In today’s tech-savvy world it is hard not to fall under the web trap. I mean, it is assumed that all of the goods and services can be found online. And it is true. There are hardly any businesses that don’t operate online or don’t have a website. There are millions of websites. Every single of them serving a purpose, some provide medical information, some technical information, some news, others entertainment, gaming information and many businesses have their own websites.
But whenever we are looking for some information online we don’t know which website to turn to? Which website will provide the best information, most efficiently and effectively, in the simplest way? Well, we go to many sites in order to search for what we are looking for but we stay on the one that attracts our attention and to do that all of the above-mentioned criteria are critical.
So if you are making your own website what are the things that you should keep in check? Here’s a list of 10 things you should do before starting your website.
Strategy –
In business the most important thing is strategy. However, this is the toughest step of it all. Once you know what you want to do other things fall in place but if that’s not clear then it can cause a lot of confusion. Everyone has a vague idea of what the website is for, what purpose it will serve but they don’t know exactly what they want to display to the world, about themselves and their business. This is important in order to create a successful website.
Customer Journey –
After establishing the core values of your business website, the next step is to decide what type of customer journey you want to provide to people. The most important detail of the journey part is the initial impression of visitors that will be the homepage. Your homepage must convey about your business and it should be attractive. Bottom line, your website’s homepage should convey the message you want to send to the world. And that’s only possible if you know about your target audience and how to attract them.
Sitemaps –
User experience is the most important aspect of driving traffic to your site. Once there are visitors to your site, you need to make sure they get a great experience which you can ensure by mapping out all the pages you want to include on your website. You need to draw out your ideas using pen and paper so that you can have an end look as to what will it look like after completion. Your approach to map out your site should be, first to figure out the main categories you will be showing on your homepage. Then decide what to include in each section of the website. You should also consider what the user experience will look like at each phase.
Wireframes –
The next step after all this planning and mapping is to start creating your website. Your goal should be to keep your website simple and easily accessible. It must not be confusing how to use it. Every page should have an objective. The site has to be easy to navigate through. Remember confused customers won’t stay on your site for long. To elongate the stay time, the website has to be simple, easy to navigate and easy to access.
Content –
Content is one of the bases of any website. It is not only going to attract more people but also going to make them stay longer. The more people and the longer they stay on your website, the chances of them spending more on purchasing increases. So, content helps you attract traffic, get them to stay longer which may result in them purchasing more. It also gets your website ranking better on search engines and helps your business in establishing its authority in the market. But again to produce suitable content you need to know who your target audiences are.
Design –
Website design is something that can attract a lot of visitors, in fact, it is the first step in attracting visitors. Before reading your content people will see the visuals and designs that you are offering. The website design should be kept simple and intricate. The design must be in sync with what your website is offering and the overall message you want to convey to the world. All this you must have figured out in step one. So, now keep that in mind and create a brand that should consist of a logo, color palette, typography- a name and some basic visual concepts that people will identify you and your business with.
Systems –
The functionality of a website is directly proportionate to the viewpoint of people for your brand. If your website doesn’t function properly, freezes often are hard to navigate through, confusing to use, then it won’t leave a good impression on people. You want to appear professional and credible which is possible by having a proper system within your site to handle everything out.
Bug Testing –
Even after putting everything in order, there are things that can go wrong. After putting in all the efforts you wouldn’t want to send a very targeted audience towards your website only to later find out that many of them just left due to navigation problems, bugs and other problems. You wouldn’t want to invest all the money to find such a result. So, in this case, you need to thoroughly check your website before attracting traffic.
Analytics –
By thus far, you will have your website up and running and probably successful. After this, you will have to do some little changes to your site every now and then accordingly. But your job isn’t done yet, in fact, it is only getting started. You will have to constantly analyze data from your site in order to make desirable changes to your website. The data should be able to tell you how long people are spending on your site, where most of them are coming from and where they are spending most of the time. There are many tools for this like Google Analytics.
Split Testing –
Split testing is another great way of getting substantial information about your website. How you use split texting is, once your website is up and running, you make variations of it with slight changes say heading change, visual change, etc among other things. Even a slight change can make a difference to the amount of interaction, time spent, engagement and purchases of your website.
