Before you create a new website or refresh an existing one there are important guidelines to follow to make the process is successful. Below are the Top Ten Tips That Will Save You Time and Money Building a Website.
10. Find a suitable website design/development company
It is very important that you find a web agency that understands what you want to achieve with your website. Most companies make the mistake of choosing an agency solely based on budget. A website built on a shoe-string budget not only reflects badly on your business, but also can end up costing you money through an ineffective UX (user-experience) design. Sadly this information can only be retrieved through your site analytics after the project is completed. This in turn can incur costly fees to rectify poor design and web development choices. Choosing an agency that fully understands your budget constraints, produces realistic results based on managed expectations.
9. Figure out the purpose of your website
Figuring out what purpose your website should fulfil is the key to getting the results you expect. For example, if your websites main function is to sell products through eCommerce, then the website should emphasise this hierarchy of information by having visible products with bold call to actions enticing clicks for viewers to purchase. Knowing what your website should do, will channel your focus, saving you time and money on design and development.
8. What is different about your website?
Knowing what separates your prospective website from your competition is paramount to achieving positive results. Ask your self what it is that makes your prospective website different? Is your website more content specific than your competition? Does your website offer more affordable prices than your competitors on similar products? Do you provide a unique or more comprehensive service than your rivals? Answers to these questions need to be established in order to centre your website in your overall marketing strategy.
7. Who is my target audience?
It is important to recognise who your main website audience will be. Knowing this information will allow you to target this audience in a more specific manner. Unfortunately, most companies have the attitude that they should be targeting everyone. This wide range of prospective clients dilutes the overall marketing message. Know who your audience is allows you to be more specific with your message and gives you a greater chance of converting visitors into paying clients.
6. How will I bring traffic to my website?
There are several ways to drive traffic to your website besides relying on search engines to do all the work. Every company should have an idea of how they want to bring people to the website through a marketing strategy. Depending on your budget, a good design agency will create a custom a marketing strategy that will bring people to your website. This can be through social media campaigns, thorough content driven SEO, point of sale material, online advertising and gorilla adverting. Once you have established a marketing budget, a design agency will be able to implement a realistic strategy to create and maintain a healthy amount of website traffic.
5. What do I want my target audience to do on my website?
In an ideal world every visitor would be converted in to a paying client on their first viewing of the website. In the real world if you were to convert one-tenth of your visitors into paying customers you would be doing extremely well for a new website. Besides making it easy to sell your services or products and encouraging interaction, every website should have a backup plan. Asking for contact details for future newsletter campaigns through prominently advertised incentives or providing useful blog articles encourages people to return to your website and gives you a better chance of converting these visitors into paying clients.
4. How do I make sure people will visit my website regularly?
By updating your website regularly, providing new interesting articles and creating special offers on your businesses products or services it encourages people to return. A stagnant website reduces your SEO ranking and gives the client the impression that your business is sluggish online. By adding fresh new content you can also use this information to draw people to your website via social media platforms such as Linkedin, Twiiter and Facebook.
3. How do I find out how my website impacts people?
This is a very straight forward process. Most web design agencies will provide you with Google Analytics built into your website. Google Analytics provide you with all the information that you need to see which pages containing articles, offers, products or services are the most successful. This tool allows you to gauge which content works best and then tweak your website to take advantage of these analytics.
2. How does my website fit into my marketing plan?
Your marketing plan should be built around your website. Having a website to provide a potential client with detailed information allows you to create more provocative advertising. Essentially you can create advertising that stimulates the viewers attention and draws them to your website where they can find more information and have a facility to purchase the advertised product or service. These website landing pages can be recorded via Google Analytics and give you a definitive sales report based on your marketing strategy.
1. Can I update and manage my website myself?
Most contemporary websites are built on a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress or Joomla. These platforms make it possible for clients to update and edit their website content in-house. It is recommended that platform updates to WordPress or Joomla as well as third party developer plugins are updated by a web developer. Most web agencies offer their clients various packages for website updates and maintenance. These updates ensure that your website runs quickly, is secure and is working correctly.
For any more information on the Top Ten Tips That Will Save You Time and Money Building a Website or any other information on our services feel free to call Opus Creative on +353 (21) 242 8689 or email us on hello@opuscreative.ie.
