Starting your own website can be a daunting thought, but there is really nothing that should be holding you back. Creating a professional-looking website is easier than ever, and you do not need crazy computing skills to pull it off.
When you do start your own website, these five tips can help you to make sure it gets the best possible start.
Have a Plan
Creating your website is much easier when you have a plan for what you want it to look like.
Your site must be organized in a way that is easy to navigate for your visitors, and this is much more difficult to create without a clear idea of what you want your website to look like.
Before you start building your site, make sure you have a clear idea of how you want it to be structured. With the help of marketing consulting services, you can really narrow down your plan and focus on what’s going to make your website successful.
Speed
One thing you have got to pay close attention to is the speed of your website. If you load your site up with loads of plugins and big multimedia files, then it is really going to slow down your site, and this makes people bounce away from your pages.
For every second that it takes your page to load, you increase the likelihood that your visitor will bounce away from it without engaging with the content, and this will negatively affect your SEO.
Keep things simple, and make sure your pages load quickly.
Mobile Usability
For several years now, more mobile searches have been performed each day than on desktop. Not only does this mean your users need a site that works well on mobile, but it is one of the key things that Google, and the other search engines will look for.
Even today, though, with mobile traffic forming such a large part of internet usage, many websites are not fully optimized for mobile.
Make sure that your content is entirely mobile-friendly.
User Experience
We know how it feels when we visit a website that offers a poor user experience – it’s incredibly frustrating.
When you work so hard to bring people to your website, you cannot afford to be driving people away by having glaring user experience errors on your pages. The internet gives people lots of options, and if there is something people do not like about your page, they can easily get their information somewhere else.
You want to be getting as much engagement from your visitors as possible by offering a clean, easy to use experience.
Avoid the most common UX errors and make sure you’re not unwittingly driving your visitors away.
Offer Value
You have got to put your visitors at the heart of what you do.
Ask yourself, “how can I offer people value?”
If you can offer people lots of value with your website, then you are going to find that people respond to it and engage with your brand.
When Google and the other search engines see lots of people are enjoying your content, then they are going to want to get in on the party and start ranking you at the top of the ranking’s pages.
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It’s important that your company website gives off a professional feel. Consumers are unlikely to trust you if your website feels amateurish or overly informal. To help your company look professional, here are a few steps that you can take.
Use suitable fonts and colors
Kaleidoscopic colors and kooky fonts should be avoided – unless you’re promoting a fun or wacky product. Stick to formal easy-to-read fonts and keep to no more than three main colors (one of these colors should reflect your brand). Serpstat offers a great guide on choosing fonts and colors when designing a site.
Use high quality images
It’s important that any images you use are high quality. If you use photographs of you or your products, make sure that they are taken by a professional photographer or someone that knows what they’re doing. Avoid using generic stock images – you don’t want customers to have seen the same image on someone else’s site. Images should ideally be large. Be wary of high resolution images as they may slow your site down.
Avoid generic templates
If your website was built using WordPress, make sure that you’re not using a basic template, otherwise your site will look identical to a hundred others out there. It’s worth playing around with themes and paying for WordPress plug-ins such as Elementor Pro in order to give your website a unique feel. Alternatively, you could pay a website designer to build a site for you from scratch.
Add a favicon
Favicons are small images that display on your browser’s tabs. Uploading a favicon is a small way to make your website feel more professional. This could be your company logo or a symbol that you think sums up your business. There are tools online that can help you create a favicon.
Make sure that it’s mobile-friendly
Most modern sites are mobile-compatible, but not all sites are necessarily mobile friendly. When people visit your site on a mobile device, ideally you want them to be sent to a mobile-friendly version. This should contain larger fonts and call-to-action buttons that are big enough to be tapped with a finger. Consider paying a developer to create a mobile-friendly version of your site if you don’t have one (or design a responsive site that adapts to all devices).
Keep it simple
A professional website doesn’t need to be complicated. In fact, too many flashy animations, auto-play videos and pop-ups could slow down your site and generally annoy visitors. Focus on creating a website that is easy to navigate with clear call to action buttons telling people how to get in touch or buy your product. Avoid large walls of text and try to break up information into concise chunks, while answering questions that customers are likely to have such as ‘who are we?’ and ‘why choose us?’. If visitors can easily get to the information that they need, they’re more likely to convert to customers – flashy sites that take ages to load and complicated check-out processes will drive people away.
