Creating Website Design and Development Plan for a Project

R G Singh

12 months ago

A Website is the best way to sell your product and services online. It serves as your official presence online, let your customers find you and attract more businesses. Nowadays, every single user turns to Google to find the best results. Almost 90 percent of the users look for reviews before buying a product. This shows how crucial an online presence is for marketing of your business.

Whether it’s a website, social media or review, an online presence can be the X factor in the success of your business. An engaging and effective business website can attract more customers and expand your business.

Majority of the businesses does not own a website. There are various reasons behind that. As some business owners think that a website is not important for them. Some think that their customers are not online. Even if you have potential consumers, they will try to find you online.

If your business is not online, they will go to your competitors. This is not exactly what you want. Not having a business website implies that you are no longer in business.

Step-by-step guide to creating website design and development plan for a project:

Earlier, in 2015, Redshift and Go daddy conducted a survey on small business owners. It was found that

63 percent of small businesses don’t own a website.
40 percent of Businesses think that their business is too small to own a website.
19 percent or businesses said that they lack technical expertise.
17 percent of business can’t afford to spend money on website.
While few think that their social media presence meets their requirements.

But the fact is that, no business is too small to own a website. Every business deserves to have a clean, beautiful, easy to maintain professionally built, mobile friendly website.

Developing a small business website is quite easy and cost effective.

Benefits of a business website:

Mark you official presence online
Display your product & services
Make your business look more authentic and trustworthy
Helps your customers to reach you online
Helps you to learn about your customers
Increase marketing opportunities from local audience to global audience
Serves as a landing page for all your Social Media Pages
Cost Effective
Saves your time & labor
Grow along with your business growth
Improve website security

While planning to design an effective business website, you first need to understand what PLAN means actually!

Prepare –

Recognize your target audience
Have a clear goal in your mind
State your purpose more effectively

Landscape –

Think about your website’s functionality
What specific features you need in your website

Aesthetics –

Think about your website design
How it will stand out amongst your competitors
Its colors & images

Navigation –

Think about what pages you need
What actions users will take on your website?
Hassle free navigation and CTAs ensures good user experience

How Can We Plan

Let’s find out how small business owners can plan an effective and engaging website

Define the purpose of your website

Before going to purchase domain name and web hosting for your business website, you need to define your purpose quickly and clearly. Whether you are simple website with less information or a complex e-commerce website, it is very important to state what your company does. Keep these things in mind:

What are potential customers? What is your target audience? How could you reach them?
Be clear and honest about detailing your website to your customers
An effective website should be centered on your goals.
Users should easily be able to achieve your website goals.
Apply your goals through navigation of your site for better user experience

Decide your Domain Name

Next step is to choose a domain name for your business. A Domain name is something which appears in the URL of your website. It’s an important feature of your website. A domain name has major impact your website performance. So, it should be chosen carefully. Let’s find out how to choose a relevant domain name for your business.

Don’t use numbers and hyphens if possible
It should be short and easy to spell so that users can find you with ease.
Use keyword in your domain to derive more traffic.
It should represent and relate your business products& services.
If your ideal domain is not available, think something more creative and catchy.
You can take help from some domain generators tools online such as Domain Wheel
Always go for .com specific domains if you are targeting global audience.
Use a country specific domain (ccTLD) if you a local business. For example, .in is you are an Indian site.

Choose Reliable Web Host

Just like Domain name, a website does not function without a host. You need to choose a reliable web host for a good user experience. For that, you need to spend a little bit more. Cheap hosts can save your money but results in increase bounce rates and poor performance.

Disadvantages of a cheap web host

Limited features
Poor Page Speed Experience
Server downtime issues
Vulnerable to security leaks
Less chances of data recovery
Impact your SEO rankings and marketing efforts
You find it difficult to reach experts to resolve your issue. Poor customer care service.

