Creating A New Website - Top 10 Tips

Designing and maintaining a website is part art and part science.  To help maximize the engagement for your new website, we recommend considering these Top 10 Tips when planning your next website project.

#1. Use Pictures & Videos To Tell Your Story

Unfortunately, the old “Reading Is Fundamental” no longer applies. Studies show that customers focus more on pictures and videos today to learn about your brand, products or services. So use visuals that evoke an emotion and keep your copy to a minimum, leveraging bulleted copy and well-honed headlines whenever possible. Best practices include:

• Utilize authentic pictures of your team, work, products, events, etc.
• Use of high-contract visuals can draw your visitors attention to a key product, call-to-action or value proposition
• Consistently leverage key visuals across your website and social media properties to build brand cohesion

#2. Make Sure Your Site is Fast

Make sure it’s fast because if it takes too long to load, customers will easily get impatient and will leave your site before they even learn what you do.

• Utilize tools like Google’s Page Speed Insights to test the speed of your site. Test your website here.
• Loading speed also affects your ranking within search engines like Google
• Make sure your videos and images are optimized on your website

#3. Secure Sites (HTTPS) Are A Must

If you see that little padlock in the address bar of your web browser, you're visiting a secure website. Even if your website is primarily an informational site (and you're not selling products or services directly from your site), it's still highly recommended to use HTTPS.

• Having a secure website improves your rank on search engines
• If your customer is visiting your unsecure website from their work computer, in many cases access will be blocked by the customer’s employer 
• HTTPS protects the integrity of communication between a website and a user's browsers. Your users will know that the data sent from your web server has not been intercepted and/or altered by a third party in transit

#4. Use Backlinking Strategies

A “backlink” is simply a link from one website to another. Search engines like Google use backlink as a ranking signal because when one website links to another, it means they believe the content is noteworthy.

• Backlinks are especially valuable for SEO because they represent a "vote of confidence" from one site to another
• If many sites link to the same webpage or website, search engines can infer that content is worth linking to, and therefore also worth surfacing on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

#5. Design for Mobile First

Globally, over 68% of all website visitors came from mobile devices. While it’s important to ensure you website looks great on desktop, tablets and mobile devices, you should design with a “Mobile First” strategy in mind. Ensure the following:

• Make it easy for customers to “Click to Call” my business
• Contact Forms are optimized and simplified for mobile users
• Site navigation is simple minimal options
• Make copy large enough for easy reading

#6. Use Animations

Draw your visitor’s attention to key calls-to-action and pieces of information that are most important by adding animations. For instance, add a bounce animation to your “CALL NOW” button to ensure customers know how to reach you.

#7. Less Is More

When listing product options and service options, keep the list as brief as possible and order them for best engagement:

• Reduce the number options a customer can choose from. Too many options can stop the decision process completely
• Limit the number of fields to complete on your forms
• Focus on one call-to-action
• Linking to social media pages from your website is great but only for networks where you are active
• List your most important products first

#8. Use Color To Set The Tone

Every color evokes a different emotion. The use of an exhilarating red is great for high-energy brands like fitness companies and adventure travel. Use of complimentary blacks and golds can portray a premium look & feel for financial services companies or high-end luxury brands.

• Pick a color palette and stay consistent across your website and social properties
• Choose a primary color and then set rules around supporting and accent colors
• Ensure your chosen colors play well together and create a consistent balance

#9. Make Text Easy To Read

Everyone wants their brand to be unique and to stand out but be certain to stick to fonts that are easy to read. 

• Don’t use an obscure font. Pick a font that is very easy to read
• Use concise headlines. Less is more
• Leverage white space to draw a viewer’s eyes to headlines and important copy points
• Ensure the font size on all devices is large enough (but not too large) to easily read

#10. Do It Yourself (DIY) or Hire A Professional?

A lot of people see ads on TV and online from companies like GoDaddy, Squarespace, WIX, etc. promoting how easy it is to build a website yourself. It's true that tools and technology have come a LONG WAY over the past decade to allow anyone to create a website themselves fairly easily. The thing they don't tell you is that it takes marketing skills and design experience to properly utilize these canned website building tools.

It's important to consider the following when deciding to Do It Yourself or to Hire A Professional:

• Are you a good copywriter?  Your website should be well written and free of mistakes
• Do you have an eye for design?  Pictures and videos create emotion and drives action. Building a website that looks beautiful is an art 
• Are you confident using a computer?  Many business owners are amazing at their job but work with their hands or minds every day and aren't even comfortable using a computer
• Do you have great pictures and videos for your business?  Great websites require great content.  If you don't have access to quality pictures and videos for your site you will need to buy them.  Professionals pay for access to great content and can save you money today and in the long-run
• Do you have free time at work?  Many business owners never find the time to update their website so it gets stale and outdated.  This is usually because it is time consuming to work within a website platform when you don't use it all the time.  An expert knows how to update your website quickly and can do something in a fraction of the time it would take a novice to complete the same task