Much of a company’s reputation rests on the strength of its website. Performance, functionality, design, and usability must all be optimized to ensure prospective customers are impressed by your operation. Letting one element slip could see them turn to your competitors, impacting your bottom line.
But to build a website is no mean feat—your business will have its own unique set of requirements and there are dozens of website building services to choose from. Lots of questions also need answering before you dive in. Do you want a content-rich site, or simply a landing page and some links? Do you prefer a simple and sleek or busy and informative design? How much are you willing to pay for your new site?
To help answer these questions and ensure your site is the best it can be, we’ve put together this top 10 list of the most important tips for building your first website.
Your homepage should immediately communicate your business’ core message or selling point. In a world of decreasing attention spans and immense quantities of online content, getting to the point is vital. Users will naturally scan your site for the most relevant information to them, and overcrowding your site can frustrate this process.
A few tactics can help you streamline things and keep your audience’s attention. Reducing the amount of text and employing more white space will stop your content from overwhelming users, whilst large headings will help them find the information most relevant to them. And if you are utilizing calls to action—requests for the user to do something, such as a “buy now” button—make sure they are obvious and don’t add more than three or four.
2. Make your menus easy to navigate
It’s also important not to overcrowd your site with menus. A good rule of thumb is to have no more than five drop-down tabs at the top of your homepage, but the fewer the better. Many options can confuse users or look untidy and unfocussed. If you need more page links on your site, consider placing options like Contact Us, Opening Times, and About in the footer menu to make space further up.
3. Pick the optimal domain name
The domain is the central part of a web address—in https://www.itproportal.com/, for example, the domain is “itproportal”—and is one of the most important things about your site. People should find it easy to communicate, so choose words that are simple to pronounce and spell, and avoid punctuation and slang. If possible, use a “.com” domain suffix (technically, these are called “Top Level Domains” or TLDs), as it carries prestige and is most well known to users, as opposed to “.net”, “.co”, and the like.
If it’s likely your operation will expand into new business areas, it’s also worth not including your exact product in the domain. For example, if you run a t-shirt store in New York, using NewYorkClothes.com will allow you to sell different products down the line, while NewYorkTShirts.com is more limiting.
4. Use a scalable and secure web host
Finding the right host for your site is the next step after your domain name. For the uninitiated, a web host is a service that stores your site on the internet. When your domain is accessed by a user—for example, if they click on it on Google—they are taken to the site that it is linked to on your hosting account.
Cheap shared server web hosting providers can cost as little as $3 per month, but these tend to be slow and lack security, especially if your web traffic increases. A dedicated server set-up means you rent your own standalone server, and this is by far the most expensive option—costing $100 to thousands of dollars per month. In most cases, a virtual private server (VPs) is the best bet for all but the most traffic-heavy sites, and offers most of the security and scalability of a dedicated server but for $20–$70 per month.
5. Produce accurate and engaging content
The length of time users spend on your site and how likely they are to revisit is linked to the quality of your content. To ensure that you keep up with the competition, it is essential to produce interesting and thoroughly fact-checked content. Indeed, Google’s search ranking partly depends on whether a site’s information is authoritative and reliable, as well as how long most users spend looking at it.
Try to tailor content to your niche. If, for example, you’re selling a visual product, large, high-quality imagery is your best friend. If you’re selling something more technical, readable and waffle-free prose may be the way to go.
6. Make sure it’s mobile friendly
Half of all web traffic comes from mobile users and Google favors mobile-optimized sites. To boost your rankings and attract a larger audience, it is essential for your website to appear well on a mobile device. Thankfully, most web design services will include a mobile-friendly version of your site as standard, or even a responsive web design which can accommodate all devices—including TVs and tablets.
7. Cultivate backlinks
When a link appears in text on a site, this is referred to as a “backlink” to the linked site. Google ranks higher in its search results those sites that are linked to by other reputable sites such as BBC News, as it views these as an indicator of reliability and good content.
As a new site, getting other sites to link to you can be difficult, but producing consistently high-quality content should pay dividends eventually. If you’d rather take a more direct approach, asking other sites to link to your content can work. But be careful—Google might penalize you if it finds out you’ve been using dishonest tactics.
