There is a lot that goes into making a website that looks good and is easy to use, from how it works and how it looks to how it is navigated and how well the code is written. But that’s not the end of it. Web developers and designers must collaborate to create websites that are easy for search engines to find, keep customers interested, and encourage sales. Whew! There’s a lot riding on that. The good news is that the 24 tips below will show you how to create a unique user experience that makes viewers want to become loyal brand advocates.
1. Picking a domain name and a web host
Look at Google and Yahoo as examples of great domain names that say so much with so little. In addition to being easy to remember, a domain name should match the voice of your brand and be hard to misspell. It’s important to find the right name for your brand, because if you use SEO, simple spelling, and the name of your brand in the domain name, you’ll have a better chance of showing up in search engine results. Simply put, more people go to businesses that are easy to find online.
When comparing hosting plans, it’s important to think about the kind of website and business you have. Will there be a lot of pictures, videos, and presentations on the site? Do you have technical support in-house, or do you need help from your hosting provider that is reliable and quick to respond? Think about how many people will visit your site as well. Does the hosting company offer solutions that can be changed? What are the backup, security, and extra features? Before making a final choice, don’t forget to read reviews about the company’s performance on social media and third-party sites.
2. Backend Services (CMS “Content Management System” or Software)
You can’t make a great website without a good program running in the background. If you think of your website like a car, it’s easy to see why. When your friends see your new sports car, they look at the smooth paint job, the shiny tires, and the comfortable leather seats. In terms of websites, this means the part of your site that a user sees and interacts with right away. The backend of your website is like the powerful engine in your sports car: it’s where all the magic happens. Your website won’t be able to “wow” your visitors without strong backend services. In the same way, a sports car without a working engine is useless. Magento is one of the best “engines” for ecommerce sites, while WordPress is a great CMS for informational sites because it can be changed to fit your needs.
Clean Design: One of the most important things to remember when making a website is to make a design that is clean and looks good. A good design is attractive, easy to read, and easy to move around. Most importantly, a clean design helps people pay attention to the value of your brand and content instead of graphics and lots of text that distract them. Customers often think that the quality of a company or product is related to how well its website looks. So, a clean design is important for a good user experience that makes people want to come back.
4. Color Scheme That Works
Customers often don’t understand how important color schemes are. Different colors can make you feel different emotions, such as calm, happiness, or anger. When designing your website’s colors, it’s important to think about your company’s niche, its target audience, its brand, and the elements of color theory. What colors do you think your audience will like? Is your color scheme overwhelming or pleasing to look at if it matches your logo and brand? Do you want to show the personality of your brand with a bright orange or a professional blue? No matter what color you choose, taking the time to learn about the best options will make a good impression on your visitors.
5. Branding
Every business, no matter how big or small, needs a brand. The design and placement of your brand’s logo affect how people feel about your brand as a whole. Logos that are made by professionals are able to catch the customer’s eye and show the brand’s unique voice. Choose a place on your site that’s easy for visitors to see, like the upper left corner, since that’s where the eye naturally starts to look around. Use the same logo on packaging, print ads, and branded clothing to make your brand’s identity even stronger. When a business stays true to its brand, it gives customers a seamless and memorable brand experience.
6. How it works
There are a few things to think about when thinking about functionality. In other words, does the website work in the literal sense? Is there a problem with loading or a broken link? Are the security features of the site good enough for your business? Aside from these technical issues, it’s important to look at your website’s features from the user’s point of view. Do the sections of your site for contact forms, surveys, and customer feedback work? A customer might leave your site if any of these things don’t work right.
7. Get around
If your website is hard to understand and use, people may leave and never come back. Review your site’s navigation as if you were a first-time visitor. This will help you make it easier to use and more appealing. Pay attention to which navigation streams make sense and which ones don’t. Adding a site map is one way to make it easier for people to find their way around your site and for search engines to crawl it. Also, making navigation easier by getting rid of pages that don’t work or aren’t needed can cut down on load time and improve the quality of your brand’s online presence.
