Website Essentials
Your website serves as the first impression of how you represent your brand, your business, and your purpose.
Your website, its contents, and how it’s designed can make or break your business. Just like a brick-and-mortar storefront represents your business’ physical home, so too does your website represent your business’ digital home. From the moment a person walks into your store/office or lands on your website, an abundance of conscious and unconscious messages about your brand are received in their minds. By acknowledging this, you can ensure that your website does an excellent job of representing your business.
Your branding sets the tone for web design.
Before a website is ever started, it’s crucial to establish your branding beforehand. The website is where your branding is applied. The logo(s), the typography, the colors, and the imagery developed in the branding phase, now have a place to shine. Without branding in place, the web designer has no direction which leads to inconsistency and communicating the wrong impression to customers.
Beautiful and professional photography enhances credibility.
There have been so many times I have worked with clients who wanted an amazing website but had zero photography to showcase on their site. People need to see images of you, your team, your place of work, and what you do on your website. You can read more about the value of brand photoshoots here.
The words on your website matter.
Website copy should be planned and written before web design begin. I always suggest using an outline format in a word-processing software like Google Docs to type out your content and share it with your web designer. Your wording also improves your website’s SEO (search engine optimization) so it’s important to use key terminology that relates back to your brand strategy.
Your homepage must immediately communicate what you offer.
The homepage of your website should include what you want your viewers to know about your brand at first glance. An introductory statement(s) and call to action should be visible and clear. The rest of the homepage contents should outline and preview what your business’ products and services offer.
Responsive web design ensures optimal viewing on different devices.
No matter if viewers are interacting with your website on a computer, mobile phone, or tablet, your website should be designed and optimized for the best viewing experience. According to the latest data, nearly 60% of all website traffic comes from people using a mobile device.
Website analytics help you measure success.
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Usually, website platforms like Squarespace have built-in analytics, but I always take it a step further and integrate Google Analytics for a more in-depth view of the analytical data of my client’s websites. Being able to track your website analytics will give you solid data to help you improve your branding strategy.