Advantages of a Reliable Web Host

Reliability
Faster Webpages
SEO friendly
Email & Domain
Database Management
Automatic Website Backup
Unlimited Space & bandwidth
Add Design & style to your website
Secured with SSL certificate
24 hour technical support
Saves your time & worth your money

Choose Your Content Management Software

After hosting, you need to choose content management software for your website. Content Management software helps you to edit, modify, publish and delete content on your website.

It reduces your efforts to maintain your website and makes it SEO friendly.You need to identify what features, technology, and support you want in your website.

You have to analyze cost as well. Most popular content management softwares are WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Saas etc

Responsive Web Design

If your website adapts to any screen size of the visitors device, then you will have a great advantage over your competitors. As, most of the users don’t want to resize on their own and leaves that website. It becomes very important to create a mobile responsive website Design.

Benefits of a Mobile Responsive Website Design

Reduce Bounce Rates
Fast webpages
Improved SEO
Better Conversion Rates
Ensure more mobile traffic
Improved browsing experience
Require lover cost for maintenance

Eye Catching Design

You need to create an eye catching design for your business website. No matter how well the content is, if your visuals are not appealing, you might lose business to your competitors. Choose attractive website template for your website. While creating an attractive website design you need to take care of these things:

Find your USP
Create stunning Visuals
Elegant Layout
Adhere to Typography
Use Color Psychology
Establish Communication
“F” pattern design for better user experience
Avoid free themes as they are not fully optimized, have less features & encrypted links.

Build Your Pages

Next think is to build your pages. An excellent website is not just about how well your homepage is. You are supposed to create various pages which justify different aspects of your goals. Let’s find out how your webpages be look like.

An Attractive Logo

A Logo does great wonders to your business and website. Many People think that only genuine businesses have logos. An attractive logo is must for a small website today as

It leaves an impression among visitors that your business is established.
A great logo communicates better with your clients.
A catchy logo attracts potential buyers.
You will get treated more seriously among your clients.
Mostly people remember a company more by logos than its name
A great logo makes you stand out amongst competitors.
People will consider you ahead of your competitors.

A Descriptive Tagline

A Tagline describes what your business does and hence it should be taken care of. Genuine potential buyers identify whether the website is ideal for them or not. You need to

Create a catchy short descriptive tagline
Invokes the visitor to take action on your website
Don’t use generic terms like trusted, respected
Think about your potential customers. What they need and what you can say to insist them

Attention grabbing Call To Actions

Calls to actions are the most important part of your website. They provide a finishing touch to your website content. They enable customers to take action on your site to meet the goals of your business website. So it becomes necessary to create attention grabbing CTAs for your website.

CTAs can be of various types

Leads: It converts your visitors into potential buyers.
Forms: It converts the visitor into buyer after the completion of form.
Service or Product Delivery: They guide visitors to your products and services.
Sharing: The sharing CTAs improve your visibility as it let users to share your content on social media.
Continue Reading:It allows users to read more information about your business without losing visibility.

Benefits of Call to Actions

Remove confusion among users
Improves user experience
Ensures better conversion rates
Ensures better click through rates
Generate more traffic to your website
Enhance the success of your Digital Advertising

Phone Number

Displaying a phone number on your website shows that you are a reputed company. Some businesses are investing money in wrong places. Spending money on improving communication can yield more customers. A phone number with click to call option is great for your business. We also recommend live chat option if you can. A live chat option can

Lower cost
Generate more sales
Improves customer service
Resolves problem quickly
Build trust among users
Expand your market
Helps you to improve your service
Keeps you ahead of competitors

Navigation plays an important role in rich user experience. No user wants to visit a website which is confusing and difficult to navigate. Navigation bar should be placed properly on your website so that a user can find desired product or service.

Pros of website with proper navigation

Reduce bounce rates
Save your customers time
Renovate your web design
Organize your information
Keep your customers engaged
Ensures rich user experience
Better SEO rankings

Cons of website with improper navigation

High bounce rate
Distracts customers
Bad user experience
Cost you more customers
Affect your SEO Rankings

Breadcrumb navigation

Breadcrumbs are similar to directions which we follow while driving. Breadcrumbs guide users where they are in your website. Breadcrumb is not a prior way to navigate a site but it is quite convenient and user friendly. It improves your SEO performance. It would be great if you include breadcrumbs in your website.

