Boss Lady

What you need to do for a great website

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If you’re in business and you don’t have a website, what exactly are you doing? We might say ‘not much’, but that’s unfair.

Business is hard work and you might not have the time or inclination to sort out a web presence. The truth is hard to take, but you do need a web presence to make any sort of success out of your business ventures.

A good website can get your work or company noticed by a lot more people than the ones floating about your local area. You might already run a website — that’s good! We aren’t looking for ‘good’ though. We’re looking for ‘great’!

The internet is a vast place with a lot of options for customers and readers in the modern day. Good might be good enough for you, but you want to aim for a great website. Whether you are just starting out in the online world and hoping to manufacture a presence on the web, or if you are looking to improve your current website – don’t set the bar low.

A great website is based on three things – great web hosting, great design and great functionality. If it looks great and works great, you’re doing something right and your workload will be minimal – but if one of these areas is not up to scratch, it could bring the website down. That is definitely the case with functionality, as a site that doesn’t work will bring everything crashing down.

Design

However, we will focus on design first. It’s the easiest area to get right as the technical side to design is rather limited. Sites like Wix and WordPress allow us to easily design our site whether it is a cloud-computing powered editing suite, or simple coding — it can be done ourselves.

Business owners might consider employing developers and designers to work on this phase of the website, though. It saves time, your focus and energy and gives you the best chance of nailing the design phase.

A website that looks good will keep visitors on the site, a website that looks bad will turn them off. This might be a good time to take a look at your branding and see how you could make it ‘pop’ a little bit more on a website. If things are lacklustre with your visuals, get original assets made by artists and photographers who can show your business in the best light possible.

Design links well with functionality, your buttons need to work and your pages need to link and this comes down to the steps laid in the design phase. Lay the good groundwork with a solid design that works.

Functionality

In terms of pure website functionality, you need to make sure that your website can actually be accessed. This comes in many ways. Firstly, you need to make sure your site can be accessed on all manner of web browsers.

While you will find that most people use Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox(or a version of these browsers), simply making sure that your website is only functional or operational on these two web browsers is a mistake. People not just from all walks of life, but people who use all sorts of web browsers will be visiting your website.

You’ll do yourself, your website, your business and of course, your web visitors a huge favour. If you can’t be accessed by the majority of web browsers, you might miss out on a big portion of visitors.

It isn’t just a web browser that your website needs to work on, though. All sorts of devices have internet connectivity and this means that these devices are used to access web sites — potentially yours.

Ensuring that your website works is one thing, but ensuring that it works on a mobile device is another. A large portion of users will be using small screens to visit your website, so make sure that your website works on a large number of devices!

With website functionality, you need to simply test, test and test again — there isn’t an end to the amount of forethought a website needs and if you can iron out a lot of issues through both basic and advanced testing on a variety of devices, you’ll make your life easier and your website better.

Web hosting

Hosting is where your website will be allowed to shine, or it could be the nail in the coffin. How does website hosting work? It is simply the ‘space’ you rent online. The bigger and better the host, the more virtual space for your online business.

How can you find good web hosting? Check out Easy Hosting Guide and you will find that good hosting is all about speed — will it allow your site to act fast and the pages run smoothly? Will the operators get back to you quickly with solutions to your hosting issues? If they aren’t fast and have bad customer service, your work on design and functionality won’t matter at all.

Bad hosting will make your website redundant and will fail you when you need it most. This is where a lot of your web budget will be going, so work with a host that is fast and reliable – two of the attributes that you want for your website and need from your hosting provider.

If they are speedy, they won’t wait around on your requests for more web space and you can take advantage of your popularity as and when business on your site is booming. A slow provider may take days to get back in touch with you, and only you will be the one losing out.

Great websites ensure all three stages are raising the bar, but the thing is this: no website can truly work well at all if these three stages aren’t met. Good design won’t matter if the design isn’t functional and neither of those matter if your hosting isn’t on point?

Want to run a great website? Get these three stages mastered and ready to go and your website will be the one working for you.

About Business Woman Media

Our women don’t want to settle for anything but the best. They understand that success is a journey involving personal growth, savvy optimism and the tenacity to be the best. We believe in pragmatism, having fun, hard-work and sharing inspiration. LinkedIn

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