Regardless of what kind of business you own, a website is crucial to your success. As a concise overview of the products and services you provide, sites help keep your target audience updated and allow full insight into your business activities.

With the advent of the internet and the rise in social media, the way a business interacts with its audience has changed completely, making it even more important to have a website where customers can view your brand in full form.

With that said, creating a website is not an easy feat, and there are multiple factors to be considered before you jump right in.

Let’s clear one misconception first: you don’t need to know how to code before creating a website. In fact, with platforms such as WordPress that can make the entire task extremely easy, you don’t need any experience in website development.

So, here are seven things you should definitely consider before you create a kickass website for your brand:

The Goal Of Your Website

Many people rush into the technicalities of building a website but fail to focus on why exactly they’re creating one, especially if they’re creating it by themselves. It’s quite easy to get a website wrong and end up creating a blog, whereas you intended to create an e-commerce site.

For starters, you should know, there are two kinds of WordPress – WordPress.org and WordPress.com. While the former allows you to host your blog or website, upload a CMS, and incorporate WordPress plugins, the latter is hosted by WordPress and operates as a blog.

Other platforms, such as Squarespace and Wix, are quite user-friendly and are suitable for beginners. Let’s take more a look review of WordPress vs 3 of the Top Website Builders to have an option definitely. However, if you’re in search of something more advanced for your business, then WordPress.com is the way to go.

What Your Customers Want

So, you’ve taken the plunge and are ready to set up your own business. Or perhaps you have an age-old business and want to modernize it. Do you know who your target audience is and what exactly they’re looking for? More importantly, though, how are they going to look for it?

Market research is an ongoing process for any business, and no time is more critical than before a significant change is introduced. You need to be spot on about the demographics of your audience and what they’ll respond to. These aspects are dynamic and might not even change six months down the line, which is why it’s always important to know what your audience wants.

Getting A Professional Onboard

This is no secret: a professional might be able to do a better job than you. If you don’t possess the necessary skills and experience in building a website, you should definitely ask someone who has the relevant experience in the field.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because everybody else is doing it, means you can do it, too. You might learn this lesson the hard way once you’ve wasted your time and money.

While many online guides and blog posts claim you can become a webmaster after reading 5 minutes of content, chances are other vital factors, such as the design and the communication will be compromised. Instead, invest where you should and hire a professional to build the website if you need to.

With many options available in the market, you’ll easily be able to find someone who not only suits your requirements but suits your budget, too.

Research is vital: check out this list of the best web design agencies. Established professionals can help you build a well-designed website to get more traffic and keep it there.

Marketing Your Website

Just because you’ve invested a lot of time and money to build your website, it doesn’t mean customers will start flocking in. When your website is about to or goes life, your attention needs to be shifted towards your online marketing tactics.

People won’t just find your website automatically, and chances are your SEO will take a while to kick in. Thus, it’s best to look towards other marketing techniques, such as social media marketing and email marketing.

Social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, are excellent platforms to promote your site at a low cost. On the other hand, email marketing and even paid search are great options to encourage visibility of your website.

Think About Your Domain Name

While you may be offering the best products and services in the market, if your domain name is too difficult to remember, and is a combination of random letters and numbers, chances are you won’t be able to build a go-to website,

Brainstorming a business name isn’t an easy task, and you need to ensure it’s unique, memorable, and interesting. In other words, it needs to pop into your target audience’s mind with ease. Secondly, your domain name should always have the name of your business incorporating to it.

A handy tip is to purchase a domain name that’s old since that’ll come with additional SEO benefits. Older domain names often give backlinks and pre-existing traffic and help build your SEO ranking in a short period.

Create Seamless Navigation

Before building anything, it’s always better to map it out. Having a sitemap in place is an excellent way to boost your ranking since it helps search engines such as Google to find your website’s pages.

Which brings us to our next point: don’t clutter your website. Navigation on your website needs to be seamless, and your website should be organized. It will be better if you can express it in a visual way by generating a visual sitemap. Think about the different pages you want to incorporate and how you can make it easier for your audience to find what they’re looking for. Too many options will confuse people while too little will make them think you lack what they need.

For starters, your website should definitely have the following:

Home page

About Us

Products

Contact Us

Blog

For this aspect, you can also track your competitors and see what works for them to determine what pages your site needs to incorporate.

While your navigation needs to be seamless, it should be fast, too. Through load balancing, you can balance multiple requests received from your users and provide top-quality customer experience.

Focus On The Design

This goes without saying, but the design of your website will make or break it. A website that looks like it’s straight out of the ’90s will turn people away, while a website that looks and feels as if time and effort were put into it will have people clicking further.

An aesthetically-pleasing website with engaging content and user-friendliness will enhance your brand and help boost your ranking. Also, ensure the visuals, and overall content falls in line with the rest of your brand image to ensure they aren’t miles apart.

With the right focus, creating a kickass website will be quite straightforward. With many guides available to learn from and countless experts to hire, you’ll be able to create an excellent site in no time. With anything, it’s always important to monitor your progress and keep track of website analytics to determine what your next step should be and how you can improve.

Do you have any other tips of what one should consider before creating a website? Sound off in the comments below!