Attractive images

“What is seen is sold”, that’s true in the case of online world. An image can speak thousands of words. An attractive image can convey your brand message more than text& keeps users engaged.

Websites with High Quality images

Generate more views
Makes your products & services more lively
Help you to appear in search queries
Ensures better click through rates
Empowers social media
Neglect Stock images

So, it is very important for you to invest your time in collecting images that relates your product & services for an effective business website.

Quality Content

While most of the businesses focus more on visuals than content. That makes their website look attractive but hampers their SEO rankings. Content plays an important role in your website performance. It can’t be neglected. It is the great way to convince your visitors in buying your product.

A Unique, compelling content can

Generate more sales & leads
Increase website Traffic
Improve SEO performance
Better customer engagement
Better customer relationships
Improve your brand image
Increase your brand visibility
Make your brand trustworthy
Increase your social media following

Brand Storytelling

As a new business, your background information is very essential to build the trust among your customers. Brand Storytelling is the great opportunity to share your story that led you to start this business and showcase your brand values. You need to add an about us page for users who wish to learn more about your company.It is the most visited page of your website.

Some tips to develop an effective about us page

Vision, mission & history of your company
Staff introduction & Bios along with photos
Links & Contact information
Great Design & Visuals
Call to Actions
Accomplishments & Testimonials

Reviews & Testimonials

If you are a new business, adding reviews &testimonials can be more powerful in drawing more visitors to your website. Genuine reviews & testimonials with their contact information can build trust among your customers. That is why websites like Amazon, Yelp, Flipkart are very popular.

Benefits of having positive reviews & Testimonials

Build more faith in your products & services
Your business looks more authentic & trustworthy
Build close relationships with your clients
Provides a kind of free advertising platform
Positive Google Reviews can boost your search engine rankings
Negative Reviews will help you to improve your product & services

Important Business Information

As a new business, you can’t afford to lose your potential buyers by making it difficult to get in contact with them. A Contact page is beginning of your relationship with your customers. Most business doesn’t pay much attention to this, but it can draw more customers to your site.Adding your business address, hours, working contact form and your business map can make your contact page sales driven.

Contact Form

A contact form is an important element of a page where your purpose of generating leads can be fulfilled. It’s a kind of conversion tool for your website. It can be used to gather information, feedback & asking questions.

An Effective contact form ensures

Better customer engagement
Better user experience
Helps to gather customer data
Reliable & Trustworthy
Increase in your subscribers list
Secure experience
Reduce Spam
Professionalism

Captcha /Anti-spam feature

You can use Captcha/Anti-spam features for additional security. As it

Report Spam
Block spammy comments
Ensures spam free experience
Terminates fake registrations

But sometimes Captcha frustrates users, so you can opt for anti-spam features.

Business Map

Adding map to your business will

Build trust with your visitors
Helps them to research about your business
Demonstrate your Quality
Humanize your brand
Helps to reach your target audience
Attracts your local audience too
Improve customers decision Making
Effortless marketing

Business Address & Business Hours

You need to describe your business Address & Business hours accurately. For building trust in your brand and better user experience, it is very vital to guide your customers properly.

Newsletter signup is a great way of building healthy relationships with your clients and customers. It can be used with email marketing also.

