Irrespective of the purpose of the website, there are a few things every developer needs to do before creating a website. In this article, we are going to discuss these basic things and some more that you can do to ensure building a really amazing and unique site.
Things to Consider Before Creating a Website
1. Domain Name: Your website’s domain should –
perfectly match with the idea or the type of business you want to build.
be a name that people can remember easily.
be short and easy to type.
Include the target keywords.
not have numbers and/or hyphens.
have an appropriate domain extension, depending on your business type
Be well-researched.
2. Web Hosting
Compare different hosting service providers and plans.
Choose a reliable hosting that perfectly suits your needs.
Check and compare the storage, bandwidth capacity and other features of the hosting.
Choose the hosting that comes with uptime guarantee.
Check and compare hosting prices, upgrade options and rates, etc.
Read user reviews and testimonials.
3. Web Technology: There are many technology options, such as HTML5, JavaScript, PHP, DotNet and more, that you can choose from for developing your own site. You must have a strong command over the technology or should be willing to hire a good web development company/developer for the job.
4. Purpose of the site: The purpose for which you are building the site would decide a lot of things, including the website name, domain, design, layout, theme, content, etc., so you better figure it out the first thing.
5. Website Design/Theme/Layout: Choose a theme that you know your website visitors would like. The layout should be simple, easy, neat and clean and easy to navigate. The website design should be simple, attractive yet professional. Use the right fonts, colours, background colour, font-size and other design elements. Make sure to include a footer with the right menus, disclaimer and a good design.
6. Sitemap: Design a sitemap/flowchart of your website which should consist of all the website URLs and/or pages in a neat manner to help users and search engines understand the website navigation.
7. Website Content: The content is probably the most important part of a website. It is the thing for which the users will actually visit your site, so try to make your website content simple, attractive, informative, relevant, unique, easy to read, short and precise. Make sure to include your business target keywords within the content as well as in the meta tags of the web pages. Optimize the web content for image size, loading speed, layout, headings, title, quality and more.
8. Audience: Research thoroughly to find out more about your target audience and understand the competition in the target market so that you can write the content and build a website accordingly.
9. Website Images: use only high-quality and relevant images on the website. An image is the second best content type after the text that you can use to attract more visitors and keep them longer on your site. If you can afford, hire a professional image designer/editor/photographer for the job.
10. Uniqueness and Freshness: One thing that will decide how users react to your website is how unique or different your site is from the competition. Use unique content, images and even a unique website layout to build an authority in the market. There is no meaning of having a website if you are going to provide the same content as everyone else. Also, make sure to keep the website content up-to-date to keep your visitors hooked.
11. Target Browsers, Platforms and Devices: Before you start building your website, you must know the target platforms on which your website will be working. A business website should be built with cross-browser compatibility – to work great on all modern browsers and responsiveness – to open properly on all screen sizes and resolutions.
12. SEO Optimization: SEO is still probably the best way to organically optimize a website and improve its value for the users and the search engines. You should utilize proper on-page SEO techniques to correctly optimize your website for better rankings.
13. Social Media Integration: Make use of the various social media tools like sharing options, Facebook page widget, Twitter timeline widget, etc., on your website to provide your web visitors sufficient options to share and be social.
14. Registration and Sign-In: If you are going to provide the visitors with an option to register or sign-in on your website, make sure to do it right by implementing proper security measures. Make nice, attractive-enough pages for user registration and sign-in, and include social sign-in options if possible. You can also offer other advantages and freebies on new registrations.
15. Website Tracking and Analysis: A website is usually built with the purpose to attract traffic, therefore you should have a proper way to keep track of your website visitors, their activities, reactions and other related metrics. The Google Analytics Tool is one way to do this.
It’s a good thing if you are a professional web developer and can build your website on your own, but there are many other important things like website optimization, design, etc., that you should be aware of when building a website. We have mentioned above the things you should consider before you actually start building your website. Feel free to share your responses in the comments below.
