ULTIMATE STRATEGY TO BUILD A STELLAR WEBSITE

Why do you need a website?

Let us first understand why it is necessary for one to have its own website.

The evident answer is to improve your social media footprint which will be essential for you to expand your business and attract more paying customers. It is very important for a businessperson to have a very strong outline of social marketing strategy. Now, many are in a state of uncertainty if there are guidelines to build a website or it is just a collection of data and images dumped in a place. Yes! There are some norms and strategies one should consider while building a website. Then, the following write-up is for you!

What is NOT a powerful website strategy?

If you are certain and serious about expanding your business to a large chunk of users, website strategy is:

NOT a one-time thing but a never-ending work in progress.

It allows you to timely update and re-design your web content and service offerings according to market revolutions. Business and websites are mirrors to each other.

If one grows, the other should

• It is very important to choose the right technology to reflect your website and this is one of the very crucial steps of website formulating strategy, but certainly not the end-goal.
• It might seem that laying out website strategy is a protracted dreary process, but believe me, this will pay off manifold in the long future.
• One should keep in mind that website strategy is not an immutable law. If your business changes, so has to your goals.
• Strategic planning makes it easier to acclimate to these modifications and replicate your new objectives

What are some benefits of website strategy?

It brings together business goals and users’ needs on one side of the viaduct.

– You are the master of your domain
Big tech-giants like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and other website design companies are uncertain if they stay or not. No one can predict whether they will stay or go. But your domain and your website are all yours and no one can regulate your email list to whom you send your newsletter.

– Time and Cost effective
Without a measured and appropriate strategic approach, you are constantly in a state of flux. Your goals remain unclear and a lot of money is spent by the companies in solving them. An advanced technological software, social media marketing ploy and visual charm and re-design are pretty much useless without an unambiguous road-map to your goals and targets.

– Help in refining your goals and clarity to your doubts
When you already have a well-defined Website strategy and answers noted to each step while building the website, just go back and read the answers carefully. During the process or after the launch you just need to understand your motive behind a particular strategy and your strategies are your answers.

– Benefits for Web developers and designers
Mind of a business owner and a web designer can NEVER intersect. Here lies the main problem when a web designer is unable to think like a business owner. Any company hires a web developer to build their website and manage their portfolio. As soon as the work is done, the web developer is paid and that is it. There is no extra revenue generated by building a new website. Unfortunately, this is the most common scenario.
That is why a web strategist is far more worthy to a business than an awfully skilled web designer.
Well, if you are a web designer or a developer, crafting and executing a good website strategy is something that will make you stand out from the herd. The union of IT and business is what brings in profits. Your client, their clients and you-all are benefited.

– Benefits for project managers and leads
It is that web technology and business goals are knotted with each other. You do not have to understand web programming’s pocket kings or the new front-end applications. What you need to consider is how numerous facets of your website plan blend in with the vision of your company.
You will learn to ask the right questions, such as what form of content is desired by our users? In which format? What type of interface and features would drive subscriptions up? And, so on…..

8 trivial steps of website development

Let us study in detail about how a website should be built on following strategies:

1. Your website should reflect business values and goals

Consider following questions about your business like- What are the areas you are proficient in? What are the areas you look forward to? What are your company’s moral values? What do you want to achieve by stepping in the business you choose? Why do you want to do that?
Think deeply and frame your answers. This is not about your expertise and ability, nor why you have chosen your unique line of business and not anything else. Let me explain to you with the help of an example.
Any architect will tell you how buildings are designed because they have the expertise needed: that he has already perfected the science of statics and strength of materials, the art of infrastructure design so that they are robust and stable, etc.
But an architect who stands out may convince you that he is designing zero energy buildings because the effect of humans on the environment is his main concern. He studied in architectural studies and his desire to design helps him to contribute directly to his view of a better future.
Think about how important a selling point it really is. A unique audience would be targeted by his post. You should be more unique about your offers than your competitors so that you can charge high for your services.
As you position yourself as a specialist in your field, speaking of which next important thing to define is…

2. Your Unique Selling Point (USP)

A well-planned website strategy will allow you to transcend your competition as only a handful of companies follow a strategic approach to developing and redesigning websites.
It is quite important to understand the characteristics and methodologies that your competitors follow in your industry and market segment. This will help you define your objectives more clearly and then you can indulge into introspection about defining your business strategies and goals. Consider what is being praised and criticised about your services.
A stand-out business is one which integrates and interlink three major areas of business objectives-
a) Quality,
b) Time, and
c) Cost.

Once you have identified your area of differentiation, converge all your efforts in building a user-friendly interface.

3. Target audience

 “Nobody cares about you or your company. All your website visitors care about is what you can do for them”.
Your website must reflect the same values as your customers. And this comes from messages targeted at our audience. It becomes very valuable to understand your customers’ views on your industry.

• What annoys them the most in your industry?
• What are they absolutely amazed with?
• What keeps them up at night?

Though you are targeting a wider group of audience, your website should be able to interact with the user who lands up there. The user should get a sense of one-to-one interaction.

Understanding personas helps you create content and design websites that allow such interactions.

• Age?
• Sex?
• Occupation?
• Location?

4. FAQ’S and Objections

For websites which are about a specific, unique service, the latter is more popular. Often this page or part of the website is called “support”. This can be done on:

• On each product page individually.
• On a single web page, such as a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page.