Some tips for creating newsletters

You don’t always need to create a unique content
You can cover your office news, contests, pictures etc.
You can also use your best social media posts as your newsletters.
Sending post or an update once in a week can be great

Benefits of using newsletters

Connects you with your customers
Boost your website traffic
Drive more sales & leads
Enrich your reputation online
Helps you to grow on social media platforms

Social Media buttons helps your visitors to find you on social media channels. It is a great way to interact with your target audience. You can convey your messages through posts that you want to pass to your customers. Before that create your business profile on various social media channels such Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. Then with the help of Social media buttons, encourage them to connect with you on your social media channels. It ensures

More Brand Exposure
Helps in improving SEO
Great Customers Experience
Increase Customers Engagement
Expand your reach to Target Audience

Blog Page

Blogging is an important part of growing your business. It is the best way to build trust and relationship with your clients. You can update your clients about your product and services through blogs. An ideal blog has

Search Bar
Sidebar
Comment Feature
Social Media share button

Hosting blog on your business website will

Boost traffic to your website
Personalize your brand
Ensures better conversion rates
Helps to make inbound links
Supports your social media efforts
Generate more leads
Let’s you to rank for long tail keywords
Creates a platform for a valuable discussion
Keeps you fresh & updated

FAQs Page

As every client and customer have their own questions about your product and services. FAQ s (Frequently Asked Questions) page helps visitors to find answers to all their queries. An FAQ page

Saves your customers time
Personalize your brand
Improve your SEO performance
Create faith among your target audience
Prevents customers from contacting you for answers

Setup your Payment system

This step mainly applies to ecommerce websites or large websites which involve any transaction of money.You need to add a secure payment gateway to your website. You can opt for some third party payment processors or e-commerce software. There are many webhost which comes with in house ecommerce shopping cart integration.Also you need to have a SSL certified connection for secure transactions.

It follows https protocol and establishes a secure connection. SSL certificates plays very important role in your website performance. Google is rewarding websites which are SSL certified. It might cost you a little but results in more leads. It would be great if you add SSL certificate to your website.

Advantages of SSL Certificate

Remove the threat of hackers
Safe shopping experience with secure payment system
256 bit encryption to secure information
Build Trust with Expanded Authentication
Keeps you ahead of your competitors
Improve your brand value and boost your SEO rankings

Test & Publish your website

Before making your website live you need to check following steps

Whether it is working well with all browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox, safari etc.
Go through each & every page to whether are images showing up, links are broken or not.
Check all your features are working or not.

Market Your Website with SEO & Social Media

After the completion of your website you need to appear on the first page of Google. This is because 90 percent of the clients purchase from the results on first page. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the best thing to get things started. You need to spend a few amounts to start marketing your website. But you will get more business to your website.

Why SEO is must for your website

Increase more traffic
Generate better ROI
First page covers most of the clicks
Take your business to new heights
Gives high credibility to your brand
Makes you stand out among your competitors
Permanent Results as compared to PPC
Best results within minimum budget as compared to PPC

Also you can promote your website on Google or on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, Pinterest etc. to reach more customers and increase your brand value.

Maintain your site

Keeping your website up to date with fresh unique content on regular basis will draw more visitors to your website. You need to

Add blog posts on new products & offers and upcoming events
Check whether your software and plugins are up to date or not. At least, once in a month.
Quickly address technical issues & resolve them

What you need to avoid while creating a website for your business

Don’t use automatic music in the background as it can annoy users.
Avoid use of flash elements as it doesn’t covert with various mobile devices.
Avoid moving slider as they are generally annoying and distracting to users.
Remove Dead end pages in which users can’t navigate to other pages. This results into bad user experience.
Avoid uploading video on the server as it can result into an error. Use other platforms like YouTube &Vimeo.

What should be your priorities for 2024 and beyond?

Clear & Attractive Design
Unique & Fresh products
Effective Call to Actions
Create more high quality content
Make mobile-friendly Websites
Make website more user-friendly
SEO optimized webpages
Online Reputation
SSL certified websites for secure connection

Conclusion:

A business website is not just about selling your products and services online but it is also about providing value to your customers. Hiring a professional web designing agency may cost you more but you will get the desired website that yield better conversions. It helps your business to grow faster and with less effort.

There are various web designing agencies available in the market which does it for you at best affordable prices. So, there is no excuse to shut it down.

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