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Are you looking for ways to ensure that your business is able to stand out online? This is important because if you don’t do this then it’s going to get lost in a massive ocean of competition. Luckily, there are some great ways to give your business brand the edge and guarantee that you are not forgotten.
Create A Persona
It’s important to understand that the typical customer doesn’t want to buy a product from a brand. They want to feel like they are buying from an individual. They want to see the evidence of people behind the brand. This is often referred to as ‘showing some skin’ and revealing that you care about more than just pushing profits. Some brands are brilliant at doing this through the use of social media. If you want one of the best examples of this just check out Wendy’s Twitter feed. They regularly get attention by joking with other brands as well as their followers. They’ve developed a fun way to engage with the audience and create memorable content at the same time.
Dynamic Design
Most of the websites that you click on when you’re searching for a product or service online have a stagnant design. There’s no movement, no real immersive feel and this can be a missed opportunity. Particularly, if your sector or the product you are selling lends itself to something more dynamic. You may want to explore design concepts that will allow you to bring your pages to life and ensure that your users can connect with them in exciting new ways. For instance, you might want to think about turning interacting with your web page into a fun game as long as it’s not too distracting or complex. This can be a form of guerilla marketing. You can click here to find out more about creative design services and guarantee that your website is one in a million.
Connected Campaigns
You might also want to think about how you can connect different areas of your campaign online. One of the benefits of doing this is that you can make sure that your customers start somewhere like social media and end up on your website. Or the connection can work in the opposite direction. It can be a two-way street and this could be very useful if you take the right approach here.
Deliver Value
Finally, you do need to make sure that you are showing your customers, followers, and users the value of connecting with your brand online. There are lots of ways to do this. For instance, you might be using email marketing. This is only a dead tool if you are using it the wrong way. With the right tactic, you could see tremendous advantages here. For instance, you could create content that is directly targetting a specific group of users. Or give them access to exclusive vouchers and codes for great deals. There are countless directions to take here.
We hope you love these ideas and look forward to implementing them into your own business marketing campaign.
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These days, starting up your own eCommerce store is as simple as clicking a couple of buttons. With the right services, you could essentially build a working website in as little as a few hours, complete with all of your custom-made products and a fantastic website theme. Unfortunately, the ease of making an eCommerce website has created a swarm of subpar stores that are clogging the market, creating an endless sea of competition.
In that sea, there aren’t many eCommerce stores that can actually survive. Unfortunately, the small investment needed to actually create a store means that people aren’t afraid to try and fail over and over again until they hit the jackpot with a lucky idea. So to help you establish a successful eCommerce store without the trial and error, we’ve put together what we believe are the 10 golden rules of a successful eCommerce store. These tips will help you stand out, build your brand and ultimately stand out in a huge sea of competition.
1. Have your own website and email domain
Do not, under any circumstances, use some kind of subdomain for your business such as www.webhost.com/yourbusiness. This is incredibly unprofessional and will scare off all of your potential customers. Furthermore, don’t use an email service like Gmail or Yahoo. Make sure you have your own email domain as well. Both of these tips will make you seem a lot more professional and will greatly improve your chances of success as an eCommerce store.
2. Market on multiple channels and platforms
Make sure you’re not sticking to a single channel or platform when it comes to growing your business and advertising your brand. You should be on many different channels, social media platforms and advertising services to help you spread out and reach a wider audience. To give you a hand, here are some eCommerce marketing tips that you should absolutely follow. As long as you remember to advertise on multiple platforms, you’ll have an incredibly easy time getting your name out there.
3. Hire a web developer
We know that templates can look really pretty and will have loads of customization options. Unfortunately, a template is a template and most shoppers will realize that you’re using some kind of default theme that took almost no effort to make. This doesn’t reflect well on your brand as a whole, hence why it’s vital that you hire a web developer to help you make a good website for your brand. This can be costly, but it’s also a fantastic investment in your brand.
