The Internet is a marvel for many reasons: not only has it made all kinds of knowledge available to us and opened up a new channel of communication, it has also given us a new way of earning economic income, for example, through transactional websites.
It is undeniable that we all connect to the Internet on a daily basis; in fact, several studies maintain that, on average, we spend about 10 hours a day online (more than we sleep), time in which all kinds of advertising from various companies with an Internet presence reach us. As customers, the Internet is the most important medium through which merchants create in us the need to buy. But have you ever wondered what happens to all the businesses that have remained anchored in their physical premises and do not have a website that represents them on the Internet?
Those businesses are losing multiple benefits that translate into profitability. Studies carried out by Santander Group (2019) in Canada establish that “a crucial factor to promote products and services in Canada is the creation and maintenance of a professional website”. But this panorama is not exclusive to this country or North America, it is a reality that applies anywhere in the world.
If you think about it, before going to a store for the item you want, you go online and establish comparison relationships between different websites that offer the same products. Some sites you discard just because they don’t appeal to you visually, others you discard because they don’t give you a good user experience, and in others, you pay attention to the characteristics of the products and the offer, to finally decide in which business you will make your purchase.
If you own a business, you obviously don’t want your potential customers to discard your products without even taking a look at your offer, do you? That’s why you need to invest in creating a website that responds to what users need and the demands of competing in an international market. If you want to know how to achieve an optimized website, I invite you to continue reading.
Considerations to take into account before creating your website
When you have decided to create your business website and have in mind to position yourself as the best company in its niche on a local scale through the internet, you must evaluate the following aspects in order to conceive a clear idea of the design of your website.
1-Must ask yourself what you expect from your website: obviously, your main objective is to increase your income, and your website will be the tool to achieve it, so you should think about what type of website you need to attract your audience: Is what suits you is a blog where you only share content in order to sell intellectual production, such as proofreading, text editing, text writing, graphic design, among others? If education is your thing, will your website be an educational platform in which there will be a space to buy the courses you have? On the other hand, if you have an online store, will your website be a kind of catalog from which customers select the products they want and you send them by mail? Or will it be the complement of a physical store in which you only exhibit your products with the aim of more visitors to your establishment?
2-Select the type of design: now that you know what you want from your website, it’s time to think about what it will look like. This should respond not only to your tastes, should be focused on the preferences of the public you want to reach, for example, if you want to sell Korean clothing and makeup, your website should be attractive to lovers of k-pop and Asian culture, therefore, you will not use a design that reigns the color black and Gothic fonts.
An action that will serve you in this part of the process is to see how your competition is presented on the Internet, with this I’m not telling you to “steal” the idea, but you can find an element that awakens your creativity and inspires you to conceive something much better.
3- The size of your website: when you get to this point, you must choose how many pages your website will have, for example, whether it will have a blog page, a contact page, a sales page, another page where you present your company and describe its vision and mission, and so on. You should consider that depending on its size, so will be the price of the design that you will have to pay.
It’s time to create your website
When you have in mind how you want every detail of your website, it’s time to make it happen!
To speak of the creation of a website is to refer to the design of the web interface: interactive architecture, page organization, tree structure and navigation on a website; in addition, the conception of a web design takes into account the specific limitations of internet support, particularly in terms of ergonomics, usability and accessibility.
So when you’re looking for the web design professional to be in charge of your site, you should consider their portfolio and style, and think about whether they match what your site needs. Also, you must take into account their experience, since the design of web pages requires different skills, such as programming and a good knowledge of technical limitations, including: the diversity of web terminals and their screens, accessibility, the specificities of different languages and processes, and compliance with the recommendations of the W3C.
The most recommendable thing is that you establish contact with more than one company dedicated to web design and that you request a quote, once you have several quotes, you must evaluate them carefully: compare prices, read recommendations, observe their work, and so on. Finally, decide on one and let the design begin!
Once you have hired a web design company and it has completed the programming stage, you must pay attention to the quality control phase. This is where you must make sure that the website is perfect in all compatible browsers, both for a desktop computer and for mobile platforms, you must also verify that all the links on the website are functional, that the forms send emails correctly, that the data is saved in the database, and so on. If all is well, congratulations! It’s time to put your site online.
Other tools to optimize your website
With the aim of making your website better positioned in search engines and always available to your customers, you can make use of tools such as SEO services and a hosting provider.
SEO is a very specialized job and it is normal that you only know the basics if that is not your field of action, but believe me when I tell you that hiring an SEO company for your website is an investment that will give you great benefits.
With respect to hiring a hosting provider, the advantages are innumerable, but what stands out is the cost savings (which is, in the end, what we are interested in: saving costs and making profits), because you do not have to worry about hiring staff to take care of the maintenance of your website or your servers, but the hosting company does everything for you, and ensures that your site will always be available to your customers.
If you prefer, you can hire a company that provides all the services you need to make your website a success, a company like Publissoft.
At Publissoft we specialize in web design, mobile application programming, SEO services and content generation; we are also a hosting provider. Headquartered in Laval, Publissoft is recognized by clients worldwide for the commitment that characterizes us in each project.
Contact us and let’s make your business grow together.