Some people think that you build a website and that’s it; you leave it and other people look at it. But it doesn’t work like that. Not any more.
These days, you need to go through a bit of a research, planning, and creation process to make sure your website is going to work for you and not be a waste of time. Here’s an outline of this process from our experience:
- Customers: determine who your customers are; are they other businesses, retail customers, small or large businesses, young or old customers?
- Outline: what do you want your website to do? For instance, is a going to be a store, a blog, somewhere for you to display your services, or where customers can book appointments?
- Plan: outline how your site will display pages and content. For instance, list out or bullet-point your home page, product or services pages, about us page, contact page, and any others that you’d like, such as your store, booking, or gallery pages. keep in mind that it’s a good idea have some testimonial content too, either on a dedicated page, or as individual snippets throughout your main pages.
- Prioritize: determine which features of the site are of the utmost importance, which features can be rolled out later, and which are of low priority. For instance, if you ultimately want to sell online, that can take a while to setup, so it’s generally a good idea to get your basic site live first, so that your SEO can start working for you whilst you are building your online store.
- Content: Collect your content together; this is all of your text, product or service info, pictures, logos, and contact details.
- Layout: Now start laying out your pages; where you want your text, pictures, menus, etc.
- Create: once the pages are sketched out, you can design them in whatever website software is appropriate to your project.
- Review: once ‘version 1’ of the site has been completed, review it, make any changes, then make it live.
- Expand: Now that your initial site is live, you can move on to developing and rolling out your more advanced features. like you web stores, booking calendars, and so on.
- Review and Revise: Once all of your features are live, it doesn’t stop there. To keep your site fresh and relevant, you need to constantly review, revise, and update it so that it stays working for you.
Now, this can be a long, drawn-out process in some cases, but we are here to help. We will advise and help as much as we can during the initial stages, but obviously, much of the research and collection of content is down to the person or business who need the particular website in development.
On the flip-side, once the outline and content has been passed over to us, we then have the onus to get the job done, and of course, we’ll correspond frequently to ensure we’re all moving in the right direction.
This kind of working methodology is commonly known as ‘growth-driven design’. It means that you don’t have to get everything done at once, that you can create a good-sized portion of your online presence to get you going and your SEO working whilst you work on other features.
Just like social media, websites are a constantly changing beast; change is good, Google likes to see sites change, adapt, and grow, just as your business does. And if we can help you grow your business online, then that will affect you offline too. It all works together, and we’re happy to help you wherever you need it.
Contact us to find out more.
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