We love creating fantastic websites for our customers, and with our years of experience in the business, we know what it takes to make a great site. If you’re setting up a brand new website for your business, there are certain elements that you should always consider first, as they will play a crucial role in your online success. Here are our tips to help you identify which aspects of your site you should be thinking about first.
Think about the purpose of your site.
Visitors should be able to immediately identify what your site is all about, as nobody want to have to navigate a confusing or seemingly aimless site filled with irrelevant content. Are you trying to sell a product or service? Are you sharing your personal opinions? Or are you providing information on a specific topic? Make sure your website content is focused on achieving this purpose.
Think about visual elements.
Visitors want websites which are visually interesting, yet uncluttered and easy to navigate. Any photographs of your product should be clear, professional and show off its best qualities. Visitors appreciate it when information is presented in a visually stimulating way, so could you add infographics or diagrams to get your point across?
The layout of your site should be logical so visitors can easily find the information they are looking for. Too much choice is confusing and can be offputting to website visitors, so menus should be as simple as possible without too many sub-options.
There’s a reason grid layouts are seen so often in all types of design, and web design is no exception. They’re simple, clear, and logical, making for a satisfying visual effect.
Consider how you will optimise your chances of being found on search engines.
One of the first things you should do when creating your website is come up with an SEO strategy. This relates closely to the first point. High quality, useful content is the key to any successful modern SEO campaign, helping to drive visitors to your website and encouraging them to share your content with others. Make sure your content contains optimal titles and topics and that you make appropriate use of relevant keywords which are naturally dispersed throughout the text, without being shoehorned in. Visitors want to read natural text with a human touch, not robotic content that’s filled with spam.
SEO is not a one-time job, but a continuous process that requires you to keep your site fresh and up to date. Tools such as Google Analytics will enable you to track your website traffic and identify which kind of content draws the most visitors, allowing you to adapt your strategy to their needs.
Make sure the site will offer excellent performance.
No matter how visually appealing your site may be, if it doesn’t perform well, visitors aren’t going to stick around. Always ensure you have a suitable hosting service to minimise the risk of downtime and server errors.
In the modern business world, responsive websites are a must. Your site needs to work on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets as well as it does on a desktop computer, otherwise you will be losing out on a huge potential audience. A responsive layout will save hassle and money on the creation of separate mobile sites, and will ensure consistency across all platforms.