Building a website is the first step to any successful marketing strategy, but many still see it as a nice-to-have rather than a must-have. Your website is actually often the first experience users have of your company, and it is therefore essential to ensure that it reflects your brand and objectives.

In this article we give you the top six “dos” and “don’ts” of any web strategy, to help you take full advantage of your site. We hope you find them useful!

1. DO map out your goals and objectives

Before building your site, it’s essential to ensure that it will meet your business’s core goals and objectives. By making these the foundation for your website’s content architecture you can help align your site with the rest of your marketing strategy.

Think about what it is exactly that you want to achieve through your site and focus heavily on those goals and metrics, tailoring your design around them.

2. DON’T ignore your audience

The best way to ensure your site is meeting your goals is to think about your audience and what their user experience of the site will be like.

By looking at the top use cases that the site will be serving, you can think of ways to streamline them so that they are as efficient and as user-friendly as possible. For example, users should be able to move quickly across the site and to easily find the information they need. Or users should be able to purchase a product in a few simple steps, without needing to enter too much information.

There are countless use cases this could be applied to, so focus on your top five or ten and work towards ensuring these are as smooth as possible.

3. DO plan your content architecture in advance

Creating an efficient content architecture is not only a great way to ensure the site is user-friendly; it is also key in making it as easy as possible for content editors to build and populate the site.

Your content architecture is the way content is organized and accessed within your CMS. By making it as intuitive as possible you can significantly speed up content edits, increasing efficiency. Make sure that all site content follows a clear logic that content editors can intuitively understand.

Also ensure that the content itself can be easily edited by non-technical users. Hard-coded content could present a huge obstacle if content editors must rely on a developer every time they need to make updates.

4. DON’T forget about updating your website

Your website is the first experience that most people will have of your business, so it’s crucial that it is up-to-date. Outdated content will only make you lose credibility with your audience and will fail to engage them or to answer any of their burning questions.

Updating your site includes ensuring that the design itself doesn’t look dated. You may want to consider refreshing your site every few years to prevent this, and to always provide a fresh modern design.

5. DO ensure your site is scalable

Your site’s performance can significantly affect your conversions. In fact, nearly 57% of visitors will abandon a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load.

It’s therefore important to look into your requirements to ensure that your hosting options fully meet them. Are there certain times of the year when your website traffic increases dramatically (eg. Black Friday)? A hosting option that’s scalable will help you meet these needs and prevent you from missing out on conversions and revenue.

6. DON’T neglect mobile

When it comes to researching products and services online today, mobile is king. If your site is not optimized for mobile, you’ll potentially be missing out on a large volume of traffic, as users won’t be encouraged to remain on your site if the experience isn’t friendly.

At the very least ensure that your site is optimized and accessible on a mobile browser. By investing on optimizing your site for mobile you could be having a significant impact on your conversions and potentially on mobile sales and revenue.

Do you have any tips to building a successful website? Let us know in the comments below!

 

If you would like to find out more about how Agility CMS can help you, request a free demo now.