You may be a start-up thinking about a new website, or an established business considering a revamp of your existing website. If so, here are my top tips for a great website.

Knowing what you want to achieve from your website is crucial to measuring its success. This may seem obvious, but I speak to lots of people who don't really know what the point of their website is!

Is it to sell your products, generate enquiries, build credibility, or a combination of the above. Once you know your goals you can build your website to focus on achieving those.

Your domain name must make a good impression. Here are my top tips for a great domain name:

Make it easy to spell. Try not to use slang or abbreviations.

Keep it short. The shorter it is, the easier it is to remember and less potential for error.

Use the best domain extension. Try to always make it a .com domain name (rather than .biz .net etc.) 

Facilitate future growth. Don’t pigeonhole yourself, your business may be very different in a couple of years.

Make it SEO friendly. Where possible have an SEO-friendly website address that includes keywords and geo-location; for example, “www.Bournemouthplumbingservices.com.”

Avoid numbers and hyphens. They may be misunderstood when telling someone the domain name.

Make it memorable. It is important that people will remember it in the future rather than having to search for you over and over again.

Hosting services can cost anywhere between £2 to £100+ per month, depending on the kind of technology and support you choose. 

Here are some guidelines for choosing a good website hosting plan:

Although you can get a “shared server” hosting plan for as little as £2 per month, this is not advisable. Shared hosting means you are sharing a server and its resources with potentially hundreds or even thousands of other businesses. This has a negative effect the performance of your website.

A “dedicated server” is the most expensive option and can cost can from £100 upwards (sometimes even £2,000 per month or more). It would make your website perform optimally. Having a dedicated server plan means that the physical server machine is entirely dedicated to your site; therefore, all the resources are yours and it is more secure than a shared hosting plan. However, it is much more expensive than what most small businesses usually are willing to pay and will be overkill for most small businesses.

The compromise I typically recommend is a “virtual private server” (VPS) hosting plan which provides the best of both worlds. The cost ranges from around £20 per month.

It is important to let people know who you are and what you do immediately so there is no confusion when they visit your website. Make sure your main homepage banner and subsequent banners are an accurate and visual representation of what you do. Also, have an introductory text (a strapline) near the top of the page that describes your business.

A content management system (CMS) is a software program or application that is used to create and manage digital content. A good CMS will help you manage and update your site, easily and quickly.

 

Having a good CMS can potentially save you thousands in fees to your web designer.

Converting visitors into customers is the whole point of your website. To achieve this your website must be interesting, engaging, and easy to navigate. Here are a few suggestions to help achieve this.

• Know your target market. What do they want from your site and make it easy for them to achieve.

• Ensure you have an intuitive navigation system that allows users to get to the pages they need quickly. 

• Make it easy to find contact information wherever someone is on your website.

• Have multiple call-to-actions (i.e. “learn more” or buy now” buttons).

A.I. websites are a new page in website technology. They have a significantly higher conversion rate than regular websites, giving you more leads and customers.

The concept behind A.I. is straightforward: it is about creating a unique website experience for every visitor. This is accomplished by changing the content and experience of the site based on things like time of day, the number of previous visits, the visitors' location, the device they are using, and much more. A.I. works automatically, leaving you with more time to work on your business rather than in it

SEO improves how far up the search results on each search engine you will appear. Once your website is “crawled” by Google, Bing, or other search engines, it competes with other similar websites. As a basic rule of thumb the better your website content is, the higher you will appear on search engine result pages (SERP).

SEO mainly includes the following practices:

• Keyword research and implementation
• Fast loading speed
• Being secure and having an SSL certificate
• Having a mobile-friendly site
• Building high-quality backlinks 
• Having lots of positive reviews online (Google, Facebook, Trip Advisor, Trusted Reviews etc.)
• Using internal links throughout your site to keep people clicking and reading
• Using social media to link to your site (LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.)

SEO is an ongoing process that can mean the difference between showing up on the first page of the search engine results and having lots of traffic or on page 50 where no one will wind you. As the joke goes – “where is the best place to hide a body? - On-Page 2 of Google!

New quality relevant content is extremely important and will improve your SERP rankings. It is incredibly important that you plan to create and publish new content. Blog posts are a great way of doing this. You can then publish them both on your site as well as other websites. If you want to appear higher in search engine results you will have to regularly update your website with new and relevant content as frequently as possible.

Testimonials are also great content for your website. As well as additional content they also provide ‘social proof’ which is reassuring for prospective customers who are thinking of using your service

Creating a website is easy, creating a great website is very difficult. there are lots of factors to consider, including the design, content, navigation, technology, visitor experience. Getting it right can be the difference between your business growing exponentially or failing.

If you have the combination of skills required and the time to invest in building a brilliant website, then great.  However it is important not to undervalue your time.  Ask yourself how much more beneficial would it be if you spent all those hours on all those other activities that you need to complete?  

If you do not have the time or expertise required, you should hire a professional.  A poorly constructed website will not only have wasted all of your time but will also have a negative impact on your business and reputation.

The good news is that there is no need to spend hundreds or thousands of pounds upfront to have a fantastic website that grows your business.  Overt Digital Media can build you a website from as little as £65 per month.

So get in touch today and find start growing your business.