4. Support different payment methods
If your website doesn’t support PayPal then you’re going to lose a lot of business. If you don’t accept cryptocurrency then that’s another chunk of customers gone. Accepting cards should be the absolute minimum nowadays. Make sure you look at the most popular eCommerce payment methods and ensure that you support them on your website.
5. Specialize before you diversify
One of the problems that a lot of amateur eCommerce stores face is over-diversification. They try to add too many products to their website because they’re using a simple dropshipping plug-in, and they try to appeal to too many different people at once. The goal is to minimize the number of products you offer and specialize your brand before you try to spread out and diversify.
6. Create genuinely helpful content
A lot of eCommerce sites tend to hire general copywriters and will request some incredibly simple articles that have very little relevance to their brand. This is usually a fairly poor way of approaching eCommerce marketing because the content doesn’t provide value to your users. Instead, what you want to aim for is evergreen content that will continue to provide your customers with something helpful to read. This could be a knowledge base of information for your products or even some explanations on how to use the items you’re selling.
7. Make your services work on mobile
Luckily, most modern web hosts and design services will include a mobile-friendly version of your site, meaning you don’t have to do much to support mobile users. However, what you can do to help is optimize images for faster loading, creating larger buttons and links for mobile users to press and potentially having a mobile app for your brand or store. This will open up your business to a huge audience of mobile-only users.
8. Communicate with your audience
It’s absolutely vital that you’re always communicating with your audience. Whether it’s on social media, on your website or even in reviews on a Google Business listing, you should always be happy to speak with your audience, receive their feedback and also discuss what your audience enjoys about your product. This is all valuable information that can be used to grow your project into a successful eCommerce store.
9. Don’t underestimate the power of influencers
Influencer marketing is starting to become one of the best ways for a small brand to spread its wings. It involves contacting influential people on social media platforms and working together with them to promote your brand to their viewers. Some influencers have a couple of thousand followers, while others will have over a million. It’s your job to find out which influencer could best represent or showcase your brand.
10. Maintain a blog on your website
Blogs are fantastic for improving your brand’s search engine optimization and it can also be a place to provide your customers with useful content and informative articles. It’s a great way to improve your brand’s trustworthiness and will provide a lot of value to your customers.
We hope that these ten golden rules have given you a different perspective on how you should run an eCommerce store. We know that creating a website to sell goods is incredibly easy nowadays, which means that you’re undoubtedly going to get a lot of competition. However, setting yourself apart from these no-effort stores is simply as long as you’re willing to invest some time into it.
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Despite the fact that we’re all living in a digital world these days, there are still a lot of small businesses out there operating without a website.
In fact, studies have shown that about 50% of small businesses don’t have a website set up at the moment. This is likely having an impact on many of these businesses’ bottom lines by affecting their ability to generate income month in and month out.
One of the reasons why some business owners choose not to invest in a website for their company is because of their perceived web design prices. They’re often under the impression that a website is going to cost too much money to create.
But this couldn’t be further from the truth. If you own a small business, you can get a website up and running without breaking the bank.
Before you take this leap, though, find out some of the factors that will impact how much a website will cost you. It’ll allow you to budget money wisely for creating a website.
Here are some of the things that can lead to web design prices going up or down.
What Is Your Website’s Domain Name Going to Be?
Before you can begin building a website for your business, you’re going to need to invest in a domain name for it. More often than not, your domain name is going to be your business name with “.com” on the end of it.
If this domain name is readily available, it shouldn’t cost you much money at all to snatch it up for your website. But there is a chance that someone might already own the rights to the domain name that you want.
If this turns out to be the case, you can:
Come up with a different domain name other than the one that you had in mind
Consider paying whoever owns the domain name that you want for the rights to it
Often times, business owners will go with the first option to avoid spending a small fortune on a domain name. But if you really want a domain name, you can make whoever owns it an offer.
Doing this will cost you more than you anticipated to spend. But it’ll be well worth it if you think that the domain name is going to help drive more traffic to your site.
Who Is Going to Host Your Website?
Buying the domain name that you want for your website is going to be the first expense you incur when creating a site for your business. Finding a website hosting service is going to be the expense that comes right behind it.
You’ll need a reliable website hosting service on your side to help you with all your hosting needs when you’re getting a site off the ground. They should have a great reputation for helping host small business sites.
