The Basics of Website Development and How It Can Help Your Business
A website is essential in marketing your business and gaining a competitive advantage in your industry. It gives your potential customers a way to know your brand, learns about your products and services, and contact you. A website can also be a platform where you can sell your products and control the whole customer’s journey.
However, before you can enjoy these benefits, you must first have a website designed and developed for your brand. This is where website development comes in and you will find in this guide everything you need to know about it.
What is Website Development?
A website is a file saved on a server that different people can access through a web browser on their computers or smartphones. To create the said file, you will need to perform various tasks and use a variety of tools collectively referred to as website development. These include coding, server configuration, chatbot integration, WordPress website development, e-commerce website development, digital marketing website design, copy and content writing, and content management systems.
Why Your Business Needs A Website
The difficulty of building a website can turn some business owners off to the idea. However, this task can easily be outsourced to a website development agency. Although hiring someone will cost more than doing it yourself, building your website by an agency is the more logical and practical approach since website design has a significant influence on how potential customers perceive your brand and act on what you offer to them. Furthermore, you’re getting the expertise and experience of professionals who have done it for other businesses. Now, if you’re still hesitant due to the cost or necessity of it, read on to find out how your business can benefit from having a website.
Adds credibility to your business
A significant number of people see a business’ website as proof of its legitimacy and expertise. Some people would even ask for a business website, instead of a contact number, when a friend refers to them. Moreover, a well-designed website can also give you a good first impression on those who only just learned about your brand.
Attract new customers to your business
A website is equivalent to a storefront in the digital world. With a majority of your customers spending a significant amount of time online, you have a good chance of capturing new leads and expanding people’s awareness of your brand.
Saves you time
Your website can give answers to common questions and inquiries from your customers. This gives you more time to do more urgent or important things for your business.
Provides round-the-clock marketing
Your website is up 24 hours a day and seven days a week. This gives your brand a marketing method that does not have any office hours or any human limitations.
Helps you position your brand
Your business’ website gives you control over how people see your brand. It lets you create content to inform customers about your products or services and make your brand more relatable to the customers you are trying to attract.
Makes it easy for people to find or contact you
A website makes your contact information easily available to your potential customers. You can even embed a map so they will not have any problems locating and going to your office or store.
If you’re worried about spam email or would rather answer inquiries at your preferred time, you can use a custom contact form for visitors to fill in when they want to set up an appointment or inquire more about what your business offers.
Display your products and services
You can use your website to show the products you offer just like how a traditional store uses a display window to attract people to come in. If you provide services, you can show them the results that you have created for your customers.
Gives you a place to show reviews and testimonials
If you have been in business for quite some time, you already have some customers who can say good things about your brand. Let potential customers know the good things they say about your brand by displaying these on your website.
Why Professional Website Development Matters
Simply having a website is not enough for your business to have the success other brands experience online. Your business must have a professional website design that has the following characteristics to create positive results for your brand:
- Competitive web design to help your brand stand out in its niche
- Polished look and functionality
- Provides a user-friendly experience
- Responsive web design for optimal mobile viewing
- Valuable content for your target audience
- Original and readable content
- Compelling copy for your target audience
- Clear calls to action
- Optimized for its targeted keywords and search engine indexing
- Accessible contact and location information
A professional website developer can help you build a successful business website through the characteristics mentioned above. Although it will cost you, the benefits your brand will experience from having professional help for your website are too just too good to pass up.
Benefits of Professional Website Design
It can be difficult to learn website development and designing your website on your own will only take you away from running the business. This is why it is best to hire a website development company to do every step of the process for you. Moreover, having a professional agency develop your website will give it the following benefits:
01
Makes it easy for potential customers to navigate your website
Your website should make it easy for your visitors to navigate through its different pages. Doing so will give you a better chance of effectively communicating your message, and influencing your visitors to act on your offer.
This is not as easy as it sounds since this requires good design and continuous optimization for your website. But, working with the best web designers will help you create a good user experience and compelling content for your website.
02
Enjoy the benefits of search engine optimization
The best website designers understand the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) and take conscious efforts to implement it into your website. Here are the benefits that you can enjoy from having your website optimized for search engines:
- Get free high-quality organic traffic for your website
- Reach your target audience on the internet
- Improve people’s awareness of your brand
- Maximize your results from content marketing and pay-per-click advertising campaigns
- Improve credibility and trust among your target audience
- Establish your brand as the authority in your niche
You are more likely to lose the mentioned benefits if you use a website builder. Although it will help you save time and money, the trade-off is not worth it for the long-term success of your business.
03
Create an original design for your business
You cannot create an original design with a website creator. Although these services let you change its layout and resize some elements, the overall theme is still based on a pre-built template. Because of this, you will still have significant limitations on customizability from web design software.
On the other hand, web design experts will code your design from scratch. This gives them full control of every web page design element. Even if they base your site’s design on a theme, a program does not limit its options and they have complete control of its code.
