5 step check list for actually creating a good website
Creating a website may be quite easy, but creating a great website may prove to be more difficult. There are many things that the average person forgets when trying to build their website from scratch, including some of the basics.
Here are five steps that should be on your checklist for creating a good website:
1. Choose your website builder
If you’re a complete newbie to the world of website building, then not to worry. There are tools that make designing your own website fairly easy.
If you’re planning on using WordPress, then Gutenberg allows you to add videos, images and text into blocks which makes the whole design process easier.
For more on the new Gutenberg tool, check out this site which explains what it is and how to use it.
If you don’t think that creating your own website is a possibility or you don’t have the time, then hiring an experienced web developer, such as Illustrate Digital, would be a better option. Web developers will design your website with your goals in mind, ensuring that your users have a pleasant experience.
2. Think about SEO
Having a strong SEO strategy will really help your website rank on Google and will, ultimately, help your business make more money.
You need to think about the sorts of keywords that you’re using on your page in order to make Google understand what it is that your website is trying to do, as well as page loading times and the security delivered by your host. Combining these three will help you rank a little better and bring in some extra custom.
Offsite SEO is equally as important, in other words, gaining high quality backlinks to your website. This will give your website a boost in authority and that website will basically tell Google that they trust you, so they should bump you up a little more in the rankings.
3. Stay on brand
There is nothing worse than arriving on a landing page and clicking onto a new page thinking you’ve gone onto a completely different website. The key to making sure a website looks professional is by sticking to the same colour scheme, the same fonts and the same design template throughout. This makes your brand more recognisable too.
4. Make the user experience easy
If a user isn’t happy with the ease of getting around the website, then they will instantly return back to the search page, and find a company that has a nicer, cleaner website.
You shouldn’t include too many categories to your menu and you should only add the most important things. There is a thing called the ‘Three Click Rule’ which suggests that all users should be able to find exactly what they are looking for in three clicks or less.
5. Make it mobile friendly
It is pretty much a given now that all websites should be adapted well to suit mobile, as over 50% of web pages are now viewed on a phone rather than a laptop. Simple ways that you can improve your site for a mobile device include shrinking images, using larger fonts and don’t use Flash, as it can really slow down the load time of a page.
