A Mobile Optimised Website
Once you’ve got your marketing and products, and you’ve nailed down your selling process, now you’re ready to start your website.
Your digital business needs to have a responsive website (meaning the layout changes depending on the viewers screen size), this has been a necessity for a while now, but more recently Google has added mobile optimisation to it’s ever-changing ranking algorithms.
As most ‘early research’ search requests on the internet are conducted on a mobile device, before continuing the later stages of the buying process on a laptop or home computer, so cater to these mobile users first.
What kind of website Do You Need?
What’s the sole purpose of the website? is it to act as a simple online brochure website to showcase your products or services, or do you need shopping cart functionality to process online orders?
Website Style & Functions
Your website follows the style of your brand;if you have one, if not then it’s time to act. Your brand helps you to stand out against your competitors, and instil trust in the minds of your customer’s. Brand awareness and recognition are essential to your digital business. A web design specialist can build a website to reflect your brand identity.
Collect some visual inspiration on Pinterest, and have a think about the kind of feature’s and functions you may need on your website. Most websites have at least one contact form, but there are load’s of different things you can add such as marketing automation, drip marketing campaigns, CRM integrations, booking facilities, the list is endless. Spend some time mulling this over to get a solid idea of how you’d like your website to function.
Check the websites of your competitors to see what works and what doesn’t. Make sure to include an opt-in offer to start collecting email addresses for future digital marketing. Once you know the kind of website your business needs, and have an idea of the style and functionality you require we can move on to the next step of purchasing your domain name and hosting.
Ongoing Website Fees
Before we get on to building the website, there are other things which need to be taken care of first. Ongoing website fees including the domain name and hosting are mandatory, but website maintenance and updates are optional. If you’re confident in updating the website yourself, or more importantly if you have the time – this would save you at least £420 per year in maintenance fees.
Domain Registration
A domain name is simply your website address, or URL (eg. www.yourdomain.co.uk). Choose one which is relevant to your online business and try and get both .co.uk and .com versions if possible, it also helps to prevent cybersquatting. Domain’s are relatively cheap and come in lots of different flavours! New TLDs (Top Level Domains) are also available which enable you to have a different extension such as .guru, .digital as opposed to the usual .co.uk, .com, .org etc.
Website Hosting
Every website needs a place to live in cyberspace, a place to ‘host’ your website. Web hosting usually comes with an enticing first year offer but then sting you for the renewal, be sure to read the small print. If you go for a website built on the WordPress CMS platform look for website hosting which enables a ‘one-click’ installation of WordPress, and has Litespeed Cache enabled – more on that later. We use Guru as our webhost.
Optional Maintenance
WordPress core and security updates need to be taken care of and installed promptly. Any themes or plugins which are used on your website also need to be updated accordingly to ensure a smooth, secure operation of your site.
Revotion offer affordable website design which includes web and mail hosting as standard – Superfast UK Cloud Hosting with SSL Certificate. So if you need a new website or looking to breathe new life into an old one, then get in touch with us, we’d love to help.