04
Create attractive and valuable content on your website
Web design goes beyond having the code and layout for your website and a website development service knows this. It is for this reason they work with a team of writers and graphic designers to provide the content for your brand to effectively communicate its message to the target audience. Furthermore, visual cues are critical for effective audience engagement and conversion.
05
Attract more visitors to your website
A website will put your brand on the internet. But, to have your target audience see your product or service, website development by a professional is necessary so people will want to visit and browse your website.
06
Increase sales or appointments
Web developers know how to place effective calls to action. With their help, a line of text or an interactive button for your call to action becomes more effective in getting the clicks you want. As a result, you sell more of your products or schedule more appointments and consultations for your business online.
07
Improve your engagement with your target audience
A well-designed website is effective in engaging your target audience. With professional web development, your audience can easily read written content, view images, and watch videos on your website.
Moreover, a good web development company will include tools that will let your audience interact with your brand. These include features like interactive chatbots that will give them instantaneous answers to their queries and direct messaging features for more in-depth questions.
Important Things to Know Before Starting the Website Design Process
Before you start planning or coding your website, there are a few pieces of information required for a successful custom website design. Here are a few questions that website development consultants ask to determine how they will design your website for you:
What are your goals for your website?
You need to determine the goal of your website before you start building it. Do you want it to attract leads for your brand? Is it for selling your product? Is it for providing information to your target market? Whatever your goal is, it will guide every design decision that will be made during the web development process.
Who is your target audience?
Identifying your target audience will help you create a website that appeals to them. You can research the different demographics of your current customer base and use this information to create buyer personas. You can also analyze the websites of your competition and use what you find for building your website.
How will you apply your branding to your website?
Your brand’s graphic design assets must be applied to your website's custom design to align it with your business. This will have a significant effect on creating a consistent look for your brand and making it easier for your target audience to recognize it.
If your brand still doesn’t have a logo and color scheme, you need to have it professionally done first before going through with developing your website. The visual elements of your brand will play a significant role in promoting brand awareness and recognition among your target audience.
What content should your website have?
All websites need content. Even if you won’t have articles or a blog in it, you still need custom website content for your homepage, about page, products or services pages, FAQ (frequently asked questions) page, contact page, and hidden pages.
Furthermore, content gives users a reason to visit and browse your website and search engines to rank your pages. The type of content your website will have depends on what you want it to achieve for your brand and website.
What do you want your audience to do on your website?
Your website must have content so visitors have a reason to visit your website and browse through its pages. Here are some ways different brands use their website:
- Provide content about the problems their product or service solves and the benefits customers can experience buying from them
- Display the results their service has provided for their previous clients
- Display and sell their products online
How the Website Development is Done
Once you have the necessary information for a full website design, you can start with the website development process for your brand. Below are the steps involved and a short description of each step.
What to Look for in a Website Development Company
The right website development agency can be the difference you need to create a successful website for your business. Here are the things you need to consider to see if an (agency) is the right one for you
A good website for their brand
A website development company’s website says a lot about the quality of work they do for their clients. How their website looks and behaves can indicate how the professional websites they create for their clients will look and behave.
Here are some things to evaluate on an agency’s website:
- Does their website completely load in under two seconds?
- Does it contain clear and noticeable calls to action?
- Do you find it easy to navigate through their website?
- Do their pages rank high in the search engine results of their targeted keywords?
- Does it perform well and look good in mobile browsers?
A portfolio of their previous projects
A web designer’s portfolio will show you the previous business websites and projects they did for their clients. This will give you an idea of an agency’s work history and quality of work. Moreover, it will give you an idea of how they can create a custom website design that looks and works differently from their website.
They can create the design that you want
Although working with an agency that has experience in creating the design you want is preferable, this might not be possible due to your brand’s unique requirements. Instead, you can talk to potential web designers about the style you want and request a mock-up of their interpretation of it before hiring them.
They provide a full website development service suite
It is better to work with a company that provides a full website design and development suite as a service. You will have all the options to create the best website your brand can have and have all the features it might need to deliver the best value to your target audience.
They can provide what you need for digital marketing
Look for agencies that offer more than just website development services. Ideally, you want those who also offer copywriting, content writing, social media marketing, and other digital marketing services you want for your brand. Website designers who also provide other digital marketing services will provide a smoother customer experience, a more organized approach, and a better price for the project.
You get along with them
It is important to hire a website design and development company that you get along with easily. This will help you and the developer have an easier time communicating and exchanging ideas regarding the project.
Establish Your Brand’s Online Presence with Big Market Solutions
Professional website development is a crucial element in the success of your brand’s success in its digital marketing efforts. With Big Market Solutions doing website development and design for you, your website will have everything it needs to attract new leads, expand its reach in your market, and convert more people to your customers. Moreover, you will have dedicated support for website hosting, email hosting, daily backups, security updates, and routine web analysis. If you’re looking for other digital marketing services, website development is not our only area of expertise. We also provide branding, search engine optimization, social media management, traditional media design, video marketing, brand management, and lead generation. Contact us today and let’s plan your website or the overall digital marketing strategy of your brand.