8. Choose some keywords
Mobile optimization and backlinks are two tactics that fall under search engine optimization, or SEO. But keywords—common terms and phrases that users enter into search engines—are perhaps the most important aspect of SEO. Including them in your site’s content gives you a better chance of drawing internet traffic.
It’s easier to rank highly for specific, niche long-tail keywords—for example, “cheap oil paints New York”—than for broader and hyper-competitive keywords like “art”. Your audience size may be smaller, but the traffic that does reach you is more likely to be interested in your content.
9. Use a respected content management system
A content management system, or CMS, is a digital platform that allows you to manage, create, or modify content for your site without the need for technical knowledge. It handles the “back-end” code, so you can focus on the visible side of things.
By far the most popular CMS is WordPress. Most developers know WordPress well, so finding a freelancer or agency to help build you a site within its ecosystem is straightforward. Another popular option is Squarespace, which is ideal for those looking for a sleek design on a budget, and also allows you to build a website from scratch.
10. Install web analytics
There are many good reasons to install web analytics on your first site. Firstly, it provides you with information about the users who visit your site, including their age, gender, location, device, and interests. You’ll also be able to see how they interact with the site—such as how quickly they exit, what they search for, how long they read for, and much more. Analytics are also inexpensive—Google Analytics, for example, is free to integrate with the main CMSs, including WordPress.
But the main reason to install web analytics is that it can help shape the strategy and success of your business. By having greater insight into your audience and customers, you will be better equipped to consider which products, markets, and advertising efforts to focus on and which ones to sideline.
Summary
Building your first website is an exciting process, but it’s not without challenges. Ensuring your domain and CMS are the right fit for your business requires careful consideration and planning, whilst SEO optimization can become a technical rabbit hole of keyword tweaking. However, these top tips provide a good grounding for first-time web builders to make a site that suits their business’s needs, or for simply approaching a prospective developer with confidence. To take the next step toward getting your site made, take a look at our preferred web hosting services of 2020.
Much of a company’s reputation rests on the strength of its website. Performance, functionality, design, and usability must all be optimized to ensure prospective customers are impressed by your operation. Letting one element slip could see them turn to your competitors, impacting your bottom line.
But to build a website is no mean feat—your business will have its own unique set of requirements and there are dozens of website building services to choose from. Lots of questions also need answering before you dive in. Do you want a content-rich site, or simply a landing page and some links? Do you prefer a simple and sleek or busy and informative design? How much are you willing to pay for your new site?
To help answer these questions and ensure your site is the best it can be, we’ve put together this top 10 list of the most important tips for building your first website.
Your homepage should immediately communicate your business’ core message or selling point. In a world of decreasing attention spans and immense quantities of online content, getting to the point is vital. Users will naturally scan your site for the most relevant information to them, and overcrowding your site can frustrate this process.
A few tactics can help you streamline things and keep your audience’s attention. Reducing the amount of text and employing more white space will stop your content from overwhelming users, whilst large headings will help them find the information most relevant to them. And if you are utilizing calls to action—requests for the user to do something, such as a “buy now” button—make sure they are obvious and don’t add more than three or four.
2. Make your menus easy to navigate
It’s also important not to overcrowd your site with menus. A good rule of thumb is to have no more than five drop-down tabs at the top of your homepage, but the fewer the better. Many options can confuse users or look untidy and unfocussed. If you need more page links on your site, consider placing options like Contact Us, Opening Times, and About in the footer menu to make space further up.
3. Pick the optimal domain name
The domain is the central part of a web address—in https://www.itproportal.com/, for example, the domain is “itproportal”—and is one of the most important things about your site. People should find it easy to communicate, so choose words that are simple to pronounce and spell, and avoid punctuation and slang. If possible, use a “.com” domain suffix (technically, these are called “Top Level Domains” or TLDs), as it carries prestige and is most well known to users, as opposed to “.net”, “.co”, and the like.
