In business, whether you should have a website dedicated to your company is more of a ‘when’ than an ‘if.’ While social media pages might make for a decent substitute in your early days, sooner or later, you’re going to want a platform that is entirely yours to control.
However, having a website and having a successful website are two completely different things, and distinguishing one from the other might be more difficult than you anticipate. That being said, you have an enormous pool of information at your fingertips thanks to the internet and the accumulated experience of many others who have been in your position.
With this in mind, knowing where to look can quickly give you some idea of how to build a successful website.
Your Own Domain
In order for your website to be successful, you first need it to stand as identifiable and easily locatable within the vast space of the internet. When it comes to leading your customers towards it, you must ensure that you cross this bridge effectively by linking it to your social media pages or marketing it properly.
However, for your website to exist in its best possible form, it’ll need a powerful and secure domain. A .app domain is something app owners use to promote their app via an actual website without having a full-blown website. The .app domain is popular with start-up businesses that want to get their website seen by a bigger audience.
This is something that you see many apps and websites make use of, and while you might have your own ideas about the direction that you want to go in relating to a possible app, this can help to give you some idea of how to do that properly if you feel it’s the right way to go.
For now, ensuring that your website is built upon the most solid foundations possible can give you the soundest footing to confidently tackle the next step.
Effective and Pleasant UI
The user interface (UI) of any given website or app might be something that you take for granted, perhaps merely seeing it as a design choice that has more to do with the brand or aesthetic than anything else. While these are certain considerations to be made when thinking about your UI, it’s important that you don’t underestimate the importance that it can have when it comes to the customer experience.
A good, easy-to-understand, and accessible UI can ensure that as many people as possible find visiting your page a comfortable experience that allows them to find everything that they’re looking for. A bad one, on the other hand, might simply push them away and give them a negative impression of your brand – which could negatively affect how they interact with you.
Website design professionals can potentially guide you through this, but looking at online examples can also give you an idea of what might work and what might not in the eyes of the consumer.
Test it Thoroughly
Going back to the idea of positive connotations with your brand, the launch of your website is an opportunity for your business to showcase its professionality. That means, naturally, that you want your website to debut with as few problems as possible.
Throughout the website design process, you’re naturally going to run into snags here and there that prevent it from initially working the way you want it to, but that shouldn’t be how it launches. Instead, make sure that you test your website thoroughly before letting it loose into the wild so that it’s immediately presented to your customers in as polished a state as possible.
Of course, you’re not going to find every problem yourself, and customer feedback can help you quickly identify and troubleshoot these issues. The process and speed of fixing these issues allow you to display how much you care about your image and reputation by launching a functional website.
