Thousands of websites today are made from themes and templates such as Etsy and other common e-commerce cart themes.

Which is fine if all you want is a simple, off-the-shelf website …

But to differentiate in today’s competitive, online landscape, you need a website as unique as you are!

No single aspect of marketing is more important than a quality website, your organization’s front door. A “good” website isn’t good enough to break through and convert users into engaged customers and brand ambassadors.

What you really need is a great website …

Your site reflects your company, your products, your services, and ultimately your brand.

So it’s important to be visually appealing, polished, and professional. Allow white space, uncluttered layouts with quality photographs and graphics look, and let your message shine through.

Equally important, the site must work quickly, correctly, and as expected. Build to web standards, proofread rigorously and test regularly for problems with speed or functionality.

Every page should always be fast and functional because any of them could be a potential customer’s first or only impression. Broken, slow, or poorly constructed areas will leave your visitors frustrated and encourage them to leave.

Site visitors are always in a hurry. Don’t make them work for the information.

User Experience (UX) plays a key role in helping visitors use, understand, and stay on your website.

Create obvious, logical navigation with a clear hierarchy. Use consistent layouts and visual cues for functionality across the site.

Your site should satisfy both ‘searchers’—coming for something specific, and ‘browsers’—just looking. Help users accomplish their tasks quickly with onsite search, and keep them engaged by suggesting related content and minimising dead ends.

Today there are no excuses, your site must look great and work well on any platform.

The growth of mobile and tablet devices is not slowing down and you just don’t know what your next visitor will be using. Optimising for mobile will improve both the experience of your visitors and your SEO Rankings.

Be succinct, interesting, and new. Use language that makes sense to your audience—avoid jargon, corporate speak, and acronyms. Explain your “Why.”

Visitors have short attention spans: spell correctly, be accurate, be relevant, and update regularly.

Blogs and social media updates are great ways to add fresh content, which keeps visitors returning and helps SEO strategy.

Yes, keeping things fresh requires a bit of investment, and no, you can’t do without it.

Your audience won’t chase you down. Make it easy to engage, offer multiple points of contact: phone, e-mail, social media, and maybe an easy-to-use contact form.

A Google map is a bonus. Above all, ensure that this information is readily available on an easy-to-find contact page—if not every page of your site.

If your site asks nothing of visitors, they will surely do nothing. What is the purpose of your site

Is that purpose clear to visitors Even informational sites want visitors to read and share articles, follow the company on social media, download toolkits, join mailing lists or learn more about the organisation. Include an ask on each page.

It’s not enough to build a nice-looking website that’s easy to use. It needs to earn traffic. Otherwise, all that effort in design, UX, and content development will be for nothing.

There are hundreds of rules and guidelines for effective search engine optimization, so here are a few to start with :

1) Use page titles and meta tags on every page and alt tags on every image,

2) Optimise content on your site to align with words real people search for,

3) Use keywords appropriately in content and links,

4) Use Cascading Style Sheets for layout and keep website code clutter-free,

5) Make it as easy as possible for visitors to share your content. Social can drive large volumes of traffic and positively impact your search ranking.

Don’t forget obvious sharing links even if they are rarely used in actuality.

So there you have it, our high-level overview of seven deep topics, the basic tenets that will help get you started, getting more value out of your web presence as you move toward the great website you need.

1) You can buy a Website Starter Package – from just £600.00

2) Our Fixed monthly fee for our Rent-A-Site Service – designed for businesses on low budgets

If you have a website, be sure to read our Top 10 Marketing Strategy Tips!