The Essential Guide to Creating a Powerful Business Website: Maximize Your Impact!
Updated January 2024
Introduction
Welcome to our blog post on how to establish a successful business website. Whether you are a business owner, professional, or entrepreneur, having a strong online presence is crucial in today’s digital age. In this article, we will provide you with the essential steps and strategies to ensure your website stands out from the competition and drives success for your business. So, let’s dive right in and discover the secrets to building a thriving online presence.
Have You Given Any Thought to Your Business Website?
Not having a business website is simply not an option in 2024! A successful business website is essential for any effective digital marketing strategy. Most business owners understand that. However, many business owners give very little thought to what it takes to establish a successful business website. And that is not a good thing!
A successful business website is much more than just a few pages up and running. Usually, their business website is a company’s first introduction to its online target audience. In 2024, having a business website is essential for your business or product brand. A survey has shown that more consumers trust the accuracy of business websites over a Google My Business listing. Therefore, making the best possible impression right from the beginning is essential. And you can only do that with a successful business website!
Why You Need a Well-Designed Website
A well-designed, professional business website is an irreplaceable asset for any business. A successful business website serves as an online identity for your business. It is the most reliable platform for generating business in terms of new and repeat clients as well as revenue. However, to ensure that your business website is the best possible fit for your business, you must establish a successful business website proactively.
And merely throwing something together is not going to do you much good. Creating a successful business website takes several critical steps. Determining your target audience and content strategy to design and maintain the site afterward takes various professional skills. Here is what you need to do to create a successful business website.
Establishing A Successful Business Website
The Planning Stage
Hiring the Right Web Designer or Agency
Any successful business website design project starts with finding a professional website designer who is confident about making your business website work for your business. A successful business website is too essential for your business to leave the design and content of an amateur.
A professional website designer knows how to create beautiful designs and how you can get the most out of your business website. They will focus on the smallest details to convert a beautiful design into a successful business website.
Coding best practices, following the design and coding standards, high converting call-to-action areas, on-page optimization for search engines, and website optimization for speed and performance. A professional web designer knows the right way of doing things. He will take care of your website so you can handle your business.
But finding one is one of the significant challenges! Avoid cheap service providers and bad web design agencies; they do more harm than good. A functional website is not the same as a successful business website. You also want to make sure to get the most from your web designer. Be sure to look at their portfolio and make sure their design style matches your expectations.
Choosing the Right Domain and Platform for your Website
A domain name, web hosting, and content management system are the founding pillars of a successful business website. Select a professional domain name for your business’s online identity, get a reliable web host, and pick a flexible content management system. All this will require you to do some thorough research. Or, if you have a professional web designer, you can follow their recommendations.
Domain Name Registrar: Find the best domain name registrar to buy the domain name for your business. We use and recommend GoDaddy as our domain registrar. Use a .COM domain if possible; it provides the most value. Avoid cute or odd spelling and special characters like hyphens and dashes! And keep in mind that Google ranks sites with a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificate higher than those without one!
Web Hosting Providers: WPEngine, BlueHost, Pressable, and InMotion are excellent web hosting providers. We recommend and use Cloudways to host WordPress websites for our clients. You can learn more about different business website hosting options here. And check out Who Is Hosting This for their up-to-date website hosting comparisons.
Content Management System: Websites use plain HTML or high-level programming languages like PHP and ASP. However, a successful business website needs a flexible, extensible, and future-proof professional content management system. Your options range from Wix, SquareSpace, and Shopify to Drupal and WordPress. WordPress gets our highest recommendation because it is scalable, can be fully customized, and is relatively easy to manage yourself. Take a look at some of the reasons why you should be using WordPress for your business website.
Identifying Your Target Audience
You need an understanding of your target audience and what they expect from your business website. Without this knowledge, creating a successful business website and targeting your content to appeal to them will be impossible. But many small-business owners don’t narrow their focus enough.
We always recommend playing the stick-figure game. Create different personas for your ideal customer or client. Use each persona to determine their needs when coming to your website. Here are some questions you need to answer:
- What is the age of your target audience?
- Are they mobile users or more likely to use a desktop PC?
- Is your target audience tech-savvy, or will they need extra guidance?
- Are they interested in your product or service for business or pleasure?
- What products or services are they most likely to buy from you?
The Creation and Design Phase
Matching Your Brand Identity
You probably noticed that there is much competition in the digital world! To be heard and seen above all the digital noise, your business website needs to be unique and the best it can be! The design, your brand identity, and your voice all count. Merely choosing a free website / WordPress theme will not do much for your business.
If you want a successful business website, you must invest in a professional website design that builds on your existing brand identity. Be sure it truly defines your product & services and puts you ahead of your online and brick-and-mortar competitors. Here are some tips for creating an effective brand logo.
