The 5 Pillars of Creating a Successful Website
Posted on 04. Dec, 2009 by Dave in Tutorials
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1 – Stop Procrastinating
Many people simply spend too much time trying to make decisions about their website. While it is important to weigh your options carefully and make informed decisions, too much time spent wastefully trying to make a decision can cause a significant delay for a project.
So, what are you waiting for?
2 – Should I go Custom or choose a template?
Custom design evangelists often claim that the use of website templates only ensures that you have a design that looks just like someone else’s website. Primarily because website templates may be resold, they argue, web templates are not unique and may give your company an unprofessional, unpolished appearance, and that you should always opt for a custom site.
The truth, however, is that a good quality website template, in tandem with professional and affordable template customization, can provide you with a unique and high quality design at just a fraction of the cost of hiring someone else to do a custom design starting from scratch.
In fact, whether they tell you or not, just as a wise contractor makes good use of a blueprint to guide the construction of a building to its successful completion, every web designer also uses a template or basis as his or her guide in creating a unique and well-organized web site.
So right away, two clear advantages are time and money. Typically speaking it can take many days for a good designer to create a preliminary mockup of such quality.
Also, consider the time necessary to piece the original design into slices and the actual rendering of the design onto HTML and resources spent validating that code on all major browsers. The cost of which will most certainly be passed onto you, the client.
3 – Make some crucial decisions
Previously, most developers worked by a rule that you had about eight seconds to get the users attention once they accessed your site.
Today, the new rule is now four seconds.
Remember always: Have an undiluted clear-cut call to action. Don’t let them get distracted! Pages that have only one goal outperform the rest simply because of the fact that having two goals requires communicating two messages.
This is a really big deal, and something you should definitely take into consideration, especially if you’re seriously considering launching an online business.
Nevertheless, don’t just try to sale them something, without offering something that’s of value to them, but at the same time you have to find a valance – too many pages on the Web give great information, and then tail off, you have to have a clear call to action, and a basic system to move them through your pages and don’t use too many unnecessary graphics.
If it’s true that a picture speaks a thousand words, then it would be wise to assume that too many pictures can overlap a conversation, similarly, if you’re turned off by endless popups, grating audio and graphics that look like they’ve been lifted from the Vegas strip, then you shouldn’t expect your Web site visitors to react any differently.
4 – Optimize Your Template for Search Engines
Building a site with SEO in mind goes Hand-in-Hand with having a site that is user friendly too, in fact you can’t work towards the one without the other. Search engines love feeding web users lots of relevant content, so the more authoritative and relevant your content is, the more likely it will eventually be served. Consequently the better the users experience the better your Ranking. In other words, make pages for users, not for search engines.
First, take some simple steps to ensure that your site helps users find their content quickly and easily. For example, is your content organized in an easy-to-read hierarchical layout? Are you using HTML links on every page, and does each page provide internal links in the text to help the search engine crawler find its way around? Does your site offer a site map and do you include a link to the site map somewhere on each page? And last but certainly not least. Do your pages contain relevant information that clearly and accurately describe your content and is that text clear, crisp and legible?
Remember, optimizing your site structure has to be an integral part of the design process and must enhance the overall user experience. Furthermore, pages that are simple to navigate and don’t require much thinking on the end users part, will also be pages that are easy to crawl and index; that’s were we come in!
Foamers is committed to helping our clients achieve the highest return on their investment. And that includes adjusting your Website in order to improve its position in search results.
In reality, SEO is pretty simple, avoid using overzealous SEO practices and think about what’s best for the user. The ideal search engines and user friendly site is all about providing the user with content–rich relevant information and getting them to that information as soon and as easily as possible.
5 – Commit to Staying The Course
First and foremost, stay fresh! Having just a simple digital brochure (e.g. an online bulletin board of your services, contact page etc) simply doesn’t work anymore. Your site has to have regularly updated content. Nobody likes stale news; similarly, your sites content needs to stay fresh in order to continually hook and delight your primary audience.
Moreover as a publisher of information people will want to do business with you if they trust you and one of the best ways to build that trust is to provide the users with relevant clear authoritative content.
This involves coming up with a strategy to keep people coming back for the latest and greatest. For example, you could plan to keep up with the latest trends in the home load industry, such as mortgage rate trends, refinancing etc. Or you could feature relevant news articles, special promos, tips or tutorials and keep a regular publishing schedule (remember we’re talking long-term strategy here) so your subscribers will become used to hearing from you and, you’ll be able to gain their trust. So again, your site has to have regularly updated content.
So, be sure to follow these steps for a successful website and when you are deciding whether to to do it yourself our outsource the work, remember that as a small business owner, you should be spending most of your time running your operation, and not having to learn a new skill or new language – similarly, if you find basic word processor functions a challenge, have never uploaded an image from a digital camera to your computer or bought anything from a retail Web site, if you still haven’t set up that e-mail account you’ve been meaning to get to, it would be a very good idea to seek professional help.
Should you wish to acquire more information about our template customization services simply get in touch and tell us what you think.
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