You might have to pay a little extra to work with one of the best website hosting services in the business. But it’ll be worth it once you see the services that they’re able to extend to you while you’re in the process of setting your site up and updating it over time.
Is Your Website Going to Get a Custom Look?
Once you have a domain name for your website and a website hosting service on your side, it’ll be time to get down to business. You’ll be ready to start putting together plans for your actual site.
To do this, you’ll have the option of either:
Using a website template to create your site
Hiring a web designer to create a custom site from scratch
The first option is hands down, the better option for anyone on a tight budget. You’ll keep your web design prices low by going with a website template.
But the second one is great for those businesses that want to make their websites stand out. You can hire a website development company to bring each and every idea that you have for your site to life.
Who Is Going to Create Your Website?
If you decide that you’re going to hire a website development company to work on a custom site for you, the specific company you hire will affect your web design prices.
If you choose to hire a well-established company with a lot of web design experience, they’re going to charge you more than someone who just started designing websites last week. Consider a bunch of different options when looking for the right website development company.
The company that you bring on board to work on your website should have:
Plenty of experience in the website development industry
A long list of web design services
Lots of examples of sites they’ve developed in the past
Fair and affordable prices on the services they offer
It’s not a bad idea to call a handful of website development companies to get quotes for their services. It’ll help you keep your web design prices as low as you can.
How Many Different Pages Are Going to Be on Your Website?
There are some websites out there that have little more than a homepage and maybe an “About Us” page and a “Contact” page. These basic sites are easy to design and won’t cost much money to create.
But many times, businesses need their websites to have more than just those pages. They also need product pages, service pages, blog pages, and more set up. They want to be able to jampack their sites with all the necessary information.
If your website is going to need more than a few pages on it, it’s going to send your web design prices soaring. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t still create those pages. But you should be mindful of the fact that it’s going to impact the final cost of your site.
Is Your Website Going to Have Any Special Features?
With almost 1.8 billion websites on the internet today, you’re going to want to find ways to make your site stand out. That might mean adding a bunch of special features to your site to make it unique.
Some businesses are incorporating things like video into the mix on their websites these days. They’re finding that they’re able to get more traction with customers this way.
Other businesses are adding things like chatbots to their sites so that customers can connect with them in a hurry without picking up the phone. This is making it easier for many businesses to form bonds with their customers.
You don’t have to invest in these kinds of special features. But it’s worth looking into some of them to see how they might improve your site, even if they cause a slight bump in your web design prices.
Will Your Website Need to Have a Store Included on It?
Are you going to sell products and/or services to your customers through your website? If that’s your plan, you’re going to need to create a store that can accept payments from them.
Doing this isn’t anywhere near as complicated as it used to be. You can have a web designer build you a special section on your site where people will be able to order products and services from you.
But this will often come at an additional cost, especially if your web development company has to beef up your site’s security so that you can start taking online orders. You’ll need to make room in your budget for this particular aspect of your site.
Who Is Going to Be in Charge of Updating Your Site?
Once you have your website up and running, updating it is going to be of the utmost importance. If you don’t take the time to update your site, it’s going to take a toll on your site’s search engine optimization and make it hard for people to find it.
If you’re even the least bit web savvy, you should be able to handle updating your site on your own. You can add new content to it every so often to show Google and the other search engines that you’re on top of maintaining it.
But if you don’t have the time, energy, or patience to update your site, that will be another additional cost you’ll have to factor in. You may need to enlist the services of a company that specializes in beefing up the SEO of websites.
Don’t Let Web Design Prices Stop You From Creating a Website
Now that you know some of the factors that affect web design prices, you might feel overwhelmed by the costs associated with setting up a site. Don’t be!
You can get a website started in no time with a small investment on your part. You can then add to it over time as you see fit to make the costs that come along with owning a website more manageable.
A website will help your company do better business from now on. By spending a little bit of money on your site, you can get a great return on your investment.
Learn how to use a website to your advantage by reading through the other articles on our blog.
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Starting your own website can be a daunting thought, but there is really nothing that should be holding you back. Creating a professional-looking website is easier than ever, and you do not need crazy computing skills to pull it off.
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