Design and website hosting.
What is included in your design package? Do you have your domain name registered? Who is paying for hosting and extras?
By asking the right questions, thinking about your direction and clients needs, your website will be a tool that helps you achieve steady growth. A user-friendly online presence will build trust in your products or services, creating a stable loyal customer base.
What is included in your design package? Do you have your domain name registered? Who is paying for hosting and extras?
Do you need your logo updated? Will you need custom graphics done? Do you need permission to use partner logos or copy right information? Will you need to hire a designer to create graphics?
Who in your company is going to write the original content and who is responsible for ongoing maintenance of the site? Do you want a blog? Information can become out of date quickly.
Do our want a custom video? Do you have all your product, business and staff photos done? Will you need a videographer for YouTube or Vimeo tutorials?
Are you going to sell product on your site? Do you have a payment processor in place? Are you complying with data security regulations?
Web design can be deceptively difficult, as it involves achieving a design that is both usable and pleasing, delivers information, builds brand, is technically sound, and visually coherent.
Let us help you accurately describe what you want your website to do. You don't need to speak our language, but we do need to know about your business and online strategy.
What might you need in a website? Here’s a list of possibilities:
• A completely new website
• An update/new functionality for your website
• Increased traffic to your website
• A better conversion rate for your website
Let’s break this out into what we often hear related to these needs:
• I need a new website
• I need a couple of changes made to my website
• My SEO is terrible, I need more traffic
• I have great traffic but no one contacts me
These are normally followed by “how much?” and/or “how long?” We will be able to answer these questions once we have more details of your business and clients, the following will help you see what we need you to consider and plan. We can help you from start to finish with all website design. Take a look at the questions and start thinking about them now.
A Complete New Website
A website can be anything from a one page simple site all the way to a database driven, responsive website. Most websites are in the middle area and chances are your new site falls in there somewhere.
What we need to know at this point are the who, what, why, where, and how?
• Who is this website for? Describe your target audience and clients.
• What is this? Is it an eCommerce site, a portal, a basic site? What is it’s intended purpose?
• Why would this audience want to visit your site? What makes this site unique?
• Where will the traffic come from? This applies to the demographics of your audience as well as the devices on which the site is viewed.
• How do you measure success? Is it traffic? Sales? Contacts?
You might already know what features you want your website to have. Great! It will still helps us to know the answers to the questions above so that you get the best website design. Understanding these things will help suggest functionality and pages you will need.
Update Your Website
Simple edits aside, we are referring to major updates to your existing website. For these, what we really need to know is the why? We need to understand what your goals are in order to come up with the best solution.
• What is the update in your own words?
• What is the purpose of the update? What are you trying to accomplish?
• Do you have what’s needed ready or is this in the planning stage?
Having this information makes the process quicker. We can give you the best estimate and you have a thought out plan for the updates you want to make.
Increased Traffic to Your Website
What your looking for is SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing). What does that really mean? You don’t just want visitors, you want the right kind of visitors. You want potential clients. So, how do you get these types of visitors? First, you have to know what they need from you. Are you giving them the content and information they are looking for on your website?
Before you start looking for more traffic, try answering the following:
• How are you currently updating your website content? What updates are you making? How often?
• Do these updates matter to your target audience?
• What is your ongoing content strategy? Do you blog? Is it useful to your target audience?
• How are you sharing this content with your target audience? Are they responding to it?
Instead of obsessing over numbers, you should obsess over people. Make it part of your mission to build and maintain a website with a content strategy that focuses on the needs of your audience.
You Have Lots of Traffic But No New Clients
This is called conversion and means that someone saw a call to action , product or service on your site and acted on it.
A lack of conversion could be the result of a few issues:
1. The traffic you are attracting is not interested in your product or service.
2. You have good traffic but the site is not designed or built for them.
3. You’re simply not asking for the sale or contact.
Poor design can drive traffic away, if your site is to busy, hard to read or navigate. If you your site is not responsive, meaning it doesn’t function well on all devices like mobile and tablet devices.
• Want someone to fill out a form? Ask them.
• Want someone to join your newsletter? Ask them.
• Want someone to buy something? BUY NOW!
Make your site easy and obvious. People don’t want to spend time looking for the information they need. Answer their questions fast and efficiently once they are on your site.
