A professional website can serve as a branding tool, a store platform, a talent showcase, a communication medium, and a marketing tool all at once. In essence, it gives you and your company a unique platform from which to accomplish just about anything in the entire world.
In this article, we’ll walk you through the specifics and logistics of making your own website while also giving you a step-by-step tutorial on how to make one. To ensure that your site is as effective as it is beautiful, we will also concentrate on branding and marketing fundamentals.
How to build a credible website:
- Plan your brand strategy
- Make the design.
- Put usability first
- Get ready for online search
- Make your site more expert.
- Be mobile-friendly
- Produce interesting content
- Keep your webpage updated
1. Plan your brand strategy
Create a clear and stable brand development strategy first, one that will affect across the board of your website, from the main goal to the guiding principles of design and voice. As you proceed with the following, all of this ought to become apparent:
• Define your target demographic:
They, who? Which racial and ethnic groupings do they represent? What do they enjoy doing? Their perception of themselves What impact will your brand or website have on their lives?
• Investigate your rivals:
Do some market research to see what the competition is up to, as well as their strengths and shortcomings, and how you may distinguish yourself from them.
• Describe your brand identity:
What three words would you use to sum up your company? What is the purpose behind your brand? Consider the personality of your brand and draw out specific characteristics like brand colors, lexicon, and style.
• Create consistent branding materials:
It’s time to get down to business and create the content that will soon appear on your website and in all of your other branding assets. Create and design your own logo as well as your own text, movies, photographs, slogans, and other materials. All of these components have to be consistent with your brand identity and support your branding strategy.
2. Begin the design
You must consider several elements of expert website design, from selecting the proper color palette for your website to creating the ideal layout for your site. You can design your website starting with a blank website template if you are already familiar with website creation and have some prior expertise. The next three stages can be used with Wix to create a professional website:
• Select a template or begin with ADI:
When using a website builder with WYSIWYG software, like as Wix, you may design your site without writing any code because the necessary functionality is already included in the user interface. The platform offers users editable website templates that serve as a good starting point for creating their websites.
Professional website templates are available in a wide range of themes, designs, and functions. Find the template that best fits your vision whether you’re building a personal website, an online store, or any other form of website. The one you choose should ideally be set up to meet your demands and align with your corporate objectives. As an alternative, you can let Wix’s ADI create your site, which you can then personalize.
• Edit and customize your template:
Now is the time to make it uniquely your own website. Include all of your content, such as text, videos, links, and pictures. To ensure that photos display as effectively as possible on your website, Wix advises utilizing JPEG, PNG, and GIF files. To quickly connect your site design with your brand, proceed to improve the design utilizing the editor’s site and theme design.
Customization can be as simple as complex as you like. Check out these three outstanding Wix websites that were built using different templates for ideas. Take note of how the original templates have been modified to produce one-of-a-kind, custom-made websites.
• Adjust the appearance:
Making a website involves much more than just picking the right fonts, colors, and photos. To improve your overall look, you can include a range of media features. Consider including background animation or movies in your website design to give it more movement, or parallax scrolling to create the illusion of depth.
3. Put usability first
Any potential customer has to be drawn to your website, but in order to keep them exploring, you also need to offer a satisfying user experience. You won’t succeed with a gorgeous website that is not functional. Pay close attention to the following crucial details when you develop a professional website:
• Website navigation flow:
Make sure the site’s structure is obvious and simple to understand for the best website navigation. Using the main menu or internal links, visitors should be able to simply move between pages and subpages.
• Content hierarchy:
One of the seven design principles, the hierarchy should be given additional consideration. Your goal is to direct site visitors in the direction that best serves your interests. Make sure the most important elements are the most noticeable while establishing the layout of your website.
Your design should reflect this hierarchy by emphasizing the most crucial components through size, color, and page location. For instance, make sure your “Subscribe” button is prominent on the website if you want visitors to sign up for your service. Large headers and attention-grabbing buttons on this landing page that explains how to build a blog clearly show how content hierarchy is done correctly.
• Calls-to-action (CTAs):
These succinct statements ask website users to take immediate action. To “Register Free,” “Get Yours Today,” or “Subscribe,” they can nudge visitors. In other words, they make it simple for visitors to trust what will happen after clicking a button by making it clear to them what you want them to accomplish.
Readability is a fundamental typographic principle. Use legible fonts in comfortable sizes, check that the background and text colors contrast well, and leave enough white space (empty space) surrounding your written material.
• Footer:
The footer is the area at the bottom of your website (the top is the header). Although site users may not see footers right away, they can still be used in a variety of ways to improve usability. Consider placing buttons leading to social media outlets in the bottom along with your contact information. You might also include a disclaimer paragraph, a condensed site map with connections to all of your pages, a short bio, and a simpler site map.
