Building your first website is not an easy task. Your business will have a unique set of requirements that its online presence needs to meet and there are dozens of services out there for you to choose from when you are looking for the best website builder. Your company’s reputation will rest on the strength of its site, so you need to optimize performance, functionality, design, and usability to make sure that your prospective customers are impressed. Letting just one of these elements slip could mean that a potential client or customer will turn to your competitors instead.
Make Your Homepage Informative And Attractive
Your homepage should communicate the core message or selling point of your business straight away. Attention spans are decreasing and there is a staggering amount of online content out there, so getting to the point is very important. Users will naturally scan your site for the information that is most relevant to them, and a site that is overly complicated will make this more difficult.
There are some tactics to help you to streamline your design and keep the attention of your audience. Reducing the amount of text on the page and trying to use some more white space will stop content from overwhelming your users. Large headings help users to find the information that they want and that is most relevant to them. If you using calls to action (requests for the user to do something like press a signup button), make sure they are obvious and don’t add too many. A website development company can help you to get this right.
Make Menus Easy To Navigate
It’s important not to overcrowd your site with too many menus. Ideally, you want to have no more than five drop-down tabs at the top of your homepage, but the fewer you can have the better. A lot of options are confusing and will look messy. If you need more links, consider putting options like your Contact Us, Opening Times, and About links in your footer to free up some more space.
Make sure your website is accessible, as not every user will be able to appreciate all the elements on your site. Google also rewards sites that make an effort to be accessible to users. Test your site with a screen reader.
Pick The Right Domain Name
The domain is the central part of your web address and is very important. I learned this the hard way. My previous domain name was lifeinahouseoftestosterone.com, which, at the time, accurately reflected my blog and circumstance. One mom in a house of three grown men. However, with the addition of “testosterone” in my domain name – many people thought I was a website to sell testosterone therapy, supplements, treatments, etc. It got very discouraging as the true meaning of my website was lost on most of the world wide web. So I then changed it to lifeinahouse.net – which was in keeping with most of my social media channels. It’s been a great transition except for the fact that I’ve lost years and years of “clout” with regards to domain name and page authority. I basically was starting a new blog from scratch with the domain name change.
A domain name should be easy to communicate, so choose words that are easy to spell and pronounce. Avoid punctuation and slang. If you can, use .com, as this is best known to users.
If it’s likely that your business 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 San Francisco, using a domain such as SanFranciscoClothes.com will allow you to sell different products down the line while using a specific domain such as SanFranciscoTShirts.com will be more limiting to you later on.
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