How to create a good website: the basic principles and stages
Until now, there are companies that create websites based on the principle “since competitors have one, then we need to”. A web studio or webmaster is tasked with simply creating a website “to be”. In this case, the business owner is not involved in the process, and experts create a website as part of their picture of the world. But this is not their business, and they do not know all the subtleties of the case. It turns out the site is about everything and about anything that spends the time and money of the owners.
Let’s see what needs to be done before ordering a site, during its creation and after, in order to get a working tool for business at the exit. Highlight the following steps to create a website:
Step 1. Define the goals
First of all, you need to decide what you need a website for. From this will depend on the structure and content of the resource, as well as ways to promote.
Examine your audience: who your customers are and how they are looking for information about a product or service. From this will depend on which site you need. If you are just starting a business, then look at the research from your field to understand the big picture. For those who already have many customers offline, we recommend conducting surveys among customers and employees.
For online stores, we recommend starting to study e-commerce as a whole in order to understand who orders what on the Internet. Sample charts from the Shopolog site (link to the full story):
Sample charts from e-commerce market research
And, of course, do not forget about competitors who have already created sites. Learn how they attract customers, what opportunities they have or what mistakes they make. We wrote about competition analysis earlier: part 1 and part 2.
Having understood who your customers are, it is easier to formulate the purpose of the site, which may look, for example, like this:
Expanded reach. You want to go to other regions and expand the dealer network. Or do you know that most customers are looking for information on the Internet and are ready to order online. You will need a full-fledged site with information about all the products and services of the company.
Brand promotion. Your company has already established itself on the market, but is unknown on the Internet: there are no references to you in various ratings, on the pages of forums or on informational sites, only about competitors. The creation of a business card site is suitable that will increase customer loyalty and help you quickly find company contacts.
Reducing the burden on support services. After a survey of employees, it became clear that customers lacked information about the product, and the creation of a certain directory would solve this problem. That is, here you need a website with an emphasis on information content. Also, this site is suitable for training new employees.
Increase sales of a specific product. Those who are not yet ready to launch a full-fledged website or would like to “test” the audience should start with a landing page for a single product or service.
These are only the most common options for reference.
Step 2. Choose a domain and hosting
The name of the site and hosting company is better to choose in advance. Selection of articles on this topic:
About what a domain and hosting and recommendations for the choice can be found here.
More information about choosing the right site name.
Should I buy old domains, told here.
An article about the features of domains in the zone. RF.
And do not hesitate to consult with the developers of your site.
Step 3. We make the technical task
The technical task, as you can guess from the title, is a document in which all the requirements for your future site will be collected. The degree of detail depends on the list of your desires and the complexity of the resource. Highlight the main sections:
A description of the purpose and purpose of the site, as well as brief information about the target audience (see step 1). So that the developers of the site were with you on the same wavelength and at the same time helped to choose the format of the resource.
Requirements for the design of the site. In general, describe how you present the design of the future resource, specify the desired color scheme and, if available, corporate colors. Also in this section you need to specify the logo or designate what it should be.
List of site viewers. List the browsers and their versions from which the site should be displayed correctly, especially if the specifics of the business require support for older versions (for example, for banking). And do not forget about the optimization for mobile, so that your site looks neat on any device.
Content management system requirements. Define a list of key features for the site administrator, for example, adding photos to a portfolio or changing texts on pages, creating new sections or changing structure, etc.
Consult with the developers what CMS is better to choose. The main advice is that we do not recommend using samopisnye systems and designers, especially if you will not be able to support them yourself later on. We recommend reading the reviews of the most popular systems and systems that are not suitable for promotion.
