How to Create the Perfect Website
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Whether you’re starting a professional blog or creating a website for your business, it’s important to make it the best it can be. Web design can be more complex than you might realize, and even though there are plenty of online website builders that you can use to make this process easier for you, you still need to put some thought and care into how you want it to look. Below are some useful tips to help you create the perfect professional website that will keep visitors returning and hopefully put your site high in the search engine results.
Fresh Design
If you are using a website builder, they will offer you a selection of templates to work with. Your website needs to reflect your brand, so choosing color schemes that match your logo is wise, and minimalist design is often better. This doesn’t mean that your web pages need to look boring, but this will help to stop them from feeling cluttered and messy. If you want to use your website as an online portfolio of your work, set out the images neatly on a separate page labeled ‘portfolio’ so that this is kept in one place and easy to find. You can see some examples of excellent webpage design here.
Consider Translation Issues
If you want your website to be accessible to your followers all over the globe, you’ll need to factor in the different languages that they will be reading your site in. Some website builders might automatically translate your website for you, but often these translations aren’t accurate, which can make your website look unprofessional to your foreign audience. To make sure that this isn’t an issue, consider hiring experts in website translation to make sure that the language is correct. This is a must for companies that work with foreign clients and have a strong market in another country.
Make Sure It’s Easy to Navigate
As well as making your website aesthetically pleasing, it needs to be easy to navigate as well. This means that each page on your site is labeled clearly, and you must make sure all the links work correctly. Otherwise, this can be off-putting for your website visitors and make it feel amateurish. Try to carry out regular checks from your website dashboard if you can to ensure that things are working correctly at all times.
eCommerce Tools
If you’re going to sell products via your website, you’ll need to make sure that your customers can make purchases securely on your online shop. Again, most website builders will offer eCommerce tools for you to do this, but some are better than others. Look into what the most popular eCommerce platforms are to help you choose the best website builder for your business so that your customers are getting the best service and secure shopping experience on your site.
Create Fresh, Relevant Content
All of the content on your website needs to be of a high standard. Always check for grammatical errors, as these again can make your site appear unprofessional, and this will be off-putting to your followers and customers. On the home page, make sure there is a paragraph or two that clearly states what your company is about or the reason why you have created this website if you’re trying to set yourself up as a professional blogger. You can include an ‘About’ page which can go into more detail, or use your home page for this purpose if you prefer. You should also include contact information, and if you can, have an email address that is linked to your website as this will look more legitimate.
If you’re going to sell products via an online shop, you need to be smart about your product descriptions too. A few brief sentences promoting the product should be written, and you need to provide product specifications so that your customers know what to expect. For example, if you’re selling furniture, the measurements need to be listed alongside the material the piece is made from. You should also make it clear that customers will have to pay postage and packaging on the top price of the product, so they are not surprised when they get to your online checkout.
Learn About SEO
Another thing to keep in mind when creating content is SEO tactics and link building. By carefully selecting keywords and including links that are relevant in your content, whether that’s to another page in your website or an external site, these can help you raise the ranks of the search engine results. You need to be mindful of this as it will help the discoverability of your website by increasing traffic, which hopefully should turn into sales for you if you are selling products on your website. If you’re not sure about the best way to go about this, take the time to research these strategies and how they work so you can get the best results.
Keep it Up-to-Date
If you want people to keep coming back to your website, you need to give them a reason to do so. Keeping your site up-to-date is a must, whether that’s changing contact details when they change or uploading new products to your site and taking down ones that you are no longer selling. You should also be mindful about how often you're posting on your website’s blog, as if your last post was months ago, people will assume that it is no longer active. If you’re worried about finding the time to continuously create this content yourself, look at getting guest writers involved so they can create relevant blog posts for you. It might be someone you know in the same industry as you, or you could hire freelance content writers to do a few for you instead. Either way, you need to keep your website fresh if it’s going to retain visitors and attract even more.
If you’re preparing to create a brand-new website for your business or to promote yourself as a freelancer, blogger, etc., use the tips above to help you create the perfect site that will best represent your brand.