Stuck Trying to build your own website?

If you are stuck trying to build your own website, don't be too hard on yourself. Building a website that is an asset to your business isn't easy. Even the most basic and plain-looking sites that get no traffic and have no income potential, require the know-how of finding hosting, buying domain names, and of using some sort of website builder or content management system. There is a learning curve to building a profitable website which will take time to master. Along the way, you will have to navigate through many options and decide which are best suited for your circumstances.  Developing a checklist for website development is essential.

Here are four important issues you will encounter along the way to building a profitable website:

Web Hosting

Websites are essentially software that reside on a server, which is a specialized computer. Web hosting companies will host your website on their servers for a monthly fee. They perform maintenance and other tasks that keep their servers running and your website online. Not all web hosting companies are equal. Some have dismal records of uptime. Uptime is the percentage of time that websites are online. It's an important metric because a website that isn't online during a critical selling period loses a lot of business revenue.

Some hosting companies place too many websites on their shared servers which causes slow web page loading. This also hurts business revenue because most people won't wait more than 3 or 4 seconds for a web page to load before going elsewhere.

Another web hosting requirement beyond uptime and page loading speeds, is good customer service. When you are losing money because of hosting problems, you want the problem resolved quickly via an effective and responsive customer service.

Mobile Responsive Design

Most of today's online consumers access the Internet with their mobile devices. Why? Because it's a matter of convenience. Their mobile devices allow them to do online research and make purchases wherever they happen to be and whenever it's convenient. No longer will people put off their online activities because they aren't home at their desk top computers.

Unfortunately, many websites don't display well on mobile devices. This causes mobile users to abandon these sites in favor of websites optimized for both mobile devices and traditional desktop computers. This means that mobile responsive web design isn't an option anymore.

Website Design

Beyond mobile responsiveness, a well designed website must be user-friendly. The visitor shouldn't have to think when finding their way around or locating products or content of interest. The experience should be seamless and enjoyable. An engaged visitor will spend more time on your website which in turn increases their likelihood of becoming a customer. This concept is similar to a brick and mortar store with an enjoyable and engaging interior environment.

Website design also affects conversions. Where you place your call to action, the color used for your add to cart buttons, your choice and locations of images all affect your conversion rate (the percentage of traffic that becomes customers). Getting these factors right requires ongoing testing.

Content Development

The more pages of content (text, images, videos, etc.) that your site has, the more traffic your website will attract from the search engines. An abundance of engaging content also makes your website more "sticky." That is, traffic landing on your site will spend more time there and make more return visits.

If each page of a 1000 page website gets a modest 10 visitors a day, that's 10,000 daily visitors, each of whom is a potential customer. Content development is a highly effective form of inbound marketing. However, producing the content requires a lot of creative work.

Building a highly profitable website isn't a trivial thing. It takes either a lot of learning and trial and error, or lots of expertise. If you are interested in using the expertise of professionals to build your website for you while you work on your business, contact us today.