We know it’s tricky coming up with ideas, refining and developing your business’s online presence. Your website is your business card, your billboard, your shop front and for eCommerce businesses, your shop floor. That’s why we’ve put together eight actionable tips to help you get your business website absolutely spot on.
Define Your Audience
You can’t build the best possible website for your business without an in-depth understanding of your audience and customer profile. Deepening this understanding allows you to create a powerful website that perfectly caters to the right visitors.
Customer profiles include demographic data, as well as likes, dislikes, personality traits, behaviours and purchasing habits. Building this profile doesn’t have to be tricky.
Study your most successful competitors’ websites and discern what they’re doing to set themselves apart.
Aesthetics, Branding and Style
Capturing the essence of your business requires the understanding of your audience, but more importantly, it requires your inherent knowledge about your business. No one knows your business as you do, let that understanding come through in the visual language and branding of your site.
Branding and visual identity is a crucial element when it comes to cultivating your business’s online identity, as well as brand loyalty and recognition.
Study the portfolio of different website designers to see who really has an eye for design.
Even if you think it’s jarring against your spotless design, always make sure to have a call to action on your site pages. According to this study, a solid CTA offers a 4.23% click-through rate, better than many digital marketing approaches.
Navigation and Accessibility
If your website isn’t straightforward to use, your bounce rate is going to skyrocket, causing you to lose potential customers. Putting navigation and accessibility at the core of your approach is always going to help you refine and create a website that truly meets your needs.
Make sure user testing and data are utilised throughout the design and refinement process
Just because your site is live and working great doesn’t mean you’re done! Always be looking to improve the way your site works for customers, especially as an eCommerce business.
Digital Marketing and Responsive Design
Lastly, it’s vital to consider digital marketing. Responsive design should be a given with mobile browsing having long taken over from desktop, but digital marketing features should be considered throughout the development process of your website, whether that’s a blog, social media integration or technical SEO optimisation. Responsive design can serve as a powerful ranking factor, with mobile neglecting websites getting penalised by the big search engines.
SEO and digital marketing don’t have to be complicated. There’s a range of solid WordPress plugins that simplify and streamline the entire process of optimisation and refinement.
Blogging doesn’t need to be constant, simply publishing a high-quality piece of content once a month is enough to boost traffic and improve your business’s social media presence, all while keeping things current and engaging.
Designing the ideal business site comes down to finding the ideal web designers and developers, while keeping your customer at the very heart of your approach. Combining a creative attitude with data-driven design is always going to yield a powerful, competitive online presence.