10 Must Do's When Producing Your Website
There are a number of areas that you must consider when thinking about developing a website. Whether you are starting a brand new site or updating an existing one, these areas must be addressed to gain the maximum return on investment.
This list of Must Do’s is how a professional web design and development company should approach a client’s website, and they should go through the points with the client to explain clearly the importance of each.
Design
Good design and visual impact for the user. A badly designed site will put potential customers off immediately, they will not be interested in following a journey through the site to find out what your offering is.
Content
The content must be relevant, easy to follow and digest, imagery should be sharp and eye catching. The content is also key to SEO as the search engines view the public text as well as the tags and headers behind the site. Your home page must have a minimum of 250 words that are rich in SEO words and phrases
Navigation
Ease of navigation from page to page and returning back to a previously read page. The journey the user has on your site is very important to making purchasing decisions, simple navigation bars appearing in the same position on each and every page is a good start.
SEO
Search engine optimisation. The way people search the Internet changes over time, as do the criteria the search engines use for gathering information. You need to have a professional SEO manager regularly checking your site to ensure it matches these criteria. Targeted traffic to your site is key, for it is this traffic that are eager to purchase what you are offering not merely window shoppers who have no real intention of making a purchase.
Analytics
Analytics – with these, in the main are free tools, you can see how many visitors are looking at your site, how long they stay there, what popular phrases are used to search your site and which pages are viewed more than others. This is an essential tool in your SEO.
Fresh
Keep it fresh and new, ideally your site will have an element of content management allowing you to upload new information and delete older news. This again is very useful for SEO as the ‘spiders’ are constantly looking for new information.
Blog
Blogs will also keep your site fresh, they will help with SEO as people will follow your blogs. If you do have a blog on your site it is important that it is updated regularly and with relevant and interesting comments; both for SEO purposes and to keep your potential customers engaged.
Social Networking
Links to Social Networking sites are becoming more important, Facebook and Twitter sites linked to your site will increase traffic to your site, you can ask people to like your site, this will then go to their own network and rapidly spread your domain name to a larger audience.
CMS
Content managed systems; this is where you have a password protected admin area behind your site allowing you to upload new information, without having to go back to the programmer each time.
Marketing
Search engine optimisation is one way of marketing your site, you can also build a list of email recipients who will receive regular news from you about yourselves and relevant news about your sector. Through this you can point to your site if you have for example had an update, are showing a promotional offer or new work you want to show off. Every piece of communication you send out should have a link or reference to your website, email footers, press advertising, brochures and fliers.
