Creating New Website
Creating new website takes focus and attention to detail. More times then others the business owner ordering the website has specific request. Like favorite colors they want incorporated into the design. Today, I’m going to provide some examples of what I’ve discovered over the years. How we’ve lost sales due to trying to educate the owner that it’s not about what you like. It’s all about what your audience likes and even expects when visiting your website.
What Not To Do
Take a cat lover for instance who also loves butterflies. Seeks to create a website for their plumbing service business. The logo and content is related to the service. Design colors are all about flowers, butterflies and images cats!
Another project was one of the very first websites it was about a physic. She could read minds, talk to insects and loved fairies. Insisted on animated characters. Hidden images that showed up when hovering the mouse. We made it for her as we created flash animation for advertisements so it was easy.
Problem was nobody signed up and time spent on website less than 10 second average. She actually complained to me that I should have educated her this was not the way to go. To be honest I did not know that at the time as I always thought the customer is always right!
How To Do It Right
First thing you need to do is disconnect your personal feelings, favorite things and learn how to use a color wheel as not all colors belong on a website. If your serious about competing with your competitors then you need to review 10 websites of your top competitors and find sections, parts of the different sites to give you a better idea of what your website should look like.
Don’t be too unique so much that you have to explain or educate visitors what your website is all about. Reduce distractions and most of all do you really need advertisements? You want to keep people on your website not send to 3rd party websites unless you’re not promoting your own services? Most do this to make money via clicks but a plumbers website for example this is a no no.
Different Web Page Content
Home
Get to the point, instantly and educate the visitor what your website is about and what you can offer them within seconds.. like 3 seconds so your website has to also be fast loading as well as responsive as you not know what device they are using to visit your website but I can tell you most will be mobile or hand held devices.
About
Keep this page about the business, history and information related to the company. Of course this depends what your website is about. Staying on topic is the key here. If you have 5 people working then you’d want to create a Team Page. This is where actual photos of the people each with title, sub title. If you like you can create a dedicated page for each member. Those pages can be mixed with related, personal likes and favorite things to do. Just make sure to consider no-follow rule if the pages are not going to help ranks on search engines. A business website needs to remain a business website but not be cold ya know?
Services
Images, videos and descriptions of each main service you offer should be top of the fold as most websites have two sections when viewing. Top half and the other half when you scroll down – don’t make the pages a mile long. If you have lots of services then you need to index them and make a directory page linking to each one. This is very good for SEO but do not make it complicated.
Prices
Everyone wants to know how much this is going to cost them. Save time for everyone and just put it out there, no need to hide what they will eventually find or figure out. This will help with reducing calls that waste everyone’s time – “Hello, how much do you charge for…” as you really want them to ask – “How soon can you come fix this or that..” – Right?
Gallery
Again, stay on topic don’t put in those butterfly or photos of you and your cat just yet. Galleries are great for before and after or even step by step tour of whatever it is your promoting. Dentist have always gotten this right as it’s exactly what they are about – before and after. Cropping images is important, clear and no do not upload 10 MB photo to a website as each image must be optimized for the web to not only look good but to also load quickly.
Contact Form
Keep this simple, especially if your into sales and not make them register, signup etc just to contact you. Name, Email and Message is perfect for most forms. Now if it’s a landing page, even better is Email only so you’ll have an automatic process in place that sends them an email with a link to continue the process you want them to follow. This way you get the email and it’s very fast for someone to enter 1 thing and you can follow up if they do not continue. It’s ok to send one email with a notice this is a one time notice or opt out option link or instructions. Do not SPAM anyone.
Links
So many websites link to non-related websites and if they are not using the no-follow method in the link then they are loosing link juice, not helping the other website or even their own. No-follow should be used for any link that is not related to your website. Also, do you really need or want to link to another website and take the attention away from your website to another? Don’t think about just visitors – think bots and what they do with the information impacts your ranking on the web.
More Than One Project?
Do you have many different interest, more than one service or types of businesses? Then you should consider creating new website for each one and do not link them to each other. If you do, then you’ll want to have them on different hosting accounts or unique IP addresses so you get the link juice. In other words say you have 10 websites and all on one hosting account and all linked to each other. That’s the same as you being at home with 10 friends saying the same thing to each one – they all know it’s you and already heard it 10 times. Bots on the internet will hear only one and if you have duplicate content on each then they will ignore you.
In Conclusion
If your creating new website and want it to succeed you should start by requesting a Free Consultation with us as we’re happy to help you! Even if you do not choose our services we’re happy to help you get your project going in the right direction from the get go!
