How to build a stealth website for your business within 7 days!

building a website for business in 7 days

Have you been thinking about building a website for your business but find yourself in dire straits? If you don’t know where to start or are not familiar with the process of making a website – don’t worry! This quick guide will help you go live with your stealth website by day 7!

Table of Content:

Day 1: Feature List, Sitemap & Domain

Day 2: Pick a WordPress theme

Day 3: Prepare your content

Day 4: Customize your website

Day 5: Install necessary plugins

Day 6: Test it out!

Day 7: Final Fixes and LAUNCH

Building a website for your business is one of the crucial tasks in order to officiate your brand, run betas/pilots, win over potential customers online and establish your foundation. The same foundation and learnings from it are then used to help your website mature or curve it towards its envisioned stage of a platform.

Which are the two most efficient ways to create a stealth website?

  1. Go for website builder platforms like Shopify or Wix
  2. Make one with WordPress – An easy to set up and modify CMS

Undoubtedly, both options are great for new entrepreneurs to take their business online. However, the decision to use WordPress or a website builder ultimately depends on your needs.  If you choose a website builder you might just find this guide to be helpful.

In this blog, we’ll walk through the website building process for WordPress – that too within a week! Excited? So are we. In case you get stuck anywhere, you can contact our experts to help you with the process.

Building a website for your business using WordPress within 7 days!

Day 1: Feature List, Sitemap & Domain

The first day is about fleshing out the details and documenting everything. Use this day to straighten out your goals and objectives. Running a website without identifying the goals is like driving a car without knowing the destination. Start off by recognizing your general business goals. Do you want to target revenue? Does your business only look at generating leads through the website? Do you need a portfolio website to just showcase your products or services? Is it a combination of these things?

Don’t forget to check out what your competitors are doing. What can you do better than them on your website? All of the above should help you with building your sitemap. You can’t build a house without a clear blueprint, the same goes for a website!

When you create a sitemap for your website, you’ll be able to answer the following questions:

  • How many or what type of pages your website will have
  • What content do you need for your website?
  • What will the key elements or features that it will have
sitemap

Once you’re done, the last task for the day will be to decide your website’s name and give it a place to live, a.k.a a domain. Your domain is what somebody types into the bar at the top of a browser to direct to your website – so it isn’t a decision to be taken lightly.

Good domain names are relatively short and easy to remember, type, or say. Since this is how most people will search for you, it should be concise and catchy. In most cases, you have to pay for your domain name annually.

Day 2: Pick a WordPress theme

The second day is when you determine how your website looks. There are hundreds of themes and templates to choose from, pick the one that comes closest to your feature list and matches your expectations in terms of aesthetics.

Whether you’re building an eCommerce site, portfolio page, or blog, there are versatile business themes to suit different business types.

Head to the WP admin dashboard. Find Appearance >  Themes.

themes option

From here you can select or browse through themes and find one that works best for you.

wordpress themes

Day 3: Prepare your content

We’re inching closer till you finally get your website live. Now that you’ve installed your desired WordPress theme, it’s time to fill it up with content!

The content on your WordPress website is usually displayed in two main categories:

  • Pages

Pages are static, which means the added content stays the same unless you edit them.  The “About Us” and the “Contact” page are two common examples. Pages are organized hierarchically on a site – this means you can make one page the “parent” while the other page the “child”. For instance, you might have a parent page called “Fashion”, which is then split into “Women’s Fashion” and “Men’s Fashion”.

To add a new page, go to Pages > Add New.

Add pages
  • Posts

Posts are typically designed to be blog entries and portfolios. You can use posts to publish long-form content, news, articles, or other important information that you wish to display on your website.

To add a new post, go to Posts > Add New.

add posts

After adding a page or a post, start populating them with your own content and publish them on your WordPress website. The best way to do it is by using ‘Text Blocks’ to add any written content and then embed images or videos in between.

Before hitting the Publish button, make sure you click on Preview to see how it will look on the live site. Once you’re happy with it, hit Publish, or save it as a draft if you want to come back to it later.

Stick to this process till you’ve set up all the pages on your chosen WP theme.

