Startups can jump headfirst into competition with other firms if they have a great website and an online presence. Building a website is as simple as choosing a web hosting service, buying a domain, selecting a template, filling it with good content, and publishing it for the world to see.
But if you want a website that’s seriously successful, you should understand the following 11 points about website development and maintenance.
1. UI/UX Design
UI and UX stand for User Interface and User Experience. Basically, you need to understand the UI/UX design of your website to ensure it’s designed with your target market in mind.
Think about colors, navigation, domain name, branding, and calls to action, among other things. The layout and overall design should exert a major psychological impression on your users. It will guide their response and encourage or discourage future visits.
2. Downtime
Businesses that have network performance issues lose revenue and business opportunities during each outage. By using a reliable network performance monitoring tool, you can easily identify dead zones, reduce network outages, and enhance website performance.
3. Typography
The text of your website is one of the design metrics that has the greatest impact. Text that’s too large will make your content look puffed-up and amateurish; but if it’s too small, readers will have to squint to read it and get annoyed (and most likely just click out).
Additionally, you don’t want to use fonts that are difficult to read. Stick to sans-serif fonts such as Arial for the best online reading experience. Avoid using multiple fonts as well. As a general rule, a website should use a maximum of three fonts, but two is preferable.
4. Security
Many websites find themselves subject to an attack simply because they don’t have proper security measures in place. If you think you’re not going to be a target because you’re a small business, think again. Many hackers target small organizations because they so often lack adequate security.
In fact, 43 percent of cyber attacks target small business. Unfortunately, only 14 percent of such companies say they have sufficient security to minimize their vulnerability. Installing security plugins, two-factor authentication, and encryption on outgoing information can decrease the risk.
5. Site Performance and Speed
Errors in functionality will significantly slow your website and affect visitor satisfaction. People won’t read your content if it loads too slowly.
On average, a consumer will abandon a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Optimize your website for speed and performance. Minimize HTTP requests, reduce server response time, enable browser caching, allow compression of larger files, and enable other speed-encouraging measures.
6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Most entrepreneurs have heard of SEO before, but do you know how it applies to your website? Certain essential plugins will promote your site’s SEO, such as Yoast SEO.
If you know a little coding, you can also build SEO tags into the framework. This will make it easier for your website to be categorized in Google’s caches, which will create a better connection with your target audience.
7. Plugin Options
There are plugins to handle a variety of your website needs. They can alert you to security breaches, optimize your site for SEO, collect subscribers, back up your website, cache your files, and handle many other functions automatically.
Explore plugin libraries for your preferred website creation tools and add the ones that will keep your site running quickly and at optimum performance.
8. Competitiveness
Everything that happens online entails a huge competition, and business owners should be aware of what their competitors’ websites look like before they design their own. This will give you ideas about what works, what doesn’t, and how to capture your target audience’s attention. It will also help you avoid creating blatant copies of your main competitors’ work.
9. Responsive Design
In case you haven’t heard, responsive web design is absolutely critical to a successful business website. About 60 percent of Internet access takes place on mobile devices, but 91 percent of small businesses don’t have their website optimized for mobile use.
This has become the industry standard, so companies who accept this and incorporate it into their websites will instantly have the high ground.
10. Basic Coding
You don’t need a web design certificate, but some basic knowledge in coding will be substantially advantageous. Try to learn the terminology and the kinds of coding requests that your website type often involves.
Even if you choose to use a template, your coding knowledge can help you customize the design and make your website more secure. You’ll save time and money on repairs in the future, have a better idea of project timelines, and be able to communicate with your web developer more readily.
11. It Costs
Up front, you may have to pay for your domain name, hosting service, templates, web designers, and plugins. This may cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. Then there’s the cost of repairing and maintaining your website through its life.
This cost is absolutely necessary, of course, but you’ll want to be prepared for its impact on your business. It’s one of the most essentials considerations when launching a website, and it can certainly shape the final product.
Allocate sufficient budget that you’re able to do your website right the first time.
