To get the best possible website design solution for your business, you first need to understand what you need from your new website. What specific results do you need it to generate? With those questions answered, you can start to think about how to build your site.
Here’s what all websites must include in 2018:
Website Look and Ease of Use
The Home Page – your website’s home page should make it immediately clear what you have to offer your visitors. Your website home page should also offer visitors quick ways to contact you including a phone number they can click on using their smartphone, and in most cases a contact form or easy link to a page where they can submit a written inquiry or request.
If you only service a specific geographical area, like the “San Francisco Bay Area,” use some sort of visual image and or icon reference to this area and include it in the text content as well. Let the visitor know that you’re local right away.
Attractive Design – Your website needs to look good and jive with your brand. Deciding how you want to be presented to your audience is a great first step. Find some websites that you like and share them with the web design company you are considering, so they know what you’re looking for and can more easily provide you with a mock-up that you will like.
Mobile friendly web design – this has been important for years, and has become critically important as more website traffic comes from mobile devices. Google, in fact, has begun to rate websites by their mobile performance above desktop browser performance. So, your mobile responsive website should look good and be easy to navigate on ANY device that someone might use to browse it.
Website Performance
Speed – Website speed is incredibly important. Many studies have shown that essentially, the longer a user has to wait for a page to load the more likely they are to leave your website. As internet speeds accelerate, especially on mobile devices, users are becoming impatient. Google recognizes this too and say they will deduct SEO points for slow loading websites! Test your mobile website speed here.
Maintenance – Once your new website is launched you will need someone to maintain it. Website maintenance should include updates to enhance security. At a bare minimum you’ll want to keep contact information up to date, but most business websites will have additional periodic updates for new offers, promotions, photos of current work, staff changes, and much more. With WordPress websites much of this content is simple enough for a novice user to handle, however you’ll still want someone to call for style/design changes, security issues, and troubleshooting.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Every business can benefit from being easier to find on search engines. Some businesses rely more than others on organic website traffic (online retailers, publishers, service companies, startups), but all businesses will benefit from more prospects finding them online and contacting them. If no one can find your website it might as well not exist. Think about choosing a company that can not only provide a great design but also helps you outrank your competition on Google and other search engines. More on SEO.
Now that you understand some of the most important aspects of designing a new website you’ll want to ask the right questions to narrow down your list of web design companies.