According to the Internet World Usage and Population Statistics there are over 4 billion internet users worldwide, this is more than half of the entire world’s population. From a business perspective this means there’s a lot of potential customers for you to target.
Websites are an extremely vital tool when it comes to growing your business and connecting with your audience. However, before you start the process you need to make sure that you plan your strategy and think about who your website is for and how they are going to use it, this will help you get more from your website.
In this blog I will outline the top five things you will need to consider when building a new website.
1. Domain name
Establishing what your domain name will be is one of the first things to do when building a new website. Make sure you pick a name that is short, easy to remember and pronounce, and is related to your brand. You want people to find your website, not get lost somewhere on the internet trying to find something relevant.
2. Sitemaps
There are two main types of sitemaps, they each serve different purposes but both are equally as important when building a new website. The two types of sitemaps are:
Visual Sitemap
Visual sitemaps provide a detailed diagram of all the pages within a website. This diagram is usually given to clients in order for them to get a better idea about what the user journey will be like when they visit the website and what information will be presented.
An XML file is added into the code of the website and is only seen by search engines. This file contains information about the pages on the website with a small description about what’s in them. When a specific keyword is searched for, search engine crawlers will look through the XML file and scan it to see if any of the information on the site matches up with the search term and brings it up as a result if it does.
3. Design
Pattern Library
When you’re starting the designing process the key points you need to consider are:
Business and website goals
Once you know what your business goals are, you can start creating a design that will help you achieve those goals. For example, if your business wants more people to sign up the monthly newsletter you would need to come with a solution on how you will present in order to get more sign ups.
Create wireframes
Wireframes show what the general layout of the page will look like whilst also taking into consideration the user experience. You can try and create a few wireframes and see which one you prefer. Once you’ve got that completed you can start creating the prototypes for the website.
While we can all appreciate a beautifully designed website, don’t go over the top with the design, especially when building a new website. Focus on optimising the user experience and setting goals aligned to your business goals, the rest can come later.
4. Content
When building a new website, one of the most important elements is the content as that’s why people are visiting your website, to find out more information. Information should be clear, readable and easily accessible.
One of the most important metrics of your website is the bounce rate. The bounce rate measures the amount of people leaving your website website as soon as they click on it. So, if all of your pages have endless amounts of text for a simple question, chances are people won’t read it and you’ll have a high bounce rate.
Try adding more imagery to balance out the text, this will help bring more life to the page and also keep the reader engaged. Remember, it should always be quality over quantity. A couple of lines of well written and informative text could say a lot more than a badly written paragraph that says nothing.
5. Content Management Systems (CMS)
Content Management Systems (CMS) were developed to help users create, manage and update content on their website without having to write code. Using a CMS is not only more affordable but also a great alternative for businesses that don’t require a professional to build a technical site or elements for them. Picking the right CMS system will come back to what objectives you set for your website, but all CMS systems allow you to manage and update your own website.
Currently, there are a few CMS software’s out there that you can use. WordPress is considered to be one of the best CMS and according to W3Techs it is powering 34% of all the websites on the internet.
There is so much that goes into building a new website but those are the five core elements that you need to have in place in order to have a website that works for your business.