Website Designing

What Small Businesses should know

Website designing is part of “every” business today, but knowing what to get should be at the top of the list. For example, when customers consider paying for a new website, they should consider several considerations before designing it. A successful website must be friendly, appealing, functionally sound, easy to traverse, have no performance problems, and always attract customers. So as a customer, you must consider different aspects before developing a website or paying for the work. Ignoring them could result in the potential to either fail at the onset or spend more money correcting the issues.

Purpose of all Website Designing

Before jumping on the train to get your website designing project started, think about the following:

What is my website?

Why am I creating this website?

What are my goals for the future of the site?

These are all just startup questions to think about before doing anything. You have to have a plan and a timeline. Are you creating it for your business? Or are you trying to write a blog? Or is this just something for your pleasure? It’s always good to know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it before starting. For example, will your landing pages function as expected, target your potential customer base, and convert them?

Domain and Hosting

A good name (the URL) should be short, clear, meaningful, and memorable. After all, people like short domain names that are easy to remember, type, and read. The title should also be clear and easy to spell and remember. Recalling a long-term name that is hard to pronounce can be a problem for marketing. Also, if the name is meaningful, the search engines will pick up your website and rank it higher. This will ensure that your site will be picked up and available to users when searching for your subject matter.

Disregarding free web hosting, a website can be shared, collocated, or dedicated. Shared is the most inexpensive but can be restricted since the server is shared and has a limited database, software support, and performance issues at peak hours. Collocated is the next step up. You are on a shared server but have your dedicated resources. This is more expensive and can have configuration and debugging problems since several websites are hosted on a shared server and need to be insulated from other websites. The most costly is dedicated hosting. This is ideal for large businesses, has excellent support tools, and is suitable for high issues. In this case, you are on a dedicated server.

When choosing a service, it is essential to check the disk space availability, bandwidth, CPU, RAM, reliability, and technical support. There is no sense in being on a hosting server that runs into resource problems during peak hours or isn’t reliable. Scalability is also another concern. As technology improves, websites will increasingly migrate from static to dynamically created pages. You don’t want to be in a position where you can’t evolve to newer technologies because your hosting site is resource-bound.

Content Marketing and Website Designing

All customers should consider the design and content that fits their industry. The company’s logo should be transparent and reinforce familiarization with the brand or logo being marketed. The logo should also be frequently seen through the website and placed naturally to the eye’s focus. Color schemes are significant since they evoke calm, happiness, or frustration. The color scheme should convey a clear and concise marketing message. The color should reinforce your company’s niche. The target audience needs to consider how they will react to the color scheme picked.

The website design should be clean, appealing, and original. A website shouldn’t have a lot of distracting images or unnecessary text. A clean design should have intuitive navigation through uncluttered pages. Also, remember when using images to get permission to use them if they are copyrighted because if you don’t, you could get a hefty fine. Anyway, the content should also be original. Original content is appealing to the user and will hold their focus. The content should also stay on target with your company’s message and focus on your brand’s value. Before any coding is developed, laying out a sitemap for the entire website is good. The sitemap should consider how many web pages you plan to present and what your website structure is to publish. Remember, less is more when thinking about your design and planning. Don’t go overboard because you don’t want a website that looks cluttered.

Navigation by Effective Website Designing

The website should be compatible with several different browsers, including older versions. The navigation should be clean and straightforward. If the navigation is confusing or complex, the user may never return to your website. The website also needs to have a first-time user experience. If a user can’t have a good experience the first time on a website, they may never return. Considerations should also be taken for Search Engine Organization (SEO). Pay attention to keywords that a search engine may pick up in searches.

Website Designing with Functionality in Mind

Another aspect of functionality is what device the website will be used on. Many users depend on mobile devices to search for products and services. You will need to create a mobile-friendly and more in-depth website for larger machines. On the other hand, you will need a responsive website for mobile devices, tablets, and laptops. Also, consider your website’s compatibility with all the browsers out there. It should work on them because you will lose many customers and viewers if it doesn’t.

Finally, test all the links on the website and make sure they make sense. Outside links need to be analyzed to ensure they will be there in the future and not leave you with a broken link on the website. If you have contact forms, surveys, or feedback forms, ensure they are designed to perform efficiently and not leave the user stuck on an entry form.

Performance

All the web pages will need to be designed for short loading times. If a page or image takes a long time to load, the design should be considered (i.e., thumbnail pictures vs. loading large photos). Be aware of links to outside websites that go away with time. And thinking outside websites, verifying the load times to external websites are efficient. If a user uses a link on your website and takes too long to traverse to an outside website, they may not want to return to your website. It is a good idea also to implement a tracking system on your website that records statistics on load times, the number of accesses to the website, and any failures.

Security during Website Designing

Web Security is another issue. Watch out for spam. Ensure that you have humans entering requests or comments into interactive sections like contact forms or comment sections. You may need a tool to differentiate between a human and a robot. Malware and viruses are also an issue. Ensure you have appropriate security to handle this on the website and at the hosting company on the back end. Consider Single SignOn or use certificates if this security level is required for business-to-business transactions (B2B).

Customer Feedback and Engagement

The website should challenge the customer to contact your company today. Displaying information is critical, but the customer must be engaged and challenged to contact you. This could be as straightforward as closing a sale or inviting the customer to join a subscription list and receive periodic emails. A return email address is also critical and should be located in a visible location. This opens the door for direct feedback from the customer.

Customer testimonials and access to social media are also critical. This will keep you in contact with your customer community to evolve your website. Also, consider having your website connected to social media like Facebook. Access to blogs is another method of getting feedback on your website and product lines.

Getting a third-party offsite review is another consideration. This adds to your brand’s credibility and is a suitable method for marketing your product line. Review services, such as Google or Yelp, can be instrumental in connecting your business with the local community.

Integration with Social Media

Social media is rising and is becoming a vital part of our lives today, and it’s important to be caught up with all the new changes and trends happening, primarily online. When thinking about what you will do with your website, you must know you are connected to every social media page. If you’re setting up a business website, you want people to promote your site, write reviews, and spread the word over the internet. So you get free publicity and keep up with the times!

Summary of Website Designing

In summary, there are many factors to consider when designing a website by web developers or website builders. Before considering all technical things, consider why you’re creating this website and understand the website design process. Now move on to the technical;  besides establishing a good domain name and hosting server, you must select a recognizable brand name and have the correct content to attract users and keep them focused on the website. This also must be supported with intuitive navigation, the proper functionality, and security. The website design needs to be networked into the local search engine community and compete with other websites, and don’t forget to get your site on social media platforms.

Overall, there must be a communication method for customers and third parties to provide feedback and reviews to the website. Of course, this will depend on the agency you hire and who the website is outsourced to. With all of these in consideration, a website has the potential to become very successful.