In today’s day and age, a website is crucial to survival of any business. Your website is the online version of your calling card. It may be the first impression to a potential customer and so you have to make sure that impression is as positive as it can be. A great website is not easy to build and there a lot of things that must be planned ahead to get everything just perfect. Just jumping into it without any idea will lead to a lot of time wasted and a lot of potential money lost. Here are some of the key things you need to know before you build your website.
- Establish Aim and Vision
What is your website for? This is the first question that must answered as everything after this will depend on the answer. Is it for a product? Is it for a service? Is it a creative outlet? Figuring this out will help both you and your customers.
- Research is Key
This is perhaps the most important step to anything you do. The more information you have the better your chances at success. Know your customers and know your competitors, this will help you get a leg up. Also decide on the design and layouts for the website you have in mind. Look at other popular websites for reference if you have to.
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- Domain Name
This also an important choice as it is not something that is easily changed later. It is important to pick a domain name that is simple, short and easy to remember. This helps your customer come back to your website more often.
- Plan and Create the Content for your Pages
Think back to the first step and build your content accordingly. Your goal is to take a potential customer to a legitimate one. If they are confused about your product or service, they will not spend money. So build your webpages in a way that is easy to read and understand. Don’t cram too much information onto a page as this is bound to lead to confusion.
- Importance of SEO
SEO is the lifeblood of a thriving website. While you are building your webpages, also make sure you make it SEO friendly. Doing so right at the planning stage will help you get rid of a huge future headache of making changes to a lot of content after the fact. Make sure you include common keywords that relate to the information on your website so that the search engine knows your page is useful when someone types in that keyword.
- Images and Logos
Having all the pictures and logos you plan to include in your website beforehand will save you a lot of time during the actual building process. Websites have to be visual with pictures and videos, no one is going to click on a website that is all text.
- Deadline
Give yourself an achievable deadline before you start. Website design is usually a long and tedious process, you will never end up finishing if you try to do too much at one time. Space it out and work your way up. At the end of it, you should have a great website ready to change the world!