8 Important Points to keep in Mind while getting a Website Designed for your Business
1. Reflect Your Brand: You must have a clear idea of what your business represents and how it should be represented (relative to the competitive landscape). Choose four or five descriptive words to sum up your essence, the qualities you want to convey, the tone and attitude of your business. Then make sure all your communications, including your website stick to these qualities. Try to select a color theme, and visual style for your brand as well as a verbal style. Consistency is reassuring and aids in recognition and loyalty. Building a well-conceived brand gives your business a personality and evokes emotional characteristics unique to you.
2. Communicate your USP: Every business, service, or brand should have a developed “Unique Selling Position” (USP) and impart that uniqueness not only on its website, but as an identifier in all it’s communications, advertisements, etc. Your USP might be you, so feature yourself prominently. But more likely it will be your profession or your products or service. You must be the best at what you offer, or the best value, or the most convenient, or something that makes your customer or client want to use you and not your competitor. Find your USP and emphasize it.
3. Be Direct: Websites need to serve their users. The easiest way to do this is to present information in a friendly concise manor. Whatever tone you adopt, make sure you keep it simple and direct. And always be consistent.
4. Expand Communication: Using your website to announce new offerings, products or services or even market trends in your industry adds another layer of opportunity to enhance your reputation and increase sales.
5. Be Memorable: Try not to use templates that give your site an impersonal look. Use great images and a coordinated color scheme that is unique. Consider your target audience and make sure your website represents you in a way that your clients would appreciate. Being bold or unexpected is OK as long as you remember that communicating clearly is your primary goal.
6. Great, Clean Design: Website design today is a fairly mature undertaking compared to the sloppy, experimental, and underdeveloped days of the 90’s. What once seemed more than adequate may now be lacking. Part of this is because our minds are so good at seeing improvement all around us. We then integrating that new knowledge into our expectations of everything else we see. As we see more examples of cleaner, or more useful website design, with better layouts and content delivery systems, we become achingly aware of sites that are dated, confusing, seem standard or funky or whatever. We are beings who constantly improve ourselves and expect enhancements in the world around us. We know that users want the most important information right away, simple and direct. Try to keep it simple, but be rich and attractive. Keep font use to one or two families with most of your text as html so search engines can index your site properly. Choose a color theme and stick to it. Keep headers/footers consistent on all pages so that no matter where on your site a user journeys they will understand how they got there and how to get back. Put yourself in your users place and list everything they might want; prioritize the list and present the most important things loud and clear followed by the next most important and so on.
7. Use Industry Standard Conventions: Don’t use templates, but don’t confuse users either. Logo and navigation placement is fairly consistent among top websites (top left corner) and that’s because people get used to things and then expect them. Registration and search areas are usually in the upper right area. Don’t forget a contact page, an about me/us page, a testimonial area, a policies page, site map at the bottom and have a blog if possible. It may seem that this “conformity” could stifle unique design or weaken your efforts of differentiation… That’s wrong. People who design cars don’t reinvent the wheel to create something new and beautiful. They take what people require and expect and make it new, different and unique in every other way possible. I see exciting designs almost every day that wow me yet also stick to standards.
8. Simple Navigation: Use as few navigation headings as possible and certainly no more then 10. If you have more pages try to group them in drop down menus to keep things neat and organized. Navigational hierarchies are your friend as our minds naturally categorize and organize information in a similar manner. If you must have a long list of items, each with their own page, order them alphabetically and keep the list vertical on the left side. Use mouse over changes to confirm which areas are links. Again remember your purpose and keep it simple.
If you would like to have a great website for your business contact me@rishavraj.com
14 Responses to “8 Important Points to keep in Mind while getting a Website Designed for your Business”
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A friend of mine just emailed me one of your articles from a while back. I read that one a few more. Really enjoy your blog. Thanks
Hello there! Quick question that’s completely off topic. Do you know how to make your site mobile friendly? My web site looks weird when browsing from my apple iphone. I’m trying to find a template or plugin that might be able to correct this problem. If you have any recommendations, please share. Thank you!
@Tignanello : Its always better to have s different website specially customized for the Mobile Phones. You can surely find many templates around the google to suit your need. Let me know your website so that i cna find one for you.
contact me@rishavraj.com
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Thanks Dela!
Hey is there a problem to see this site on fireFox ? it’s seems like some text are missing in the menu. any way it’s was a very helpfull, and I would defintly let my friends see it.
No, I dont think there is an issue with the website on firefox at my end. if you could send me the screenshot, i shall see and rectify if there’s a problem
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Thanks Leland!
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