First Steps to Building a Website 

So now you’ve decided you definitely need a website for your business, what should you do next?

1/  DEFINE WHAT YOU WANT YOUR WEBSITE TO DO

Whether you are using a professional web design company or tackling the job yourself, the first thing you should do is clearly define exactly what you want your website to do.  What sort of clients are you hoping to attract?  What sort of image are you hoping to present to your customers?  Do you want a simple website to act as a means for prospects to make contact with you or do you need a fully functional ecommerce site with all the bells and whistles and hundreds of pages to show off your product range? 

2/  WHAT MAKES YOU DIFFERENT FROM YOUR COMPETITORS?

It’s always a good idea to use your website to focus attention on what YOU do differently from your competitors.  For example, an insurance broker might wish to focus on some case studies which illustrate how his personal service has really helped his clients in moments of crisis – quite different from the more impersonal approach offered by a large, faceless organisation.  Make it clear to your site visitors why they should use you rather than your competitor down the street.

3/ SIMPLE RULES

Whether you are designing your own website are asking a professional web designer to do it for you, there are a few simple rules to follow which will help you achieve the best results and also entice those search engines to bring customers to your door. As we’ll find out, there is more to it than just coming up with a colourful design…

When a search engine scans your website, it DOESN’T care about the colourful graphics and Flash animations you might have included in the design. What it DOES look for is written content. It is the words on the page that entice the search engines, so it’s important to include plenty of keywords and phrases (ie, the sort of search criteria someone might type into their search engine when looking for your type of business) in the text.

The first thing a search engine looks for is the header to your page. So it makes sense to use headings which correspond to the search terms your target customers may be looking for. For example, a page title such as ‘Company name - web designers in Windsor’ will work better than ‘Our websites are the best’ because no one is likely to type ‘our websites are the best’ into their search engine…

When setting out the navigation links on your site, keep it simple – for the benefit of your visitors AND the search engines. As far as possible, aim to name your pages in accordance with the ‘search term’ rule mentioned above too.

When designing a page layout, consider the colour scheme.* Does it fit well with the colours of your company logo? Are the words easy to read (ie, not too small) with strong lettering on a white background? Finally, if you are using graphics on your pages it is best to resize them to optimum size first using a graphics editor. If you upload a huge image to your site, THEN resize it, it will slow down the page load time considerably (and probably look odd as well).