Social networks are ubiquitous, so much that many companies thinks that ditching the website in favor of a Facebook page is enough. Are they right? We don’t think so. A company’s website is still one of the most important part of a business strategy: it represents you digital identity.
A well organized website can make the difference, we all know this, but which are the parameters that make your site stand out? A good visual impact is important but is not the only metric we should use to evaluate. There are others, less evident but not less important. Underestimating them could worsen the user experience and, in some cases, penalize you position is search results. Try to focus on the following details if you are creating a new website for your business, or in the case you’re upgrading an existing one.
When you are evaluating the layout remember there are many devices, not only computers with big screes. Most people now surf the Internet on a smartphone so your site should be easy to navigate and read on mobile devices. Especially on those devices, we shall say.
If it takes a few seconds to load your site there’s a problem. Both your homepage and all the content must be loaded instantly if you don’t want to bore your users and push them to visit another page even before yours is loaded.
You site could have jaw dropping visuals but your efforts will be wasted if a potential lead have to navigate trough a series of menus just to find basic informations like phone number, email and address. Make sure this infos are in evidence: the contacts sections must be prominent.
Being online is not enough. If you want people to visit your site you must fulfill it with contents, quality contents. A good numbers of well written articles or blog posts not only attracts new visitors: it increase brand loyalty with the current audience. Which kind of content we can consider “good”? Of course this depends on the product/services you’re offering, which of course define your specific target.
A good UX combined with quality content could be useless if you don’t think in a SEO perspective: people won’t find your articles. You should make decision about SEO since the beginning of the project: the names of the sections and picturs, the titles of posts, the metadata…a lot of little details that on long term will help you in escalating the first positions in search results.
At this point you’re probably asking yourself with is the best solutions for your site. Better to opt for the simplicity or WordPress together with a professional theme or to pay someone to customize WordPress for your convenience? Maybe you need to start from scratch, skipping WordPress at all and investing in a good programmer? Well, there’s not an answer. It depends on your needs and your budget, but we’ll go more in depth about this in the next article.