4. Get ready for an online search
One of the best methods to drive traffic to your website is to have it appear highly in search results. This is why it’s crucial to give search engine optimization (SEO) top priority while building your business website. SEO is a crucial component of web marketing and is a science unto itself. Its main components are:
- When conducting keyword research, put yourself in the position of a possible client or site visitor. Which key words or phrases could people enter into Google to find your website? Your SEO strategy will be determined by the terms used in their search inquiries. You’ll be able to decide on the keywords you should be focusing on using keyword research tools.
- Text: All of the text on your website, including the menu, FAQ page, blog, footer, and bio section, should be created with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. The overall goal behind finding subtle and elegant ways to include your keywords into the textual material of your site without sacrificing quality is to increase traffic to your website. There are many SEO techniques available to help you do this. If search engine crawlers believe you sound too much like an advertisement, they may lower your ranking.
- Meta tags: Google and other search engines read your info. You are in charge of deciding what they view and how they display your website in search results. To optimize your content and aid search engines in understanding what your pages include, it is well worth the time to add customized meta tags to your website.
- Alt text: Images are important to your SEO efforts as well. The word “alt text” stands for “alternative text,” and it should be included with each image that you post to your website. A very little sentence known as “alt text” tells search engines what the image represents. Writing alt text for all of your photos that is SEO friendly is crucial since it enables your images to be “discovered” in search results.
- Link building: In general, if other websites link to your website, your ranking on search engine results is likely to improve. Starting points include submitting your company website to directories, ensuring that all of your social media profiles connect back to your website, and encouraging website users to share your content.
Remember that SEO is a continuous activity that doesn’t end when your website is live. To attain long-lasting benefits, you will need to keep improving it as you go.
5. Make your site more professional
You should consider how your website can further your professional success in addition to serving as the internet front for your product or service. Your website may offer a variety of elements, depending on your industry or field, that will appeal to your target market more.
The easiest way to manage appointments online is using scheduling software, which also makes it easier to take reservations, collect payments, and present your offerings in the best possible light
Online store: Setting up and maintaining your e-commerce website, complete with powerful marketing tools, safe online payments, and many sales channels, has never been simpler. You can either choose one of these online store themes or begin developing your website from scratch.
Fitness website: As you develop your fitness business, you need a complete solution that includes online booking and payment capabilities, staff and scheduling flexibility, and gym administration software.
Music website: With Wix, you can sell your music straight on your website and retain all the money you make. Additionally, you’ll be able to increase your audience while retaining complete creative control.
Essential apps: The Wix App Market has a wide range of apps that will enable you to maximize the potential of your website. Think about a countdown timer to assist you to increase sales, a tool to track visitor data, and complex text animation to wow visitors.
6. Mobile optimization
In today’s world, it’s imperative to make sure your website works equally as well on mobile as it does on desktop. In reality, statistics on mobile usage show that over 50% of online page views globally occur on mobile devices. Additionally, ever since Google introduced mobile-first indexing, websites are ranked mostly based on their mobile versions in search results. It is clearly an effort well spent to optimize your mobile website.
The mobile editor transforms your desktop design into a mobile-friendly site when you create a business website with Wix. The style and design can then be modified to work on mobile devices, with a focus on readability, text sizing, and navigation. Even users can download your website as an app to their cellphones.
Editor X is an advanced creation platform from Wix that was created specifically for designers and agencies and is for those searching for complete control over breakpoints. On an adaptable new canvas, it mixes cutting-edge responsive design with simple drag and drop. You now have complete creative freedom and may create your website for any viewport size.
7. Produce interesting content
Once your expert website is live, you’ll notice that getting and keeping visitors becomes the main problem. Creating a content marketing strategy, or the specific plans for producing, disseminating, and promoting material that fosters brand loyalty and trust, will help you become ready for this task. Here are two strategies for starting a content marketing strategy:
Create newsletters: By providing pertinent and alluring content that compels readers to click, marketing emails, like a newsletter, can increase traffic. With Wix, you can create your own effective email marketing campaign using fully configurable layouts, tools for marketing automation, easily readable analytics tracking, and more.
Create a blog: Blogging is worthwhile for many reasons, so get started today. A blog can increase traffic to your website in addition to allowing you to work toward making money from it. You may attract more readers and, in turn, more customers to your product or service by writing about a variety of subjects.
Having your own blog will allow you to express your ideas and message in a more intimate manner while also showcasing your degree of proficiency in your industry.
8. Keep your webpage updated
You’ll need your professional website to function flawlessly as traffic increases and more users come to the site. Even though maintaining a website may seem like a major task, it doesn’t have to be intimidating. You can maintain your website with a small investment by following some simple procedures. These include revising the content, such as the contact form, reacting to client feedback, verifying online stock, fixing broken links, or changing your privacy statement. Maintaining keeps visitors interested and keeps your website looking professional.
In Summary
Making a website can be daunting, but with the help of Wix it becomes much easier. With its wide range of apps and mobile optimization, you can create an expert website that looks great on any device. Additionally, by creating interesting content, you’ll keep visitors coming back for more. And don’t forget to update your webpage regularly; this will keep it looking professional and functioning flawlessly.