The modern world of business often depends on the internet. If you’ve got a connection to the online world, the market opens up fully to you; you reach customers you never would have thought of before, and your shop will always be ‘open’ for anyone to use. Now isn’t that a modern marvel of technology?
And yet, you don’t start off with a kickass business website. It takes quite a few steps to get there, and a lot of hard work on your end. You’ve got to go back and forth to determine what makes a website work, and what your customers specifically are looking for from a retail website that caters to them.
If you’ve got a website to kick off, and if you’ve got a lot riding on your new website, you’re going to need to get down with the basics. And if you’re not too sure where to start on your entrepreneurial journey (because not everyone does!), we’ve listed some of the most important basic points to keep in mind as you go about designing.
So, if you’re looking for a handy guide to take you through this crucial step in your business life, be sure to read on for more information. Not every business manages to secure success this early on in the game, but knowing how to perfect your business website will certainly help.
A Domain Name That Makes Sense
You’ve been thinking about making a website for a while now, and you’ve been thinking about the name a person should tap into their address bar to find it. You know it should be simple. You know it should be relevant. You know it’s going to take a bit of brainstorming to find the perfect combination. But whilst you go about this process, you’ll need to keep one thing in mind: does your domain name make sense?
You see, when you’ve got an idea for a domain name, and you look it up to find out whether the domain name is free or not, you’ve got to make sure it makes sense before you hit the purchase option. It sounds basic, and you’re right that it is, but so many new and often inexperienced business owners just try to settle for something that sounds similar to what they really wanted to use as a domain.
It might be a little meandering here and there, and no customer would even think of tapping it in to find a website like yours – it’s a big worry you should think about when shopping for the right website address, and it’s a lot more important than you might think.
Clear and Concise Content
The content you write needs to be clear and concise, and something you yourself would enjoy reading through. No matter what you’re writing, it needs to be easily understandable, for anyone who uses the internet, and there’s a lot of people who have accessibility issues.
But how do you be clear and concise? Well, you make sure you have set out category tabs on your website, that direct a person immediately to where they want to go. And then you’ll want to keep your word count to something sensible, every time you publish something new on your home page or your blog. You’ll want to be sure you’ve got at least 3 to 4 minutes of reading time to get invested in, but you’ll also want to keep the sentences flowing and easy to get through.
Niche Relevance
Before you get started with many other elements of website design, you’ve got to get to know your niche. If you know your niche, you’ll be preparing a recipe for success, no doubts about it! Seeing as no website online exists in a vacuum, after all, you’ve got to be sure you can operate inside the ‘target market’ you’re designing a business website for – a.k.a., your niche! So let’s go through it in a few more detailed steps.
You’ve got an idea for a website; the first thing you’ve got to do is a bit of research. You need to know what other websites also work in that niche, and how high their authority rankings are. If you can find quite a few low DA websites already operating there, you can be sure there’s some room for you too! But at the same time, you’ll want to be sure that the DA points aren’t few and far between – if they are, it means little to no monetization exists within this niche, and you might struggle to find a profitable relevance.
If you want low fellow authority, but still a chance to capitalise on the market, you’ll want to operate within a niche that has a lot of potential content. And this is where a good SEO strategy can come in to help you; if you manage to write a lot, over a course of 3 to 6 months as you establish yourself, you’ll build links like never before.
Because if you’ve got a lot of content to make use of, and you can write about them for a long time to come, you’ll have quite a few keywords to put to good use in your online strategy. They don’t even need to have high traffic on a word by word basis, as you’ll be able to use a lot of them in conjecture. And that’s how you’ll manage to capture niche relevance at a basic level!
Full Contact Information
If you want a customer to place their trust in you, as well as a bit of their actual custom every now and then, you’ll want to list out your contact information. You’ll want to be sure there’s a clear way for someone to get in touch with you, whether they have something nice to say or something a little more critical for you to hear. If you manage to take both, and allow people to directly contact you, you’ll provide a lot more legitimacy to your brand name.
After all, you’ve got to take the bad with the good, and even when you’re a new business with a basic business website, there will be people in both categories who’ll want to let you know what they think. And that’s good! If you receive emails or phone calls on a regular basis, it means you’re receiving a steady flow of traffic to your website! Now that’s a mark of a working website.
A Testimonial or Two
And finally, when you get them, make sure you let other visitors know about the experience customers you’ve already served have had with you. Because when you’ve got a glowing testimonial, you won’t want to keep it private!
You’ll want to let the whole world know, and if you manage to showcase it on your website, where the right people are going to see it, your need for repeat business has a chance to start taking care of itself. It’s one of the main features of website design: you want to create feelings of usability and positivity, and words literally have a lot to say.
Have You Started Building Your Website?
A business website has a lot of basic elements to it. If you manage to keep all of these in mind whilst you build your own online portal, you’ll make sure your site has the best chance for online success. A lot of it is navigating the UI, but there needs to be good content too.
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