One of the most common problems I come across when helping companies improve their online business is the website they have had designed for them is not developed with their business in mind. Many companies are told they need a website in order to get more business, they speak to a website design company and are ‘sold’ a website without any real research taken in analysing their competition or market sector.
Plan your website from the start
In order for a business to have the best chance of improving their presence online there should be a plan written up detailing what the initial website will look like, what content will be on it and how the website will ‘evolve’ over a period of time. By coming up with this strategy both the company and the website development firm will have a clear plan of what needs to be done and when.
It’s no good having a website developed for you if, 1 year down the line, the site needs to be re-designed from the ground up because you want to add more content to the site, but the current layout doesn’t give you the ‘room’ to add this new content. This is frustrating and expensive and unfortunately is what a lot of companies are faced with.
Plan, plan and then plan some more. It means putting in some extra time and effort at the beginning of the project but this is a far better option than facing a re-design further down the line.
Keep it simple stupid (K.I.S.S.)
When designing your website don’t focus all your energy on the visual elements of your site. Having a good looking site is nice but it also needs to be functional and easy to use; if your website looks the part but is totally unusable then people will quickly get annoyed with it and move on elsewhere.
Each page on your website should have a purpose and a focus, a contact page for example is there to allow people to contact you should they so wish and a product page is there to showcase a product and provide a simple next step for the visitor – be this a ‘buy now’ button or a link to a contact page so a visitor can contact you to find out more information.
Pages that are filled with text that doesn’t go anywhere and no call to action tend to be ignored. Remember that people’s attention span online is a lot shorter than it is in the real world – therefore if content is boring or hard to understand your visitors will soon bore and move on elsewhere.
Update your own website
When you have a website you should aim to update it yourself. You don’t need to know how to code the site – if you can use MS Word you can use the majority of CMS (Content Management Systems) available today.
You know your own business and industry better than anyone so it makes sense that you should be able to write about it. Get a website that has a CMS system behind it and update your own content – this will give that personal touch to your site and will also save you money by not needing to rely on a website design company who will charge you to update the content. If you choose not to have a CMS system then make sure you have a ‘website guy’ or firm that is willing to update the site on your behalf.
You must log in to post a comment.