It’s 2021; there are about 4.0 billion internet users. And if today your business doesn’t have a website, you are potentially missing out on a healthy profit. But wait, are you afraid that building your own website would end up as a horror story?
Well, I won’t lie, there is a fair chance that it would fail, but there is a healthy chance it won’t. Trust me with the process, and I will ensure that you can build an exemplary website by the end of the blog!
Why Do You Need a Website?
Let’s dig in some stats; according to a report by transaction history, 81% of the buyers would look for a brand on the internet before going in-store shopping, and 69% of the buyers won’t make a purchase until they can’t access reviews about a particular product. You can’t make the most of your business’s revenue by simply running a physical store; you need to be multi-dimensional, think of all the possibilities, and eventually, build a fully efficient website.
Interact with your customers: A website allows you to regularly post updated information about your business, keeping your customers updated at all times.
No regional restriction: You can sell the product to a customer living in any region of your country. Improved logistics mean that an order can be delivered in the shortest time, and your revenue rises.
Online presence builds credibility: A good website with trustworthy information can help build confidence among your customers. It would help them understand your brand’s value and philosophy.
User Experience to Consider Before Building a Website
Let me tell you the difference between a profitable website and a failing one. According to research, 90% of online businesses don’t last more than a year, mainly due to falling demand and rising losses. However, when experts reviewed 1500 of these sites, the results suggested that 97% of the websites offered a poor user experience, leading to lower visitors, dampening sales, and finally, shut down.
So, now you would know where all these horror stories come from. Therefore you cannot make a mistake when you decide to get your business online as it can be costly for your business and its reputation. At the same time, you must adapt to doing business online if you wish to increase sales; that’s quite a dilemma, right?
Let’s start thinking the other way around; 10% of businesses succeeded; presumably, all of them had efficient websites. This eventually means that you need to follow the tips that successful companies use to create and run a successful website. Do you think finding such suggestions would be a tedious task? Well, it would have been if you hadn’t seen the blog.
Let’s move on to some of the major considerations you should make while building and designing your website. We hope you appreciate our little refresher guide.
Tips to Consider Before Building a Website
In the latter sections of the post, we will be dealing with eight crucial tips/questions that you must consider before building a website.
1. Identify Your Viewer’s by Creating a Buyer Avatar
Do you think a sophisticated Rolex would attract a kid aged 8? Will he be more attracted to a digital G-sport watch or an analog million-dollar watch? The answer is simple; everyone is different; our choices, preferences, personalities differ. You can’t expect a website to attract viewers because you have paid five thousand dollars in building it; the users don’t care about the cost; they care about the value that the website provides.
Your website should be made for your ideal customer segment. You need to know who is interested in learning about the topic or buying your product or service.
Create a buyer avatar; highlight the features of your buyer, how they are different, what they like, and everything that can help the web designer craft something that provides value.
Too much? If you are confused about what your website should look like, then the next step would be to simply identify the demographics of your target audience to an experienced web designer, and then, they would probably sort it out for you.
All websites are generally built on a similar layout, but the images can greatly impact their perception. You need to pay special attention to the pictures that you use on the website’s cover, its logo, and primary slides. We will talk more about images shortly.
2. Plan the Website’s Structure by Drafting a Blueprint
Once you have identified the target audience, the next step is to think about how you expect your website to look.
You would have seen that several websites have a range of tabs in their navigation menu, and each of them connects to multiple drop-down options.
On the other hand, some websites are made on a single page; all their navigation options are linked to the sale page, containing adequate information to make a sale.
What layout do you prefer? Is it the same as your audience?
A multi-page website isn’t always for nerds, while a single-page website isn’t always just casually built as a temporary website; both of those websites can have their own purpose.
For instance, a brand selling an online monthly-charged service may provide a separate page and loads of information regarding their services and credentials to ensure they are credible. However, a trusted bookseller might not need anything more than a single page to sell his $1 ebook.
When you think of a blueprint, consider what your audience would like. Identify the information provided on the website and clear ideas on what you can skip.
3. Why Visit Your Website?
Content ultimately makes or breaks a website; if you provide the right information for your audience, nothing stops you from making a mark.
Your website needs to have the right content that addresses your potential customers’ concerns. It should have resources to answer the most common questions and clear any confusion. The content doesn’t only include a blog or sales section; it consists of the text on your images, compelling CTA buttons, and header and footer options. All of them must be on-point and available in the right places.
Having said that, you must ensure that your website isn’t just flooded with content. Everything should look sophisticated and professional.
Reports suggest that 59% of customers would only stick to a site if the content is beautifully presented, which is a hint to note.
Similarly, pay special attention to the CTA buttons on your website; they should be clear and concise. If anything goes wrong with the main directive buttons, you can lose potential customers, and your bounce rate skyrockets. I am pretty sure you won’t like any of the two to happen since this could impact your rankings.
4. The First Impression with Images
An image says more than a thousand words; the first impression is dependent on your main image.
If you have a compelling and intricate main idea, your customer will clearly understand your website’s purpose. Many websites often put vague images in their primary slider, which means that the customer is confused once they land on your page, and the bounce rate rises. Hence, you need to ensure that your first image information relates to any services or product and potential pricing information.