Keyword Research and Strategy
Before you can start thinking about your new business website’s content, you must understand what search terms and keywords will drive visitors to your site. That way, you know which keywords and phrases to use when you describe your products or services. This knowledge is the key to ranking better than your competitors for the selected keywords in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
You can use a tool like Google Analytics to find out what your business website visitors are most interested in on your existing website. If you do not yet have a business website, you must spend more time and effort identifying your target audience. Once you have identified your target audience’s needs, you can use a tool like SEMrush to research your keywords. Our essential SEO toolbox has even more resources for you.
Creating Valuable Content
You will need to create engaging and valuable content for the site visitors to interact with your site and search engine bots to index your site. Great design and a fully functional website are also crucial aspects. Integrating a blog is a good idea to move in this direction.
On the one hand, content will help you have a one-to-one conversation with your online visitors. On the other hand, it will help you establish your brand authority. Building valuable content is nonetheless a challenge — before churning out the words, you must identify your keywords and plan the content accordingly.
Choosing a Design
Aesthetics are subjective, but designing a successful business website according to your tastes is a big mistake. An outdated-looking business website is a major turnoff for your prospects. Especially in competitive markets, the company that provides the best first impression usually gets the sale. So keep these two guidelines in mind:
Keep It Professional: Do you want people to take your company seriously? Then, invest in a site that looks legitimate. Unless you’re a savvy site-builder, hire a consultant. Your website is the image you share with a world of potential customers. Make it the best it can be!
Keep It Simple: Don’t overwhelm. Many graphical additions and colorful sections on your site look messy and confuse your site visitors. Keep a streamlined approach and focus on simplicity.
Organizing Site Architecture
The key to a successful business website is to present the valuable content from the previous step to your potential clients in an intuitive and easy-to-navigate way. Be sure to start with a consistent and straightforward navigation menu. Don’t make it difficult for your target audience to find what they need. If you do, they will go elsewhere!
Essential Pages:
No matter what business or industry you are in, a successful business website must include the following:
About Page: The autobiographical section of your website, the “About” page, is a crucial trust-builder and attention-grabber. This page should never be generic. It’s a history of your company that details who you are and what you do, written in a tone that matches your company’s culture. Include personal bios of your top management staff. That gives a sense of transparency and openness to what you do and fosters connections with prospective customers.
Services or Products Page: Your target audience will expect to learn how your business can fulfill their needs. Give them what they want by providing detailed and relevant information regarding your products and services. If you offer multiple products or services, you should list each on a separate page. And be sure to organize them into distinct verticals.
Contact Page: Contact information tells your customers you are reachable and at their service whenever they need you. Don’t be shy about listing ways to connect across platforms and devices. To give the best impression of your accessibility and engagement, offer e-mail, phone, mail, and social media options for your target audience to connect with you.
You should also include your contact information at the footer of each page. Many website visitors will expect to find it there. But be sure to keep your NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information consistent everywhere. Search engines will love you for it!
Social Media:
Social Media Integration: Building social media, like your X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook feeds, to your website helps boost your engagement on those platforms and allows you to keep in touch with your customer base.
We suggest adding your social media platforms in the page footers and the top menu if you have the extra space. Having your business found on social media helps you build your audience and adds another layer of trust for potential clients.
Page Footer:
Page Footer: You can take the opportunity to engage your website visitors further by adding content to your page footer. Including information such as your contact info, location on the map, recent blog posts, or one of your social media feeds helps you build the trust of your site visitors.
Compliance and Policy Pages:
Privacy Policy: Business owners all too frequently forget this simple document. And that can leave them open to costly legal troubles. At the very least, we recommend a boilerplate privacy policy. For complete protection, you should consult with your business attorney.
Cookie Policy: If you use cookies on your website, and most modern websites do, you should inform visitors. At the very least, mention you use cookies. You may elaborate on how you use cookies and the data they collect for an even better user experience.
GDPR Compliance: If you collect ANY information from residents or businesses in the European Union, you must be aware of GDPR requirements. As of May 28, 2018, business and website owners are responsible for explaining how their website manages visitor data. And 2024 will be another banner year for privacy changes and policies.
Additional Considerations
We also recommend that you add as many of the following as applicable to your business website:
- A Blog
- A FAQs page
- A Resources page
- A Testimonials page
- A Portfolio page
- Case Studies or White Papers
Selling Products & Services
Having a simple business website is a good start. But you can take your business to the next level by selling your products and services on your website. That is what a successful business website is all about: generating more revenue online. Even if you only have one or two products or services, you can reach a much bigger audience by selling them on your business website.
