Any web designer will tell you that a lot of heart and soul goes into creating a beautiful and fully functional website, regardless of how easy they make it look.
In 2017, every business should have a functioning website and social media platform which customers can use to find out information about their services and to engage with the sales team. When correctly optimised, a company’s website can be the number one method of lead generation.
User experience should always be at the forefront of any web design projects, always putting you in the shoes of the audience considering how each page works, what appeals and what does not.
The Brand
While a website should be user-friendly, it should also represent the brand in the best possible way. Content should be clean and crisp, presenting information in an easy to digest format. When the user clicks onto the homepage, they should know all about your business and what it has to offer.
Anything less than this will result in the user clicking off of the website. They are not going to investigate each different section to learn about your brand – your chance has been missed and opportunity has opened up for your competition.
With the perfect mixture of content and online graphics, your website will be best placed to convert users into customers.
Developing an E-Commerce Platform
If your website is an online shop, it is important that the user journey is as smooth as possible. This means keeping the steps required to complete an order to a minimum, just like Amazon has managed to do.
WordPress is one of the best platforms to develop an easy to use e-commerce website, with various plugins available that can be installed quickly and easily onto the page. WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce WordPress plugin on the market, which is probably helped by being owned by Automattic, the company responsible for WordPress’ blog hosting service.
This plugin, in particular, boasts a large online community of experts and developers who are always on hand to offer help and advice. That is not to say that this plugin, or even WordPress, is the way to go when building an e-commerce website, but it is definitely the friendliest for smaller businesses looking to keep costs down.
Make sure to check how your website performs both on desktop and mobile devices, with more and more users relying on mobile devices (such a smartphones and tablets) for online shopping purposes. Just because your website looks the business on a desktop computer does not mean it will perform anywhere near as well on a mobile, which is what most of your customers will be surfing on.
Marketing
When you have your website up and running, you will need to employ a marketing strategy to show it off to the world. It is no use having a beautiful website if no one can find it.
By optimising your site to show in search results for relevant keywords, you have one part of your strategy nailed down. Another key part is to open up social media accounts and engage with your audience. Accompany your post with eye-catching images, you can find some good examples by visiting this website, to make your content stand out more.
Make sure to link your website and social media accounts together as, not only is this good for SEO, but helps to improve the user experience.
To build the best website possible for your brand, you need to keep to three main principles. Keep it simple, keep it informative and keep it updated. If your website ticks all of these boxes, then you are well on your way to creating the perfect website.