After more than 10 years of web design, online marketing experience and dealing with clients with different requirements, I’ve managed to identify the key factors involved in the creation of a website. Here are my ten key points that I follow to ensure your new website will be successful.

1. Easy on the Eye

Your website should look professional and polished. It’s important to choose an appropriate colour scheme with just 2 or 3 primary colours and use appealing graphics and high-quality photographs. Balance the content with white space to make the content easy to read. Your website’s appearance should not distract attention from its written contents but rather be complementary to them. In a nutshell, make it beautiful, use neat fonts, don’t clutter it up and use eye catching images.

2. Easy Navigation

Make sure every page is accessible.  I tend to place a menu bar at the top of each page and making it fixed so as the visitor scrolls down the page the menu bar stays in view ensuring the visitor can still access other pages.

3. Homepage design with clear company information

The homepage is usually the first page the visitor arrives so it’s important to display your company information / services and be clear about who you are and what you do, otherwise they won’t spend too much time on your website. Make sure your content is clear and precise.  Including complex and redundant design elements and using fluffy statements to talk about your company will put visitors off.

4. Make sure you have a call to action button

The whole point of your website is to attract more business and to get your visitors to take action. Think of your website as a lead generation tool that will convert visitors into customers. Telephone numbers, contact us links, forms, subscribe to your email, sign up for your service, or purchase a product should be visible and clickable on your homepage /landing page. I do like to include a call to action on every page to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to get in touch.

5. Contact Information

Your contact page should display your address, phone number, a contact form and a Map to show your location but to make it easy for your potential customer to get in touch,  I like to display your contact telephone number and email on every page of your website.

6. Registering your business on Google Places

I strongly advise all my client to register their business on Google Places if they haven’t already. This is an easy way to increase your website visibility and get more customer leads.

7. Social Media Links

Make sure you have links to all your social media profiles on your website.  If you are not on Social Media then you are way behind – get in touch and I will help you set up.

8.   Customer Reviews and Testimonials

I always ask my clients to get testimonials if they can.   It’s important to display your client’s positive comments about your service as it makes your service look trustworthy and reliable.

9. Strong SEO

SEO is a continuous task and it’s important to keep your website fresh with new content.  This can be difficult for those who just want to display their services but I always stress the importance of having a blog section.  I recommend posting relevant content, case studies and news about your industry on a regular basis.

10. Responsive to all browsers

This is so important and not always easy.  What looks good on a widescreen desktop won’t look good on smart phone’s browser or a tablet.  Its all about tweaking the margins and the padding and making the website fluid and flexible so it will adjust according to the screen size.