out.
Try adding a subscribe area to your site too as email marketing can be a convenient way of directing new, old, and existing customers back to your website.
As you can see, website development consisting of a fair amount of time and effort but it is most definitely worth it. If you have a business, it can be one of the best moves to make.
Do you have any other tips for what you should consider when developing your website? Please share them in the comments section below.
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