Day 4: Customize your website

With some pages and posts, you’ve added life to your empty website. It’s time to take a step further and start customizing it to match that content. Here are four main ways you can do that:

  • Start by your site title: From your admin dashboard, head to ‘Settings’, then click ‘General’. From here add a title for your website.
  • Add a navigational menu: Yes your navigational menu can be customized too. Under the ‘Appearance’ section and then go to ‘Menu’. Determine how you want your navigation bar to look and select which pages you’d like to add.
  • Set up your homepage: Your homepage can either be a dynamic page with all your featured posts or a static page with the same content. You can set that up by heading to Setting > Reading.

Day 5: Install necessary plugins

Plugins are software additions that improve the functionality of your WordPress website and help you tailor your website user’s experience. There are over 58,000 available plugins – from adding a quick form to set up the website in multiple languages, the WP plugins library is one of the main reasons why businesses worldwide opt-in for it. But 58,000 is a heavy number and can be extremely overwhelming for you. So here are some of the most popular WordPress plugins that are common for most businesses:

  • WP Forms – a simple and user-friendly drag and drop’ online form builder plugin to easily customizable forms with just a few clicks.
  • Yoast SEOYoast SEO is a plugin to help optimize your WordPress posts and pages so that it ranks well on search engines.
  • WooCommerce – an easy-to-master WP eComm plugin in case you’re looking to set up your online shop.
  • The SEO Framework – helps you master SEO on your new website.

To add these,

Head over to the Plugins section in your admin dashboard to begin the installations. This section shows all your installed plugins. Click on Add New. Pick the plugin that is best for you. Once you have installed a new plugin, you will have to ‘Activate’ it to start using the plugin on your WordPress site.

plugins

Day 6:  Test it out!

A website is never truly ready without a few tests. When working on a website, even the best developers miss out on some minor errors or mistakes. In this situation, it is a good idea to get some outside opinion. We’d advise you to send out your website’s staging or test link to a couple of friends and trusted sources. Ask them to at least spend 10 minutes examining the functions and features of your new website and give their honest feedback. If you want, you can even ask them specific questions so you are able to guide yourself better:

  • What does the website tell you about my business?
  • Are you smoothly able to navigate through the pages?
  • Does the website look like it’s targeted towards my audience?
  • What are the things that you think I can do better?

Send out your questions and wait for them to respond back. You can also run a few tests yourself – looking at it from your audience’s eyes and seeing how well the website is performing.

Also, be sure to check how your website looks on different devices and browsers – especially on mobile view since the majority of the global traffic today comes through phones! Consistency is key.

Day 7: Final fixes and LAUNCH

You’ve reached the seventh day – how proud are you of yourself? By this time, you may have received the feedback as well. Take the day to work on incorporating that feedback – from arranging the background image to fixing some small grammatical errors. This is your chance to nail everything on your site before you finally launch it!

Once you’re done refining and modifying the essentials, it’s time to have a final look and a final proofread of all your content! Make sure you’re satisfied with the end result and if you are – good job! You’ve made it. But your job isn’t done here. When you are building a website for a business, you’re also responsible for putting the word out there about your newly launched website – whether through social media, word of mouth, email marketing, paid promotion, or all these ways. Just make sure you keep a track of the website traffic, what’s working and what’s not working, new features your customers suggest, your ideas on evolving the website – all this will help in launching the 2nd, more optimized build of your website!

The most amazing thing about building a website for a business is that you did it all by yourself. While setting up the stealth website can be achieved, don’t forget the grander vision you have for it. With time, your website will mature with newer features and functions. Build something that doesn’t need to be relooked in 3 years and costs you a fortune. Anticipate the expansion of your brand and your requirements for it through the website. Build it today while thinking of your brand’s tomorrow! Our in-house team makes and develops WP custom websites that are tailored for users.

Thinking about building a website for your business? How about a free discovery session with our experts? The coffee’s on us!

When should you get your startup’s website developed? Should you outsource it?

Outsourcing web development & the right time to get a website developed

How do you know at which stage your startup needs a website? Is outsourcing web development a good option?

Be honest. What is the first place you visit when you hear about a business/startup? We’re sure at least 90% of us directly jump on the first link we get on Google.

In this digitally dominating world, a business is lost if it doesn’t have a website. You get conversions and recall when you give a simple-to-understand, hard-to-forget online experience to your customers. Till a couple of years ago, this only applied to B2C brands but today a website unlocks many doors for B2B companies too.

business is lost without a website

However, when you’re running a startup, every dollar counts. Every day is an uphill battle to figure out the right investments during this nascent stage of your business.

