In today’s digital age, having a professional website is a necessity for all business ventures. A great website can simultaneously work as an engine for branding, marketing tool, a store platform, display of work, a blog etc. If you want a website that can do many tasks then here we are giving you the steps for creating professional business website.
We will tell you the technicalities and details of building your own website and we will also focus on key issues in branding and marketing.
Here are the steps to create your professional website:-
Strategize your Brand
The first step is to create a detailed branding strategy. You should have a solid idea of the site’s purpose, its audience, its visual philosophy before start creating a website. You should also think about these:-
Identify your target market
Identity who are they, which demographic groups do they belong to, what are their likes, how will your website can change their lives etc.
Research about your competitors
Know what the competition is doing, what are their strength and weaknesses and how you can leave a mark in this field.
Define your brand identity
How you will describe your brand, What is that which motivates your brand.
Prepare branding material
Prepare the material which will be used on your site and on other platforms too. For e.g. A logo, images, videos, slogans, textual content etc. They all should match your brand identity and branding strategy.
Design of the website
You have to select the design of the website
i. Choose a template
Website templates give you a solid foundation for designing your site. The template you choose has the layout. You can search for various templates and take a look and take the time and choose the one which best suits your needs.
ii. Customize the template
After selecting, customize and edit the template by adding your content, images, texts, links, videos etc and refining the design with colors, font etc.
iii. Editing the look
After choosing the images and colors then you can add a variety of features that will enhance your site design.
3. Prioritize Usability
Your website may look beautiful but it should also provide a user friendly experience to your site visitors. A beautiful website that does not function properly will not work. Hence you should keep these points in mind while creating your website:-
Navigation flow
You should make sure that the website structure is clear and intuitive so that the site visitors can easily navigate between pages and subpages using the internal links or main menu.
Content Hierarchy
A right content hierarchy will guide the site visitors through your site content in a order that best suits your interests. The designs should clearly reflect the most important aspects.
Call to Action
Call to Actions are the messages that invite website visitors to take direct action like Register Free or Buy Now. CTAs tell the visitors what you want them to do.
Readability
There is no point of having a website if the content is not readable. Hence you have to make sure that you use clear fonts and comfortable font sizes, your text color contrast well with the background color and that you have left enough of the white space around your texts.
Footer
As the top part of your website is header, the bottom part of your website is known as footer. Although Footers are not easily visible to the site visitors but they can be used in many ways to enhance usability, for e.g. You can add all of your content information there including buttons linking to social media channels. You can also display a simple site map that links to all of the pages of the website, write a brief About Us or a site disclaimer text.
Prepare for Search Engines
Now a day’s it is very important to incorporate Search Engine Optimization (SEO) when you create your site as if you will be able to get your site rank on top of search results then it will increase lots of traffic on your website. Some of the key aspects of SEO are:-
• Keyword research
• Text
• Meta Tags
• Alt Text
• Link Building
Go Mobile
In today’s age, every website must have a mobile version. Research reports indicate that internet users now spend more time surfing the internet on mobile devices than they do on desktops. In recent updates, Google announced that their algorithm will give more priority to mobile friendly websites on search results. Hence in future each website must have a mobile version. When you will be customizing your website for mobile then pay close attention to readability, navigation and image size. You can also plan from start about this strategy by creating responsive website which can work well on all type and sizes of mobiles and desktops.
Keep Visitors Engaged
Once your website goes live then the main challenge for you will be to attract and retain visitors and customers. You can add some features to actively reach out visitors and keep your online content dynamic.
Newsletter
You can use Newsletter tool to keep direct contact with your subscribers.
Blog
There are many benefits for writing a blog. A blog lets you communicate your message and ideas in a more personal way. Also blogs are very good for improving SEO as they offer textual content that can be optimized with keywords. Hence you should add a blog to your professional website.
Social Feed
If you are active on social media then make sure that your site visitors are aware of it and encourage them even more to connect to you on other platforms as well.
If you will keep the above points in mind, you will definitely be able to create a professional and good looking website which will also be an online platform for your business. Creating a professional website is not so difficult if you design it well, add right content, add blog and plan for SEO.
