In 2024, not having a website for your business is bad. Websites are today’s shop window and having a well-designed site vital to your business success. Building an effective website may seem daunting but there are plenty of tools out there to make it easy. It is important to have a great and functioning website, so find out what makes a good website checklist here!
Creating a Good Website from Scratch
Have you decided to build a website from scratch but don’t know why you should? Web design and development is important because it provides a good first impression for your customers. Providing a good user experience and making your website attractive may result in more people choosing your business over competitors.
Key factors that contribute to a good website include navigation, visuals and content. There is much more to it than that so below is a website build checklist you can follow to help create a site perfect for 2024.
Website Checklist
Having a website that works well is key to business doing well. See what makes a good website checklist below so you know where to start.
Define Your Website’s Purpose
First, your website planning checklist should be something you know before you even get started: what is your site’s purpose?
A website can do many things and being clear and what you want it to accomplish is a great advantage. Do you want your website to generate leads, provide information, sell products or facilitate online booking? With a clear goal in mind, every part of your site can be built towards achieving the overall goal.
Having a clear purpose for your website can cut down on build time as you don’t distracted and lost in the weeds.
Plan Your Website Structure
After you’ve figured out the purpose of your website, the next task to tick off on your good website checklist is planning how the website will be structured.
Everyone has a website now and many potential customers will turn away from your site if is confusing. Prioritising logical content organisation, making navigation simple and incorporating a user-friendly interface will help your website stand out.
You can make use of clear headlines, snappy visuals and clear calls to action to ensure customers are getting the most from your site. In e-commerce websites, structuring the site with drop-down menus and clear categories with a search bar can help people find the right products.
It’s vital to include essential pages such as the homepage, contact page and About Us page.
Choosing the Right Content Management System (CMS)
When it comes to actually building the website, you don’t have to do it yourself. Content Management Systems are online applications that manage web content – allowing you to create and edit without knowing any code.
WordPress is incredibly flexible, allowing you to create any type of website, is very easy to use and has different pricing tiers. However, the choices can be overwhelming. This might lead you to just go more basic – making it harder to stand out.
Joomla is free to use as well with payment needed for a domain name and hosting. There is a lot of flexibility, which is ideal if you want to create something complex and there are a lot of extensions available for an e-commerce site. Joomla is not for beginners and you need some more know-how to use it effectively.
Drupal is another platform that is better suited to web developers or people able to hire one. It is better suited for more complex sites with plenty of customisation on offer but this means it has a tougher learning curve.
Decide which platform is best suited for your skill level, business goals and your ideal audience.
Responsive Web Design and Mobile Optimisation
More than half the people browse the internet on smartphones. This means that responsive design and mobile optimisation need to be on any checklist for a website.
Content on your site should reformat for different screen sizes and everything should be easily readable on a smaller screen.
Navigation designed for finger scrolling, more white space, simplifying forms and keeping content concise are all mobile optimisation techniques you should consider.
Google’s ranking algorithm emphasises sites optimised for mobile, so if you want your business to appear in search results you must make it mobile-friendly.
Essential Website Elements
Every website should have certain elements, some of which we’ve already mentioned. These include:
- Compelling content – engaging content will help your site rank higher, bring more engagement and make your site have a low bounce rate.
- Engaging visuals – using non-stock images that present a consistent brand identity will help you stand out from competitors. You want to be memorable.
- Intuitive navigation – make it obvious and simple to move through the site.
- Prominent contact information – including phone numbers, emails etc helps with customer engagement.
- Clear Calls to Action – CTAs help prompt potential buyers, pushing them in the direction you want.
Optimise Website Performance
Fast-loading, snappy websites mean a better user experience. If potential customers are stuck with ponderous pages, they’ll go elsewhere.
You can optimise your page speed and loading times by:
- Optimising images – compressing visuals means they load faster whilst retaining quality.
- Caching – browsers can pre-load elements of your site, such as logos and static images, to speed up load times.
- Minimising code – some plugins help minify your code, removing unneeded elements to reduce file sizes.
Search Engine Optimisation
On any checklist for a website should be Search Engine Optimisation. Effective SEO helps your site show up high in search engine results for people looking for the products and services you provide.
Google uses an algorithm to comb through websites so it can rank them appropriately in search engine results. You should consider SEO best practices including:
- Keyword research – knowing what people are searching for and putting it in content helps your site get noticed.
- Meta tags – this is the bit of text beneath the content title in the SERP. Provides another opportunity for free advertising.
- URL structure – short, keyword-rich URLs help search engines figure out what your page is about, making it easier for them to show it to your target audience.
- Internal linking – Google always looks for pages that are linking to other pages on the site. This can help with your page ranking.
Implement Analytics and Tracking
Utilising website analytics tools can help you monitor website performance, better understand your audience and gain key insights.
Google Analytics is a popular platform. GA is free a useful tool, able to help you see how many people visit your site, the pages that are visited, how long people stay on pages and where they come from. With this type of information, you can create catered content, target particular social media platforms change your language and look to suit your audience’s interests and age profile.
It’s easy to do as GA provides a small bit of tracking code that goes into your page’s HTML. They can then process and analyse the data and provide you with insights.
Testing and Continuous Improvement
Making sure that your website stays up-to-date and is constantly appealing to your audience. You can enhance your website performance and the user experience in many ways, including:
- A/B testing – test two versions of a webpage against each other and find out which performs better.
- User feedback – asking customers what they want is the safest way to become more successful. Can come in the form of surveys – could be a part of email or social media marketing.
- Testing tools – automated testing applications can examine performance, functionality, security and compatibility. With actionable data, you can make improvements.
Get Help with Your Website Today
Refer to this article to find out what makes a good website checklist so, you can employ website design best practices and make your site competitive in 2024.
At Maxweb Solutions we provide bespoke solutions and can help with your website design and development. To know more about us and get started on a website redesign, call us at 0151 652 4777.
Posted on Friday, June 16th, 2023 in Latest News.