With WordPress or any CMS as the foundation for your successful business website, you can decide to employ the e-commerce feature anytime in the future. And by implementing open-source technology like WooCommerce, OpenCart, Magento, Stripe, Square, ApplePay, and PayPal, you can add much functionality quickly and cost-effectively.
However, it requires additional skills and resources to build and maintain a successful e-commerce store. You need to understand the mobile social shopper and how to provide the shopping experience they expect. Your site must be transparent and secure, or your customers may not feel confident enough to complete a transaction. You should consult with your web designer or agency from the beginning if you plan on selling products or services on your business website.
The Maintenance Phase
Ongoing Website Maintenance
Developing a successful business website is a one-time activity unless you want to redesign your site frequently. However, a successful business website is very complex and has many moving parts. To keep your website running optimally, you must maintain it continuously.
To make having a successful business website as worry-free as possible, you need to keep the database, website framework or theme, and all plugins and extensions up to date. You should update as soon as new versions become available. Be sure to check that all the latest versions are still compatible with each other.
Website Optimization
You must keep your business website optimized for speed, secure against malicious login attempts and other cyber attacks, and clear of spam. If something goes catastrophically wrong, you should regularly back up your site and its content. Trust me; you will sleep better at night!
Content Updates
Updating content, uploading graphics, and adding and maintaining a video channel are all part of website upkeep. Resolving minor design issues, experimenting with colors, fonts, and other design elements, and building landing pages as and when required are other aspects of maintaining the site.
You can hire a website design agency for ongoing maintenance services and pay for it monthly. Of course, you can also train your staff members to take care of the issues involved in site management. You must manage your online presence just as you look after your physical store to succeed.
Assessing and Optimizing Website Performance
As your successful business website grows in terms of content and visitors, you will need to evaluate the site’s bandwidth and see if it can handle the requests efficiently. From time to time, this may require you to review your web hosting plan and upgrade the plan or migrate the hosting environment to meet your business website requirements.
You don’t need to upgrade the plan if you have a dedicated server. Still, you need to ensure that you have regular site backups. And if your web server is slow, you must migrate to a better hosting provider.
To ensure optimal website performance, you must tweak and tune your website performance by enabling caching, improving page speed, and compressing images.
And don’t forget that part of having a successful business website involves the ongoing performance tracking and analysis of your search marketing strategy. Optimizing your search strategy is crucial if you want to stay ahead of the frequent Google Algorithm Updates.
Creating Your Successful Business Website
A successful business website is an employee who works for you 24/7 and caters to your customers worldwide. A successful business website is a perfect salesman. One who knows everything about your company works around the year, meets thousands of people daily, and helps you grow your business exponentially. Your successful business website is an investment to secure the future of your business. Tap into that opportunity today.
Consider This As a Business Investment
Establishing a successful business website should be a serious consideration as a business investment. The future success of your business may well depend on it. Therefore, we do not recommend that you do this on your own. We have seen too many business owners fail miserably and give up in frustration. And we can’t recommend cheap DIY solutions like Wix or Weebly either. The only time and cost-effective way for your business to establish a successful business website is to have a professional do it for you.
Your chosen web designer or agency should be committed to being the right service partner and provider. You should be committed to being a good client. If everyone works together toward a shared vision of success and avoids common website design problems, the project will end well, and everyone will be happy! Are you ready for a successful business website for your business?
Conclusion
In conclusion, establishing a successful business website is critical for any business owner. Neglecting this aspect can hinder long-term growth and success. It is essential to carefully plan and consider the necessary components to support your business objectives. Don’t underestimate the power of a well-designed website in attracting and engaging your target audience. Take action now and contact us for more information on creating a formidable online presence that drives business growth.
Let Us Build a Successful Business Website For You!
Are you unsure how to create a successful business website for your company or product brand? Our award-winning team will happily help you launch your online presence and grow your business. But first, look at our portfolio and read our case studies.
Then, if you believe we are a good fit for your web design needs, reach out to us! We offer a full range of consulting and design solutions for businesses and product brands.
Why not get started by requesting your free estimate?
And if you are still unsure how a business website will support your objectives, don’t worry! Simply reach out and contact us. Our expert team will listen to you, answer your questions, and help you with cost-effective website design and development services. That is one of our specialties, after all!
Do You Have a Successful Business Website?
Do you have anything to add to our tips for establishing a successful business website? Please leave your comments below so our audience can benefit as well, and grab our feed so you don’t miss our next post! And help other business owners by sharing this post with them!
For more content relevant to your business or product brand – check out the range of articles on our web design blog. (This one, explaining the top usability principles every business owner should know, is an excellent place to start!)
Thank you! We appreciate your help to end bad business websites, one pixel at a time!
By Gregor Saita
Co-Founder / CXO
@gregorsaita