Our thoughts on...
Setting up a new website is not easy and we will all make some mistakes when we are doing this, However, it can be important to learn form the mistakes of others so that we do not make the big mistakes that others do.
Most people have some sort of monetary goal when they build a website. Whether it is to advertise their business, sell items online or get money through affiliate links, there are very few people that will be happy to put lots of effort into putting together a website without considering how they will make money from it. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with being ambitious, it is important to understand that if you make it obvious that it is all about the money then it will be off-putting. This is where you need to design your site very carefully. You need to make sure that you put your visitors needs first. Provide them with things that they need and want and then slip in money-making opportunities for you. For example, if you want to make money from affiliate links then provide your visitors with lots of information, perhaps reviewing products and providing them with lots of other related information while slipping in a few links. If you are selling things, provide something as well. So if you are selling, food items, perhaps provide them with recipes, healthy eating advice, history of those food products, information about the manufacturer etc so they get a whole experience rather than just a shop.
Spending more money than necessary can be a big problem for anyone in business. However, there are some times when it is necessary to spend money or else you just do not look good. One of these is your domain name. These are relatively cheap and so it is not likely to break the bank and it will just give your website a much more professional feel. If you are looking for advertisers on your website, they will not take you seriously if you do not have your own domain. You will also find that you will be able to gain a lot more trust from potential customers if you pay for a domain. It can be tempting to start out with a free one to test the market and then decide if you need to buy one. The problem with that is that you will have to redirect everyone to your new one and wait for all the search engines and directories to change their listing and you will need to change everything you have with your website address on. It is a whole lot easier to just start off with a paid domain that you can always use.
It can be tempting to think that if you have a broad niche then you will be able to appeal to a lot more people and so it will be a much more worthwhile thing to do. However, if you have a specific niche it will be much easier to target your specific market. Also, visitors to your site will immediately know who the site is for and what it is about. They are more likely to connect with most of the content on your site and will be more likely to create money for you, whether through affiliate links, buying things in the shop or viewing adverts. It can be much more lucrative than just trying to attract everyone in the world but actually not being of interest to anyone.
It is really important that your site visitors can get a feel of you and what you are like from your website. It can be easy to think that a business website needs to be very formal but that is not the case at all. Visitors want to feel like they are connecting with you or the business and that they know something about you. This will all help to built trust and they are more likely to revisit and buy things or generate income for you in other ways. Think about the tone of your website and the information on it and make sure that it portrays you in the right light.
Many people feel that if they have a really good product or a lovely website, then they will be able to make sales. Sadly, it does not work like this and it is important to make sure that you do promotion to make sure that people know that your website exists. There are many promotional methods but making sure that you come up high in search engines can be really important. This means that you need to make sure that you not only have the right tags in your website but you have content that search engines like. This tends to mean lots of informative text which is natural, rather than being stuffed with keywords, well written and to the point.
It is so essential to utilise social media. Modern businesses must ensure they have a presence on all leading social media channels. It will take time to keep up with it, but you need to make sure that you are posting on there and responding to comments etc. You can schedule posts and even use someone to do it for you if you have trouble keeping up with it.
We can offer you a full range of services including graphic design, web design, e-commerce builds and developing digital resources of any level of complexity. We can create both a trendy web design that will cause the “wow-effect” and a well thought-out technological interface.
