6 Steps For Creating A Successful Website
Whether you’re starting your own business or just posting game reviews, you want your website to stand above the rest. But how do you distinguish yourself in a market already flooded with entrepreneurs? Here are six steps towards building a smart, dynamic website.
1: Choose A Template
A template is the foundation of your entire site. You can tweak code, swap images and play around with fonts until they all bleed together before your eyes, but the template doesn’t change. Make sure you’ve committed yourself to a good one that will last. If you’re unable to create your own, consider outsourcing the problem to a website builder.
2: Find Your People
Demographic information is the key behind targeted advertising. You need to know who’s coming to your site, why they like it and what is and isn’t working for them. How old are they on average? How much money do they make? How much money do they spend?
3: Form A Marketing Strategy
The first step of any viral marketing campaign is putting your brand on social media. After you’ve tweeted, tumbled and “liked,” then you can move on to bigger endeavors like video advertisements and pay-per-click links.
4: Teach Yourself The Lingo
What’s the difference between SEO and SEM? What are SERPs, and why do they matter? What does Java have to do with Chrome on Apple? If all of this sounds like gibberish to you, it’s time to get educated before you open your garden to the vultures.
5: Optimize for Speed
Not everyone will view your site on a laptop with a lightning-fast processor. In fact, the majority of Internet users browse the web from their smartphones or tablets. If you don’t want to lose their patronage, it’s important that your site is speedy, readable and accessible on all platforms.
6: Deploy Test Subjects
Once you think you’ve finished your website, recruit your friends and family to log on and play. Have them purchase something from your inventory or search through your blog for a specific post. Then gather their feedback, go back to the drawing board and hammer out all the issues you didn’t notice the first time.
These are just a few tips for creating a website that’s worth the trouble. Remember, if at first you don’t succeed, just keeping tweaking the formula until a spark catches and your business lights up the industry.
