If you’re about to join the online community and need to produce a website, I’m sure you have many questions and reservations. We’ve listed below our top 25 tips hoping this will lead you in the right direction.

1 Define your goals
Why do you need a website? What do I want the website to achieve! It’s important to know exactly what your goals are. Have a clear strategy of exactly what your intentions are.

2 Know your audience
Try to imagine yourself as a visitor to your own site, be critical, does it work! If you can’t find what you need, how will a new visitor.

3 Register your domain
Choose your domain carefully, does it reflect your company identity or what your selling. You can buy your domain before creating your website, so if your chosen domain is available, buy it, don’t wait.

4 Design
If you have a company or organisation style, use this as a basis to the design of your site. This will easily be recognised by visitors who are aware of you already.

5 Style – how you look does matter
Make your site look professional and well thought out, it only takes a second for a visitor to not be impressed and move onto another website.

6 Don’t hide what you sell
What you do or sell is important so don’t hide crucial elements behind unimportant pages, make sure the user doesn’t have to spend time finding what they want, they will move on.

7 Good content
The first few words on your website are critical and a short statement containing keywords will help the search engines find you easily, improving your search engine performance.

8 Easy to read
Most people browse over website content so make it easy to read, straight to the point.

9 Avoid too much text
Don’t be tempted to write a novel, keep it short and sweet.

11 Keep images small
Images are great, but keep them small. They can slow down your page loading, visitors hate it and so do search engines.

12 Easy navigation
A well thought out navigation is essential for visitors to find their way around your site.

13 Contact details – make them clear.

14 Make hyperlinks easy to identify
Display hyperlinks in a consistent manner throughout your site, so visitors quickly get a feel for how it works.

15 Speed
Ensure your website loads quickly, visitors will quickly loose patience and move to another site. Search engines don’t promote slow to load sites.

16 Email mailing list
Encourage visitors to subscribe to an email subscription for latest news/products – this customer opt-in facility will generate a database for you.

17 Links
Have links to informative sites, search engines like genuine links and will help with your ranking.

18 Browser compatibility
Make sure all your visitors see the same information correctly. Check your website works in all the popular browsers and their relative versions.

19 SEO – no tricks, follow the rules
There’s no quick fix or cheat, use the SEO guidelines properly, continually working at keeping your site up-to-date and finding out what your potential visitors will be asking the search engines and adjust your content.

20 Web analytics – look at how people will find your site
Use analytic software to view how people arrived at your site and what they asked the search engines.

21 Encourage browsing
Encourage the visitor to go further into your site with promotional hooks and benefits. Make them inquisitive to find out more.

22 Test your site
Before going live test your site with friends and people in your network. Get feedback.

23 Keep your content updated regularly
Update your content regularly, returning visitors will want to know what’s new and search engines promote well kept and updated sites.

24 Be confident
Plan out your goals, look at your competitors, learn what works and what doesn’t and get started.

25 Getting started
Strike while the iron is hot! Call us on 01580 212676 and let’s get started on your new website