These days, a website seems to be a digital essential for a business. With dozens of tools available as well as the massive flow of workflow on the market, there’s a way to build a website for any budget (even completely for free).
With the spiking growth of social media, businesses use their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn accounts instead of a corporate website. While it makes some kind of sense, here’s why we believe that businesses shouldn’t dismiss building websites.
1. Custom and good for branding
Technically, there are other ways for your clients to find out your business exists. You can start a blog on a ready-to-publish platform, run a social media account, etc. However, all these platforms have a fixed range of features so there isn’t much room for standing out.
By creating a custom website, you give clients a chance to remember your business. Where you choose to build a website by yourself or hire a PHP developer, you’ll have every way possible to unleash your creativity. With all the creative themes, sliders, fonts, and page layouts, a business owner stand a real chance of being remembered and rocking the first impression which is not what you can say about social media accounts.
2. A website gives you more power than a third-party platform
As easy to manage as a simple Google Blog might at times be, you’re always limited. Any platform you invest your time and resources in can simply stop exist or change the algorithm in a way you couldn’t have possibly imagined.
In that sense, the website equals freedom. You won’t struggle all because a platform changed its page layout and no one likes the new version.
3. You won’t miss out on digital audience
Even if you’re a local business with a physical store, a cafe, or a training center, having a digital presence will be extremely convenient. You’ll lure the client on the stage of decision-making when he’s too busy to actually visit the place and is just browsing through offers.
Also, looking for new hires, investors, or PR will be easier if you introduce them to a company’s website. This way, all the interested people will be able to have an opinion about your business without wasting no one’s time on calls and meetings.
How to make your website stand out?
Having the website is important. However, it creates new challenges for businesses as well as monetary difficulties. Paying for hosting and domain, constantly following up on website maintenance, investing in an average developer salary and promotion- it’s a lot to handle. It’s important that all of this work is worth doing and pays off.
In order to make sure that your website does what you were building it for - making sure your clients love your company at first glance. Let’s see at a few ways to do it.
1. Killer mobile experience
We’ve been actively using smartphones for almost two decades now. However, it seems like the mobile versions of websites are a little slow to catch up. Till these days, there are a lot of web pages that are not only unpleasant but borderline impossible to use.
Make sure your website is mobile-friendly. There are tools to test the level of mobile optimization of a webpage - so use those. If you don’t want to pay for a professional test, ask your friends and family to open your website on a smartphone.
While chasing mobile optimization, make sure the size of images aligns well with the one of body text. Icons and header sliders can be a mess too - make sure they don’t stand in the way of the main blocks of the page.
Responsive web design can also be a way to go for a killer mobile experience. It improves cross-platform optimization of your website as well as the way it’s displayed on different screen sizes.
If you’re looking for ways to improve mobile experience, be sure to take a look at technology stacks for web development. There, you’ll find frameworks and tools for mobile optimization.
2. Improve the website speed
These days, no one has time to wait. Between dozens of dinging messengers, constant inbox notifications, and your website, the last one is not so likely to win, especially if it loads for 2 minutes.
Website speed is way more crucial than a fancy page design that takes a lot of time to load. Here are a few ways to speed up your website and improve user experience:
Install Google Page Speed and use its insights;
High-traffic websites have to use a content delivery network (CDN);
Use plugins for image optimization;
Install caching tools.
Optimizing loading speed is a low-hanging fruit. With just a few quick actions, you can make your webpage rocket fast.
3. Constant updates
A good web development project changes constantly. New techniques and practices are used by developers - you don’t want to stay behind. We have all seen the websites that look like they are over 10 years old. Chances are, that’s really the case.
Even if your website is old, it doesn’t have to be obvious. Make sure you have the best website design possible and update code every once in a while to keep speed, style, and layouts as modern as possible.
4. Fill your pages with compelling content
Looks are important. However, they are just a part of a great image. A website that hits a home-run is the one not only with an intuitive user interface but awesome content as well. Don’t be boring and corporate - add jokes to your pages, come up with interesting stories, and creative narratives.
Most importantly, make sure the content is useful and relevant so that a client can’t help but come back to you. For developers, for instance, writing pieces on new trends is a way to go. It could be a post on how to use python for machine learning or the overview of data science applications for businesses.
Finding something to write about is not a challenge as long as you follow the industry, catch up on industries, etc.
Conclusion
Regardless of whether you are a freelancer, an owner of a local business, or a creator trying to monetize his hobby, you shouldn’t dismiss the value of your own business-oriented website.
A website is your space to express a company’s creativity and vision. Unlike social media platforms, on your own webpage, you’ve got all the freedom. You can either build it by yourself or hire dedicated employers that will do all the work.
A great website needs to stand out. To make sure you make the best first impression possible, use the following techniques:
Create an unforgettable mobile experience;
Improve website speed;
Update page design, as well as the front-end and back-end code to keep your page modern;
Write compelling content.
Those are, obviously, just a few of the many possible techniques. However, those are exactly the tried-and-true approaches you can use to make your website stand out among others in no time.
Also, if you constantly keep an eye on your website, it’ll pay off in full. The websites that are constantly updated and checked upon are cheaper to maintain - you’ll reduce development costs quite well.