8. Usability
Websites that are easy to use are more likely to get people’s attention and get them to buy something. Displaying product and service information in a clear, concise way can make it easier to use. Make sure your website has everything a customer could want to make it easy for them to use. If someone is reading your blog and wants to sign up for an email newsletter, do they have to look for the opt-in form? Is it easy to find your contact information? Does the layout of your website make it easy for people to share it on social media and learn more about your brand? When trying to make your site as easy to use as possible, it’s important to look over these key parts.
9. Call to Action:
Putting calls to action on your website encourages customers to contact your business. A friendly suggestion like “Contact us today!” shows that your business wants to get to know its customers better. It’s important that your calls to action match how interested a visitor is in your business. If they are just learning about your company, ask them to sign up for your email newsletter. If they’re already a loyal customer, your brand’s loyalty rewards program might be something they’d like to take part in. Include a call to action at least once on each page of your site, no matter what you want people to do when they get there.
10. Short times to load
Slow loading times are the most frustrating thing for people who are looking for information online. Because of this, customers can be turned away for good. Testing your website before it goes live will help you find any problems with how long it takes to load, so you can fix them before your site goes live. Once your website is up and running, check the time it takes to load every so often to keep users happy and keep customers coming back. Customers can get the information they want when they want it because of short load times. If your site doesn’t work, one of your competitors’ sites will.
11. Running a blog
A blog on the website keeps customers up to date on the latest products, company events, and information about the industry. Having a blog on your website is a great way to connect with them, especially if your posts encourage people to interact with your brand. Keeping your blog up-to-date lets customers know what your brand stands for and how much you want to encourage communication. By giving your readers fresh, helpful, and interesting content on a regular basis, your brand becomes a trusted resource and an authority in its field.
12. Clean code that is good for SEO
It’s important to have clean, SEO-friendly code when making new websites or improving the ones you already have. If you take the time to improve your site’s code, you can get a better return on your money. SEO-friendly code helps search engine spiders understand what’s on your site by giving them a clear picture of what’s there. Some CMS services, like WordPress, offer plug-ins that make it easier to clean up code and improve your search engine rankings. WordPress is a great tool for companies that are having trouble getting people to visit their websites because it doesn’t require much (if any) coding knowledge.
13. Work with more than one browser
As technology gets better, more and more people are using the internet. It can be hard to keep up with all of them, like Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. When making a website, it’s important to make sure that it can be reached from different browsers. In particular, all major browsers, even older ones, should be able to load your site correctly. If you don’t take this step, you might lose a lot of customers, which can be expensive for a business that is growing.
14. Mobile Sites vs. Responsive Sites
Statistics show that the number of people using their phones to do online searches has gone up a lot in the last two years. In fact, about 95% of people who use mobile devices depend on them to look for local goods and services. Businesses need to make sure that their websites can be accessed from any device if they want to reach the growing number of people who use their phones. For a big company that already has a website, it makes sense to make a separate one that works well on any device and is friendly to mobile users. On the other hand, a business that wants to start a website would be better off going with a design that can be changed to fit any device.
15. Linking to social media
Integration with social media is no longer something new; it’s now a must. As technology makes it easier to share information, businesses that don’t use social media fail to take advantage of what has been called “word-of-mouth advertising” for the 21st century. Social media gives your customers a place to talk about your brand, give reviews, and find out what’s going on with your company. With social sharing buttons on your website, you can easily share written and visual content, like pictures of your products and branded videos, on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
16. Tests with Captcha
Lots and lots of spam. That’s what some businesses get in their comment sections, contact forms, and site forums that don’t have captcha tests. These tests, which look like the random letters and numbers you have to type in before sending in a web form, tell humans from robots. By adding these short tests to your contact forms, you can make sure that only real people can use your site’s resources. This will save your business time and money.
17. Security That Works
As technology changes, new and more advanced security risks could threaten the integrity of your website. Malware, viruses, malicious apps, and the threat of hackers are all things that could cause a security breach on a website. Both the front end and the back end of a website need to be safe. Ecommerce sites and other websites that let people buy things online need extra security measures to keep customer information safe. Businesses need to add SSL certificates to their websites so that browser-based threats are less likely to happen. During development, it’s important to check your site’s framework and design for security features. Businesses also need to do security checks regularly or work with a company that does this.
