Top 7 things to consider when building a ...

Ask yourselfWhat is important to the website owner?

Establishing a prevalent brandEvery page must emanate the brand story and mission; the word you are searching for here is consistency throughout the website. And don’t forget about the logo!

Facilitating sales by making purchase easy for readers/users Facilitate and fluidize online sales by making it easy for people browsing the website to place an order.

Turning potential customers into sales leads. Make sure that every page has relevant content, because as long as content is constantly updated and added, potential customers will keep returning to the website pages and will do what the CTAs (calls to action) tell them to do, whether it’s to subscribe to the blog / newsletter, order, submit a quote request and so on (all of these actions can be done via a form, for which you can use a fast and easy form builder).

Gathering data for measurement and future improvement. Make sure to implement measuring and data gathering solutions, choosing the best option for the client’s particular needs.

Get a full picture of what the website should look like and accomplish, ask the website owner the following questions:

What do you need the website for?

What will your website do? What do you want visitors to do

once they reach your site?

When do you want the website up and running?

What is your budget for this project?

How do you plan to get a return on your investment (ROI)?

What about content? Who will create it and when will I get

it? Who is your target market?

Have you researched where your customers hang out

online, what keywords they search for and what they want?

Which existing sites do you like the look of and like to use?

When asking what the website is for, keep in mind that in business, there are 3 types of websites according to purpose:• the brochure site• the lead generator site• the online shopYou can read more about these 3 website types here.

Before you start putting together the website

1.Ask for most of the website content to be finished before you start building. An average reader will spend a minute on a website page, but if the content doesn’t have any focus, or even worse, has errors, then 1 minute is very optimistic. How? Qualitative content and UX. Why you need the content beforehand? Because it’s much easier and will look better if you plan the layout around it (paragraph lengths, headlines).

Meanwhile...

2.Know what kind of images you will be usingCreate or get the logo first, because it not only represents the brand, but it could determine the color palette of the website as well.. A given website needs different photos: photos of products, photos with company members for the about us page, an image for the home page. Make sure the images you choose are high resolution and quality. Use stock photos as a last option.

3.Plan visitor flow Find out what the client expects the visitor flow to be like and what actions he wants them to do (via CTAs) once they arrive on the website.

5.Find a host, a domain name and keep hosting information safeYou will need to provide access to the hosting account whenever it’s needed; make sure you have the login information in a safe place. The website will be hosted online on the domain name (for which you will pay an annual fee to a register in order to have the right to use it exclusively), so make sure you and your client choose a good one. Remember: Domaines age. Trust comes with age. Buy the domain long term.

4.Sketch out the layoutIt’s a very good idea to sketch out the layout before starting to build, and more so for clients that have to approve the design, clients that seem unsure about what they want. This is a great moment to check out templates and themes, such as the RSJoomla! templates to see what matches the desired website look and feel.

6. Set up Social Media profiles After creating profiles on the relevant social media networks, you should include links to each social network on the website, in order to make it gain more traffic. The main channels are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and GooglePlus. Facebook is mainly dedicated for B2C marketing which means it’s good for reaching people and LinkedIn for B2B, for reaching companies and potential partners.

And never forget about security!

7.Implement SecurityHackers target websites that are not maintained and don’t have a security plug-in to protect them. Malware, viruses, malicious applications - there are numerous ways hackers can interfere. After you finish and put the website online, you can use a security extension to maintain it’s integrity, protecting your project.

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