There is so much to think about when building a website and the internet can be an overwhelming place when trying to figure out how to promote yourself and your business online. So, in this post, I have put together a list of website design considerations to help you make your website pop, rock, and sell your stuff.
Of, course, I could add so much more to this list but these are the absolute basics that your should focus on nailing down when building or rebuilding a website for your business, no matter the industry you work in. (Check out my other posts for more on building a website and making it work for you and your business)
USER FLOW
Think easy navigation, straight to the point call to actions, a solid home page that shows what you are all about and a simple way to find what they need to know to take action to buy your products or service.
GOALS
Business goals = website goals. Align your website to the goals of your business from the get-go so that you can focus on serving your customers/clients, doing what you love and making money.
GETTING IN TOUCH
Make it easy for people to get in touch with you. Clearly offer ways to get in touch with you, whether that is through a visible contact page or through a certain route that allows people to connect with you for a specific reason. ie. for a specific service, you offer. This is so simple, yet bizarrely all too often overlooked.
WEBSITE COPY
Sharp, to the point & SEO friendly is where it’s at. No one wants to read loads of fluff – Get to the point straight away so that potential customers/clients can take the actions within your site that you need them to take in order to fulfil your business goals.
MARKETING STRATEGY
Planning how the marketing of your business will integrate into your website is extremely important. This will allow you to get into the good stuff that you WANT to be doing more of, instead of trying to add loads of bells and whistles that allow you to market yourself better LATER.
SYSTEMS
Deciding how your systems will integrate into your website is key to saving time and money. Tweaking your website when you finally decide on your business system flow is way more time consuming than you can imagine. Do the big jobs now so that you can focus on doing the best part – running your business.
MAINTENANCE
Keep your website fresh and secure. Make sure all of your themes and plugins are up to date, test your contact forms and payment systems often.
HOW WILL YOUR CUSTOMERS/CLIENTS FIND YOU
Think about how your ideal customer/client will find you – Do you need to provide them with a way to access all you have to offer from one link?
YOUR CUSTOMER/CLIENT
Think about how your ideal customers and clients browse and consume content. How can you integrate this into your website so they will stay there longer and get hooked on what you have to offer? Think about how you can lay this out in your website to serve up your best content that makes your offers shine.
MOBILE DESIGN
Making sure that your website is responsive and runs smoothly across devices and browsers is very important and not only for easy viewing but also for SEO – Google now indexes the mobile version of a website before the desktop version which will ultimately improve your ranking.
INVEST
Bootstrapping your website or using free software isn’t always the way forward. Believe me, investing in your website = investing in your brand AND the future of your business. A decent website speaks volumes over a free Wix site about how you approach what you do.
ACCESSIBILITY & INCLUSIVITY
Think clear layouts, colour contrast, video captions, transcripts for people who may have sight/hearing impairments. Think about how you want people to feel when browsing your website and where you could be creating age, gender, disability, religious or racial exclusions through design. This could be through the images embedded in your website or the language used in your copy.
What is one thing that you have realised that you need to change, add or plan to add to your website?
