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14 Things To Consider When Building A New Website For Your Business

Planning a new website for your business means embarking on a thorough process that deals with a number of critical success factors. The aim of this comprehensive guide is to take you through everything you need to know, right from initial planning to post-launch maintenance.

Things To Consider When Building A New Website For Your Business

#1. Purpose

First, determine the purpose of your site: What are your objectives? Do you want to generate leads, sell products directly, inform, or build brand authority? Your website’s main objective will impact every decision from now until the end of the development process. Know who your target audience is-what they need or like; how they navigate and generally use the Internet. The answer will help mould the shape of your website, its content, and functionality.

Things To Consider When Building A New Website For Your Business

#2. Domain Name

Pivotal early decisions also include the selection of domain names. Your domain name should be memorable, mission-related, and not difficult to spell. When you can, use a professional-sounding domain extension, like .com, and avoid using a name that could infringe on someone’s trademark, or is too similar to another competitor in your space. After choosing a domain name, you’ll want to register it through a registrar service, and may want to purchase similar-sounding variation domains in order to protect your brand.

Things To Consider When Building A New Website For Your Business

#3. Hosting

The right hosting service provides the very foundation for your website’s performance. Factors to consider include server uptime guarantees, loading speed, customer support quality, security features, and scalability options. While small websites will fare adequately with shared hosting, a growing business will seek to consult VPS or dedicated hosting to achieve greater performance and tighter control. CDNs are other options available that can help your loading times in cases where the visitors are coming from more diverse locations.

Things To Consider When Building A New Website For Your Business

#4. Platform

Your platform or CMS choice will significantly affect the functionality of the website and ease of management. Popular options include WordPress, Shopify, or custom-built solutions that have their own merits. WordPress provides flexibility, coming with a great, huge ecosystem of plugins; however, it requires regular maintenance. Shopify is awesome for e-commerce and requires monthly costs. Custom solutions provide ultimate control but demand a higher initial investment and specialised knowledge for updates.

Things To Consider When Building A New Website For Your Business

#5. Design

Design and layout should lead the visitor through the site with ease. Allowing them to complete a purchase, submit a contact form or read your content, and in today’s smartphone-dominated world your site will be responsively designed to work seamlessly across all device sizes.

Things To Consider When Building A New Website For Your Business

#6. Content

While your website should look good it also needs quality content relevant to the needs and questions of your audience. Create a content strategy that includes great copy for the homepage, product or service descriptions, plus an “About” page and blog posts if applicable. Remember that content isn’t only text, you can include videos, infographics or other interactive elements that will help to keep users’ attention and better present the information.

Things To Consider When Building A New Website For Your Business

#7. e-Commerce

If applicable to your business, you must plan for e-commerce functionality. Determine payment gateways, inventory management systems, shipping calculators, and return policies. Make sure the checkout is optimised with a smooth and secure process, clear pricing and shipping information, and multiple payment methods to reduce shopping cart abandonment.

Things To Consider When Building A New Website For Your Business

#8. Security

Security should be a prime consideration from day one. SSL encryption provides security for data in transit; frequently update all software components in the stack with strong passwords and consider additional security measures such as two-factor authentication for admin access. If handling customer data, ensure compliance with relevant privacy regulations such as GDPR or CCPA and make visitors aware of your privacy policy.

Things To Consider When Building A New Website For Your Business

#9. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO should be incorporated into your website from the very foundation. It would involve more technical elements: proper URL structure, page loading times, and response design for mobile. This includes, but is not limited to, content-based elements such as keyword research and integration, meta descriptions, and header tags. If your company targets specific geographic regions, take note of local SEO to ensure that your website appears in local searches.

Things To Consider When Building A New Website For Your Business

#10. Analytics

Analytics tools will be needed to measure the performance and behaviours of your website. Google Analytics or any other alternative platform can give you good insights into the demographics of visitors, popular pages, conversion rates, and many more. Set up goal tracking to keep track of specific actions you want people to take when visiting so that you can optimise your website based on real user data.

Things To Consider When Building A New Website For Your Business

#11. Integration

Integrate your website with other business tools or platforms: It could be a CRM, email marketing software, social media accounts, or another type of business software you might use. Proper integration will facilitate smoother and less confusing flow for customers and employees alike.

Things To Consider When Building A New Website For Your Business

#12. Maintenance

Not to be forgotten, post-launch maintenance is amongst the most important features for achieving success in the long run. General tasks that should be  performed regularly include updating of content, security checking, backup creation, testing of functionality across different browsers and devices. Plan scheduled maintenance and support continuous improvement through user feedback and performance measurements.

Things To Consider When Building A New Website For Your Business

#13. Load Speeds

Loading speed optimisation should always be among your highest priorities and an ongoing process. Compress images, minimise code, and enable browser caching. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to test the loading speed of your website for bottlenecks that could be scaring potential customers away. With fast loading times comes better user experience and higher positions in search engine rankings.

Things To Consider When Building A New Website For Your Business

#14. Accessibility

Accessibility often is not just an ethical requirement but a legal one as well for business websites. Make your website usable by people with a range of disabilities following guidelines for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). This includes alt text for images, colour contrast that is sufficient, website keyboard navigable, and text alternatives for non text content.

By giving sufficient consideration and planning to all these aspects, you will be able to construct a business website that is professional in outlook and effectively serves your business goals. However, a website is never “finished”, it must evolve with your business as user needs and technology change.