Whether you're a small bakery owner or a freelance photographer, a great website is essential for the success and growth of your business.
A website helps potential customers find you through search, and it provides a central location for your contact information, product listings, prices, and more. It also adds credibility and helps you compete with larger businesses and established brands.
So how do you create a great website for your business? Here are 11 tips:
1. Have a great domain name.
When people visit your website, the first thing they'll see is your domain name, or website address. It can make a big first impression.
For usability and SEO purposes, here are some things to keep in mind when choosing a domain name:
- Make it easy to spell and type.
- Keep it short and to the point.
- Avoid using numbers, symbols, and hyphens.
- Use an appropriate domain extension. .com is a good option.
2. Choose a good hosting provider.
A web hosting provider is a company that offers the technology and services needed for your website to be accessible on the internet.
Depending on your budget, you have two main choices: shared hosting or dedicated hosting. The former is more affordable, while the latter gives you a private server that you don't have to share with other sites that might slow down your speed.
3. Make sure your website loads quickly.
Website speed is a critical website element. A fast-loading website will have a lower bounce rate, rank higher in search results, and have a higher conversion rate.
So how fast should your website load? As a rule of thumb, your site should load within three seconds.
There are many factors that affect the loading time of your website pages, but there are also many solutions.
4. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly.
54% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. So if you don't optimize your website for mobile, you're doing your business a disservice.
Use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test tool to see how your site fares. It will help you pinpoint specific areas for improvement and provide helpful suggestions.
5. Keep your design simple and easy to use.
Less is more when it comes to web design.
A simple design is not only cheaper and easier to maintain, but it also provides a better user experience for your customers, which can lead to more sales and better customer retention for your business.
6. Don't clutter your website with pages.
A cluttered site with too many pages and messy design elements can lead to a negative user experience, resulting in a higher bounce rate.
The standard pages for a business website include a homepage, about us page, products/services page, blog, and contact page. So remove any pages that don't serve a purpose.
Also, avoid using too many links and images, and use more white space.
7. Make it easy to navigate.
A well-designed website with poor navigation is useless because users won't be able to find the information they need.
So design a user-friendly navigation system that helps users easily get to the pages they want. A navigation bar and search bar can help make your website easier to navigate.
8. Put your contact information above the fold.
Providing your contact information, such as your physical address, phone number, email address, and social media pages, establishes credibility.
So always put your contact information above the fold. The fold is the visible part of a webpage before the user scrolls down. It's prime real estate in web design and is best used to add important information like your contact details.
9. Choose a good website builder.
WordPress is the most popular website builder in the world for a reason.
It's free, has a huge selection of plugins to extend the functionality of your site, is easy to install and use, and has a large and active support community.
10. Include clear calls to action.
A call to action (CTA) is a signpost that tells visitors what to do next.
You can use CTAs to encourage visitors to fill out a lead form, share your content, subscribe to your newsletter, read more content, buy your product, or contact you.
When writing CTAs, be clear about the benefits and use actionable language, such as "Buy Now" or "Sign Up." Your CTAs should be short and to the point.
11. Optimize your website for search engines.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of using various techniques to ensure that your website is indexed and ranked by search engines so that it appears high in search results pages (SERPs).