Images make the central part of your website and are necessary for raising the perceived value of the content. They need to be placed in between texts to improve the representation.
However, finding the right images can be troublesome if your product is unique. You would need to take some high-definition pictures, and it’s not a cup of tea for every owner especially since some editing may be involved.
The other option is to hire a product photographer, which is generally expensive, but an experienced photographer can do great a great job at getting images that make your website pop. If you aren’t comfortable with any of these options, you would have to scroll the web for available replicas of your products and then edit them with your logos, so they look like yours. This is not what we would recommend though especially if your product has certain unique characteristics,
5. Brand Customization
Brand customization could be further down the list when you have identified your designer.
Still, I think that while we are talking about your website’s impression, it’s another essential thing, and probably the last, that determines how your website will look.
Your internet website is your face on the internet; that is how your customers would perceive you. Therefore, you need to stand out but still look refreshing and not… well too much. It is quite a dilemma to ensure that your website looks unique but acceptable for the reader, most don’t get it on the first try.
The company’s brand would include a logo, typography, colors, and icons.
All of these components can have a major impact on how your brand is perceived amongst the viewers.
Your logo should be creative and be a clear representation of your brand. The brand’s layout is crucial as the logo should look unique and not too heavily inspired by a well-known brand. The logo’s colors should be the same as the primary colors used in your images and website’s themes and maybe an accent color.
Similarly, typography plays a significant part because it covers about 60% of your website’s overall content. You need to ensure that the font you choose isn’t too funky; it should look, clean professional.
You can take some leverage of using a lesser-known font to appear different. Currently, google reports “open sans” as the most used font on the search engine, while photoshop users rate ‘robot as the number 1 preferred text type.
Colors and icons are another critical part of brand building. These two components should be well in line with your products and theme. Using different colors for logo and theme hasn’t always worked out for most brands, but if you think the contrast could work out, it’s always worth a try.
6. Layout
An efficient layout can be a gamechanger for your website. According to a survey, 38% of website viewers would leave a website that doesn’t have an engaging or attractive layout.
Layout refers to how your website looks; it contains the arrangement of images, sliders, product catalogs, service descriptions, and other text. You need to make sure that your layout is well arranged based on the preference of your target audience.
Most e-commerce stores prefer to have an announcement bar, then a header followed by an image slider. The rest of the home page would have horizontal product catalogs for new arrivals and best-selling categories.
Towards the end, the web page would have a lead magnet offer. Although the layout works great for e-commerce stores, it isn’t always the best for service or real estate business.
Once you plan to start a website, you’d need to think about the order of preference for your customer, what they’d like in the first place. These thoughts would provide you with insights into how the layout should look.
7. Mobile Responsiveness – A Top Priority
About 63% of all viewers use a mobile to access a website. A survey shows that 85% of the adults would prefer a business with a better or the same mobile website experience as its desktop site.
When we are designing a website, we often overlook how it would look on mobile. Today most internet users visit websites from smartphones on a daily basis. If your layout looks awkward on mobile, it’d be an undesirable first impression.
The problem occurs because a laptop follows landscape orientation while mobile is in portrait mode. So, the horizontal images may look great on a computer, but it would look poor once it’s accessed on the phone especially on some retina displays. Similarly, a header is generally invisible on the phone, which means that if you don’t take care, your layout would be out of place, and you’ll lose tons of customers.
8. CMS And Web Designer
Finally, we have to decide on a Content management system (CMS) – A software platform that allows you to create, edit and modify your website’s content without editing the code.
Some popular CMS has eased the designing of a website. It allows easy drag & drop options, and you can add anything to your homepage without being proficient as a coder. About 65% of all websites use WordPress as their CMS. However, it might not be as easy as it may sound.
In some instances, you’d need to add some features that aren’t provided by CMS components. In such cases, you’d either have to give up on the feature or hire a website developer to build that functionality, if the CMS allows it, which is a complex and time taking task.
The other option is to build a fully custom system which can be expensive and most people don’t need to do that in this modern era.
In times like these, you’d need a website designer to find a solution to your problems. Getting a website designer is like searching for a diamond in an ocean; the popularity of CMS has led to various starters coming out as ‘website building experts.’
Although some of them can be good at their job, they’ll often end up confused when you ask for an advanced feature that might require some coding. You need to opt for a website building and maintenance agency with experience and reviews to support their claims. That way you get a website and a team to support for the long term.
Conclusion
That’s it! Hopefully, our tips and suggestions will help you get your project started. At Sitepact we have helped many website owners through this process and for many, we have even become an extension of their team providing long-term support to help in their pursuit of success.
Now, remember, 75% of the consumers would make judgments of your business’s credibility by your website’s presentation.
Hence, a website is a crucial aspect of your business, and you need to make sure it lacks nothing. Although it might seem tempting to start right away, it’s essential to consult a professional before you make any irreversible or costly decisions.
Lets us know if you have any questions and we will try our best to provide answers. Feel free to reach out!