18. Offsite Reviews
Due to changes to Google’s search algorithm, local searches are now given more weight. Review services like Google and Yelp can help businesses get leads that are good for their business. Now, when people use a search engine to find a local business or product, they often see reviews of that business on the first page of results. Getting reviews on third-party websites gives your brand more credibility and makes it easy for people to see how happy your customers are with your brand. Make sure to claim your business profile on third-party review sites like Google and Yelp so that customers can leave reviews about your business. Then, you can put a call to action on your website that tells customers to write reviews and sends them to that third-party review service.
Google has a great way to link the reviews on your Google+ business page to your site. As long as your business has a valid address and you have a Google+ account, you can search for your business page and make one if it doesn’t already exist. After Google confirms that you are the owner, your Google+ business page will be linked to your website whenever it shows up in the SERPs.
19. What Customers Have to Say
Customer testimonials can be used to promote your business, just like reviews from other sites. By putting customer reviews on your website, you can show how good your company’s skills, products, and customer service are. If you already have a group of loyal customers, ask a few of them to write online reviews. Take advantage of the chance to make a branded video if they are willing to give a recorded testimonial. The more real, detailed testimonials your business gets, the more likely it is that you will get new customers.
20. Verification of an author on Google+
Even though Google no longer accepts page verification requests (not to be confused with Google+ business page verification, which is still going on), it is still important for your site to have Google+ author verification. When Google+ profiles are used to link site content to specific authors, the search engine can easily tell the difference between content made by a person and content that isn’t as good. By following the steps for Google+ author verification, the author’s byline and photo will also show up in SERPs. Customers are more likely to click on a link if they are greeted with the promise that information will be given by a real person. By claiming your brand’s byline in SERPs, customers and peers will find it easier to connect with it.
21. Following
Between Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, and Bing Webmaster Tools, web developers have all the tools they need to calculate return on investment quickly and accurately. These tools can be used together to keep an eye on traffic, engagement, and conversion rates on both traditional and mobile websites. If you look closely at the data, you can find out which marketing campaigns work best and which ones don’t. These valuable insights into why people visit, stay on, and leave your website help your team improve marketing strategies and engagement techniques to get the best results. Since your branded online presence is like a storefront that’s open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it’s important to make it easier to measure results by using Google Analytics and the Webmaster Tools from Google and Bing.
Comprehensive Sitemap: When you sit down to read a book, what part should you look at first? Usually, it’s the list of what’s in the book. The table of contents gives an overview of what’s in the book. It’s like a summary of what’s in the book. In the same way, a sitemap gives visitors and search engines the information they need to find their way around your website and find out what it’s about. To keep your site up-to-date, you need to update the site map every time you add a new page. Google Webmaster Tools makes it easy for you to do this.
23. Original Content
When making a website, it is very important to write original, high-quality content that is about your business and products. Your site’s rank in search engine results is affected by everything from the quality of the content to the keywords you use. Keyword research can give you ideas for topics and, if used sparingly, can help your customers find the content they’re looking for quickly. To make your website more interesting, each page should have at least 150 words and links to reputable sources and other pages on your site. The content you put on your site should do more than just give information. It should be written in the voice of your brand. Use a tool like Copyscape to check for duplicate content before you publish it. If you post duplicate content on your website, Google will punish you severely, and you may even be taken off of search engine results.
24. Stock Images
Copyright laws cover everything on your website that is considered intellectual property. As one of the biggest providers of stock photos in the world, Getty Images controls how images can be used online. Copyrighted images can lead to fines if they are shared without permission. When adding images to the content of your website, make sure you have written permission to do so and, if necessary, pay any fees. There are also sites where you can find images that don’t have copyrights. But make sure to read the terms of use carefully before you post them. For many businesses, the costs of legally using images outweigh the benefits of “getting something for nothing” in the short term.
Given these 24 aspects of website development and design, it’s clear that there are many things to think about when making a branded website. In addition to bringing in more visitors and generating leads, your site’s design, navigation, and content must keep customers interested and make them want to interact with your brand more. Review the tools and information in this guide as you build a website to make sure it has everything it needs to do well.