If you’re thinking about starting up a new website or even revamping the one you currently have, then look at some tips and advice on how to go about doing it
Goals
Even before you start hiring a designer to work on your website layout, you must first plan out what goals you want your website to complete. Keep a list of ideas written down from your designer and yourself to refer back to through the creation process. When everything is created, then you can look back on the list and see how well you had accomplished your goals.
When Developing your website, here are some questions you may want to ask yourself:
➢ What will be accomplished with this website?
➢ Who is your target audience?
➢ What is the function of the website? Is it going to be an entertainment website, an online boutique, or just a news hub?
It is essential that you know exactly what your website will do before it ever goes live.
Structure of the Site
How will your website be organized and what will be the central theme. Don’t try to be too fancy with the site, just make sure it is pleasant to the eyes and navigable for those who are not as familiar with the internet. Remember back to other websites that you have visited: It is obvious that plenty of time and work went into sites that are easily navigable.
Design of your site
The look and feel of your website really shows the intention and mood of your business to the public. It’s essential to find a designer who can work with you to make your site resemble what your company’s function is.
Research your competitors. Choose a few websites in your field and really study their design: Which features did you enjoy and which did you think were not efficient? The information you collect will develop your own website to meet your own intentions and show off your own style.
Make your website reflect yourself and know what you want, but don’t put down any ideas that are offered, take them into consideration. Giving the designer a sort of creative control can morph your website to an even better product. Studies show that the design of a website is the number one most influenced factor with potential customers, no one is going to buy products from a site that looks boring and dull, and in general most people feel more comfortable buying products from professional sites: designers are highly skilled at creating the trustworthy looking site.
Send any logos/business cards to your designer to incorporate with the website. Mix them into your theme and keep them consistent.
Content
You may have a great theme and design to your site, but if there is no content, people are soon going to leave. Always update your site everyday with no information and content to keep bringing back loyal customers back.
Content doesn’t have to be just text either, it can be new music, products, pictures, or even video games. The web contains a limitless amount of information and media to cater to any need that your website may need, experiment with content.
Content is near the top of the most important things for your website. Your website will most likely need content writers to prosper online or at least an editor that can find content. Most designers have worked with other content writers that they may be able to recommend. Make sure your theme matches with the content writers style or voice to keep up with consistency.
Production Values
The nice thing about your site is that you can enjoy it yourself and rate and comment on it, changes can be made to it at any time. Keep track of your stats to see how well certain pages perform against others and why. Just don’t forget your original goal for your website, but let it shape and change to keep up with that goal. A website isn’t a physical thing like a business card or a newsletter, it can change constantly and will most likely.
Marketing Techniques
Now that your amazing website is built, you have to make sure people come and see it.
➢ In order for your website to be listed on large sites such as Google or Yahoo, your designer will have to use descriptive words in your titles and other largely used keywords otherwise your work was all for nothing.
➢ Consider investing money into PPC (pay per click) ads.
➢ Some banners can be constructed to be featured on other sites that shows some brief words about your own website.
➢ Never forget to put your URL or website name on every single promotional card/flyer that you send out or banner. They may not click on the link to get to your site right away, but they may remember the URL for later use.
Maintenance on your Site
Once again, keep your content fresh to bring back other loyal customers, if it’s left to get stale, others won’t stop by anymore. Update photos, calendars, news stories, and others things like those to keep up your visitor count.
Maintaining your site will be the most important thing you can do for it, but you won’t be able to do it until your website is operational and live. You have a few options on how to maintain your site after it is live, you can hire your designer to update it daily (which can cost a pretty penny) or you can create some sort of CMS (Content Management System).
I highly recommend you don’t higher a designer. If it is up to him or her, they might not be able to be there to update content if they are on vacation or some sort of family problem. Your news could lag if they are not there because they are in Maui for vacation without a computer, that could cause some of your clients to leave. Just choose some type of CMS to work with. Besides, if you have a great designer, they’re going to have plenty of clients to work with and won’t have time to help you.
CMS’s were created so that you could update your site without having to know a great deal of HTML or coding language. If you know how to work a word processor or a type of folder system, you’ll be able to use a CMS. These systems let you do almost anything you want to do including changing the layout of your site, adding a blog, or basically anything. They are usually divided into different sections of your website for easy navigability.
Don’t think that this means you can slack off and not learn some aspects of programming languages, if the CMS goes wrong how are you going to know how to fix it? It’s best to learn some things about your website in case something does go wrong with your CMS. Talk to your designer to see if he or she can help you with your CMS if it ever goes haywire for no reason.
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