The best advice for small businesses considering DIY web design. Website building top tips and best practices for beginners.
The 7 Best Website Building Tips
Building a website is essential for any online business, but many people don’t realize that there are several parts to website building that go on behind the scenes.
Websites are what give the first impression to potential new clients, but it also is what helps create returning business and customers as well. If a website isn’t simple and easy to use, you might be leaving money on the table for potential sales and client retention.
Here are some tips for being a website builder to create a compelling and easy-to-use website.
1. Website building and design is FOR your customers
It’s true that a website needs to be fun, bright, and easy on the eyes, but more than anything, customers want a website that is functioning and fast.
Time is money, and waiting for a website to load or looking around for hard-to-find answers will only cause frustration for potential clients.
If you’re looking for direction on what is most important for your clients, take a small sampling from a social media account, or send out a questionnaire to your email list. Clients will tell you exactly what they like and don’t like – and this can save you time and frustration in the future.
2. Build a fast website
Have you ever visited a website and spent what feels like forever waiting for the site to load? If you’ve felt that frustration, that is a big indicator that you know exactly what you don’t want to happen when creating your own business website.
Picking and choosing themes is very important when creating a website from scratch. Some themes are fast as lightning, while others are a little bit more “bloated” in terms of loading and refreshing.
Another consideration for website building is that you want to try to keep it as lean as possible. While it’s essential to have a website that can be easy to use on the back end, you’ll find that many people download and run many plug-ins as shortcuts without realizing the plug-ins will quickly add up and slow down the site.
Impatient customers are customers that will “bounce” off your site quickly if the page doesn’t load quickly enough. Make sure that you’re not compromising speed just because you want to add something visually frilly and potentially laggy.
3. Hire someone to help
It’s okay if you don’t know how to set up a website; this is where hiring a company or a person to do the work is vital!
While it can be a bit of an investment initially, it will end up paying for itself in the long run because your site will be up and running quickly!
Rather than spinning your wheels and trying to figure it out, you can easily have an expert help you and save yourself so much time.
4. Create important categories
Giving your customers guidance on where to click and what to do is key to creating a user-friendly website. Categories should be easy to read and labeled right at the top of the page so that anyone visiting will see them immediately and can navigate the site easily.
5. Trust a website building agency to help with website issues
No matter how tech-savvy you might be, sometimes the internet has a different say in how the day is going to go. Outages, problems, or even the website appearing to break for no specific reason are all very real possibilities that can happen on any given day.
Entrusting a website management company to be there for you and any needs that may come up is crucial to the success and growth of your online business.
There are plenty of horror stories about websites being down for days, weeks, or months and businesses missing out on thousands in sales because of it.
The hard truth to realize also is that if a client comes to your website and it doesn’t work, they aren’t going to be coming back anytime soon, if they ever do at all.
While it’s not possible to have a website permanently error-free, it is possible to have help on hand to troubleshoot and fix when these issues arise. It’s way better to be safe than sorry when it comes to your day-to-day business.
6. Always make changes
It’s true! When you have your own website, it’s essential to keep it looking new and fresh. Changing pictures, adding new information, and constantly finding ways to make it more user-friendly is a great way to keep users happy.
7. Optimize your webpage for SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it’s what makes Google instantly happy. While it might be cute to have categories with silly words, you must name your categories with words and phrases that people are actually searching for.
If you can optimize your website with SEO, there’s a much better chance of getting your site to rank with Google, which will send you organic traffic.
The great thing about organic traffic is that these are people who are actively searching for something, meaning they’re customers who are NEEDING and LOOKING to buy something specific.
Organic traffic means higher sales and potentially returning customers. When you can start getting Google to recommend your site on page 1, that’s a very, very good place to be in terms of making money and business growth.
Building a website doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and the above tips are great places to start. It may not be something that you can do 100% on your own, so enlist trusted website tech experts so that you can set up your website correctly right from the start.
Start with the small and easy steps and then set goals for accomplishing the rest. It’s entirely possible to create a user-friendly and functional website in a short amount of time – which means you’ll be able to promote and earn money even faster!
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