Writing down the responses to your consumers’ most frequent questions you are likely to have will ensure:

• Your customers should not want the website of your competitor because they have done their thorough research and you have not done it yet.
• Exempt you from having to respond to emails and phone calls because on your website you did not answer those problems.
• To show your understanding of the desires and worries of your clients.

5. Website building

 Sooner or later! You did so to come on the other side from the intellectual, theoretical and documentation stage to start creating your website!
Now that you have described the first component of your website plan effectively, what follows is the actual method of website construction. Here you can define:

Your website’s goals:

• Your visitor’s needs– Languages, Instructions, Buy, view later, Compare, Tutorials, Direction to use, etc.
• The scope of content and website architecture– Home page, Services, Portfolio, About, Contact, etc.
• The website’s functionality– Blogs, Web shop, Subscription area, Contact form, Login for registered users.
• Languages offered– Is your website in English only? Or do you wish to make it multi-lingual to attract a diversified class of users? How offering multiple languages affects your content production, SEO, web architecture, etc.

Based on the last two, keyword research and design decisions will be made.

6. Search engine Optimisation (SEO)

The key ingredient to better content is separating “THE SINGLE” from “THE STREAM”.

KEYWORDS:

You should always write a copy of your website with SEO in mind (in other words, Google). You may use Google’s free Keyword planner tool for relevant keywords, or software applications such as KWFinder. When you consider the quality/price ratio, KWFinder is the best SEO platform out there. It is very convenient to use and the advantages are massive. For several local and international websites that I did SEO for, I used it to improve the organic traffic.

CONTENT:

Write a copy of the website specifically describing the advantages, together with your chosen keywords.
And note to keep the audience involved!In general terms, on any given website, there are two kinds of pages/content:

• Offerings
• Artices

A separate page for each service you provide is offerings.

The second, articles, help to ignite curiosity in the audience and create confidence. That’s the marketing of content: offering away valuable information. This places you as an authority within the industry and you create trust and by repeating “buy, buy!” you are not flinging your goods down the throats of your customers.” Instead you have useful, ideally actionable, free information.
You’ll get a lot of visibility for free if it’s high quality content, which contributes to higher page visits and more leads and clients. Quality content naturally gets shared and connected to.

  “Traditional marketing talks at people; content marketing talks with them.”

7. Design, UI, UX

 Web design must be geared towards conversion. A website should look beautiful, but above all, should be easy to use and made to convert visitors into customers.
We have finally arrived at the visual component! This is where most individuals initiate their method of website construction, which is wrong!!!
If you have been through all the previous stages, you will begin to see that the surface layer, the website’s outer skin, is rightfully the last!
A virtuous website should be:

• Functioning- All functions must be priorly tested and in running condition.
• Useful- Users should get the desired information and services.
• Usable- Intuitive user interface (UI) and friendly user experience (UX).
• Converting- Visitors to your website must convert into your client/buyer.
• Beautiful- Timely make changes to the aesthetic outlook of your website. Maintain professional, unique design. For more professional designs, check out ThemeForest

8. Performance, Troubleshooting and Optimisation

Today’s users want everything within milliseconds, right now.

Let us take your own example. Are you ready to wait for even 5 to 10 seconds for a page to load? Just check your expressions and click a photo, it will become a meme.
To check the loading times of your web pages, use free tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and WebPageTest.

From a website, these elements are intended. They’re the norm, not the exception! Yet, there are still many websites that lack them. How come you’re not going to see them? Since most websites that end up on Google’s first search results page have great and useful content, they load quickly and are user-friendly. Will you like to be part of the elite club of 1 percent? Do the job thoroughly and professionally and you will.

Firstly, link it to the Google Search Console to see if anything is technically wrong with your website. It is free and it will alert you if your web pages have anything wrong, such as loading speed, mobile rendering problems, indexing by Google’s crawler, etc.

Do you remember…??

You can get answers to any doubts or problems by just going back to your book where you have noted Website strategy.

That’s it! It is here that the strategic process come to your rescue.

I will help you understand these norms with an example.

Say you’re not positive about any design decisions, such as a product page, for example.

• Selling more items is the aim of the website.
• Now it’s evident that the purchasing process should be facilitated by the User interface (UI). And that the layout should be clear of the elements on the list.
• There must be product attributes and functionality at the forefront.
• At all times, a clear call to action (CTA) should be prominent and noticeable.

Thus, regardless of how attractive and smooth those gradients look on your monitor on the “buy now” button, think again.

If there is not enough comparison, there are chances that some users will not find it quickly enough. See how it appears on other screens as well. Even with other buttons and links, see if the colours are consistent across your website.

Also, let us say that you are not sure if your posts and blogs will be advantageous to give a boost to your website’s traffic.

• Ask yourself if the content is actionable?
• Will it solve my users’ problems?
• Are they interested in reading them?

You can add forums for discussion and post the link to your articles on their social media handles.
This shows that the business owner is constantly trying to improve his business goals as per user requirements and can use the newest methods of digital marketing and programming functionalities.

CONCLUSION

In each step of your website plan, if you put in the time and effort to answer the questions, you will be shocked at what you will discover. It can make you reconsider the whole approach to your business.
A good website strategy is not a separate component of your business. It is quite important, but also a part of the overall business plan.

Post credits: https://www.flipkod.com/website-strategy/