If it’s likely your operation will expand into new business areas, it’s also worth not including your exact product in the domain. For example, if you run a t-shirt store in New York, using NewYorkClothes.com will allow you to sell different products down the line, while NewYorkTShirts.com is more limiting.
4. Use a scalable and secure web host
Finding the right host for your site is the next step after your domain name. For the uninitiated, a web host is a service that stores your site on the internet. When your domain is accessed by a user—for example, if they click on it on Google—they are taken to the site that it is linked to on your hosting account.
Cheap shared server web hosting providers can cost as little as $3 per month, but these tend to be slow and lack security, especially if your web traffic increases. A dedicated server set-up means you rent your own standalone server, and this is by far the most expensive option—costing $100 to thousands of dollars per month. In most cases, a virtual private server (VPs) is the best bet for all but the most traffic-heavy sites, and offers most of the security and scalability of a dedicated server but for $20–$70 per month.
5. Produce accurate and engaging content
The length of time users spend on your site and how likely they are to revisit is linked to the quality of your content. To ensure that you keep up with the competition, it is essential to produce interesting and thoroughly fact-checked content. Indeed, Google’s search ranking partly depends on whether a site’s information is authoritative and reliable, as well as how long most users spend looking at it.
Try to tailor content to your niche. If, for example, you’re selling a visual product, large, high-quality imagery is your best friend. If you’re selling something more technical, readable and waffle-free prose may be the way to go.
6. Make sure it’s mobile friendly
Half of all web traffic comes from mobile users and Google favors mobile-optimized sites. To boost your rankings and attract a larger audience, it is essential for your website to appear well on a mobile device. Thankfully, most web design services will include a mobile-friendly version of your site as standard, or even a responsive web design which can accommodate all devices—including TVs and tablets.
7. Cultivate backlinks
When a link appears in text on a site, this is referred to as a “backlink” to the linked site. Google ranks higher in its search results those sites that are linked to by other reputable sites such as BBC News, as it views these as an indicator of reliability and good content.
As a new site, getting other sites to link to you can be difficult, but producing consistently high-quality content should pay dividends eventually. If you’d rather take a more direct approach, asking other sites to link to your content can work. But be careful—Google might penalize you if it finds out you’ve been using dishonest tactics.
8. Choose some keywords
Mobile optimization and backlinks are two tactics that fall under search engine optimization, or SEO. But keywords—common terms and phrases that users enter into search engines—are perhaps the most important aspect of SEO. Including them in your site’s content gives you a better chance of drawing internet traffic.
It’s easier to rank highly for specific, niche long-tail keywords—for example, “cheap oil paints New York”—than for broader and hyper-competitive keywords like “art”. Your audience size may be smaller, but the traffic that does reach you is more likely to be interested in your content.
9. Use a respected content management system
A content management system, or CMS, is a digital platform that allows you to manage, create, or modify content for your site without the need for technical knowledge. It handles the “back-end” code, so you can focus on the visible side of things.
By far the most popular CMS is WordPress. Most developers know WordPress well, so finding a freelancer or agency to help build you a site within its ecosystem is straightforward. Another popular option is Squarespace, which is ideal for those looking for a sleek design on a budget, and also allows you to build a website from scratch.
10. Install web analytics
There are many good reasons to install web analytics on your first site. Firstly, it provides you with information about the users who visit your site, including their age, gender, location, device, and interests. You’ll also be able to see how they interact with the site—such as how quickly they exit, what they search for, how long they read for, and much more. Analytics are also inexpensive—Google Analytics, for example, is free to integrate with the main CMSs, including WordPress.
But the main reason to install web analytics is that it can help shape the strategy and success of your business. By having greater insight into your audience and customers, you will be better equipped to consider which products, markets, and advertising efforts to focus on and which ones to sideline.
Summary
Building your first website is an exciting process, but it’s not without challenges. Ensuring your domain and CMS are the right fit for your business requires careful consideration and planning, whilst SEO optimization can become a technical rabbit hole of keyword tweaking. However, these top tips provide a good grounding for first-time web builders to make a site that suits their business’s needs, or for simply approaching a prospective developer with confidence. To take the next step toward getting your site made, take a look at our preferred web hosting services of 2020.
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