The World Wide Web contains over 4 billion pages. That’s a lot of traffic! This is why it’s important now, more than ever, that you create a totally unique site that ticks all three boxes of being user-friendly, visually stimulating and informative.
1. FUNCTIONALITY
Choosing the right web host is one of the first, and crucially one of the most important, steps you have to make. Try not to be seduced by the lowest price as it may not necessarily be the best option for your business. There could also be hidden costs along the way that you end up incurring. Research your web host first of all – what are their customer service department like? Do they have online chat where you can speak to somebody and get instant support? This could be invaluable in the early stages. Not securing a good host could mean you are left with a slow loading site that is likely to frustrate and turn away any potential customers.
Also of paramount importance is ensuring that your site is built to be fully “responsive” i.e. it adapts and views correctly on computers, tablets and smartphones. Once your site is up and running, take the time to check this out for yourself and make sure it displays correctly across a range of devices and browsers.
2. DESIGN
As soon as somebody lands on your website you only have seconds to grab their attention and keep them interested before they click off and carry on browsing. A nice clean design with an easy to navigate layout and structure will encourage people to explore your site further. Assuming you have a strong brand in the first place you can use the same colours throughout the various pages.
In order to make your webpage truly unique you have to inject some personality into it while at the same time making sure your brand identity is being portrayed in the correct manner. One of the easiest ways to do this is to have an “About us” section where you introduce your company, ethos and your staff. Have fun being creative with your staff member bios.
3. SINGLE PAGE OR MULTI PAGE?
The advantages of a single (scrolling) page website is that they are clean, simple and can display information in a comprehensive manner – there are no endless clicks that can end up confusing or irritating users. Check out the site we recently completed for Catch Energy
www.catchenergy.com
If however you have a broad range of services/products/information to get across then a multi page site will probably best fulfil your needs. This website we designed for online magazine Fearless Femme is a perfect example of this www.fearlessfemme.co.uk. We can include more keywords on each page, which in turn helps the web page to get pushed further up the google rankings.
4. CONTENT
Make sure your content is current, fresh and updated on a regular basis. If it is not updated regularly, visitors won’t feel the need to revisit the site. You could try including a blog section on your page where you cover important topics in your sector. Social media plays a key role in networking nowadays so icons for these should be displayed clearly along with any contact details or calls to action
It’s true that getting yourself noticed may be the hardest part – but after following these steps you can rest assured that once people do notice you they will remember you for all the right reasons.