So let’s find the answer to this question – what is the right time for your startup to get a website?

To really know if your startup is ready for a website you first need answers to some important questions. One simple way to do that is by comparing spending on website development to any other important expense you can think of – like buying a car. What questions would you ask yourself before you make the final decision of investing in a brand new car? The answer isn’t supposed to be the same for every situation, but most of the time it boils down to a few questions:

  • Why do I need a car? (convenient and saves time, facilitates daily tasks, beneficial during emergencies, personal mobility, and independence, etc.)
  • How will I be using a car? (commuting to work, traveling, long drives, etc.)
  • What are the most important things I look for in my car? (style, reliability, comfort, space, quality, etc.)

We’re sure there are other questions you’d ask, but you get the point. Unless you have a lot of cash to burn, you wouldn’t buy a car without a reason or a plan. The formula is the same for websites. Let’s ask the same questions, but this time let’s replace the car with a website:

  • Why do you need a website? (increase brand visibility and awareness, generate sales, get leads, increase customer base, build credibility, increase accessibility, etc.)
  • How will you be using a website? (showcase and market your products, build relationships with existing customers, inform and educate potential customers, deliver excellent customer service, etc.)
  • What are the most important things you look for on your website? (appealing visual design, easy navigation, contact information, security, etc.)

Developing a website for your business without structuring a plan is more likely to fail in achieving your goals if they are anything beyond just having a website.

Once you know what you need, it’s time to figure out how you’re going to get it. This means deciding whether you should build your website on your own or outsource it to a company you trust.

Building Your Website vs Outsourcing Web Development

Building a website on your own totally depends upon the type of business and the level of knowledge you have within the area of technology. You obviously wouldn’t fix an underground water line without having any idea about what you should be doing. Or perform a LASIK surgery without having any proper training.

We rely on expertise only when we require things that are way beyond our area of knowledge. Plus it takes away a lot of time from your hands which you could’ve spent focusing on other macros of the business.

Let’s contemplate both options.

Developing Your Website

This is something that every entrepreneur, blogger, start-up owner, etc has at least thought of once in their lifetime – so yes, you’re not alone. You could be someone who doesn’t like working at someone else’s pace, wants to do the best for your brand, maybe want to save some extra bucks, or maybe it’ll be all of these things.

That’s completely fine!

There are various resources available online that can help you get some basic knowledge about web development. But remember that even after signing up and spending big bucks on courses online, not all of us end up having a good relationship with coding! In that case, numerous CMS (Content Management System) platforms are at your service. Following just a few simple steps, these platforms can easily help you create and build your own website.

Does that mean CMS is a sure-shot winner for developing a website? Um, not really. While CMS can be a champion in getting a cost-effective website made without taking too much time, it often loses the battle with SEO and core user experience. Visual design and search engine ranking are two important factors that, when done right, help in generating quality leads for a business. In this case, it is a wise option to outsource web development services and get in touch with an experienced team of developers who have a deeper understanding of what exactly needs to be done.

If you’re bending towards hiring a team of professionals, keep reading!

But if making it on your own makes more sense for you then WordPress and Squarespace are a couple of user-friendly website-builder platforms that let you create your website without spending too much.

Outsourcing Your Website’s Development

While using a CMS may sound simple, it isn’t the best outlet in many scenarios. In some situations, these free website builders can be a perfect choice. A quick simple website for a conference or an event? CMS platforms are all you need! However, when it comes to running a full-blown online store, or leads-generating business website, it is a smarter bet to hand it over to a professional web development agency.

outsourcing web development
Source: Outsourcing Insight

A web development company comes with a varying number of professionals working under different aspects of developing a website. All with one aim – to build a high-quality, highly converting website for your business. Here is the list of professionals you join hands with when outsourcing web development:

web development company

Together, a web development company is an all-in-one package of experienced individuals. Another of the various other benefits of outsourcing website development is that it allows you to deliver something that is more aligned with your business goals without any hassle of doing it all yourself.

Cost and time are seen as important determining factors between DIY and web dev outsourcing. Indeed, outsourcing development is more expensive than building a website on your own. But when you look at the broader picture, you’ll understand why:

  • This is the cost you pay to the experts to manage your website. In this constantly shifting & changing landscape, you are hiring a team of individuals who are knowledgeable and always up to work on the latest developments.
  • Other than just designing and developing your website, they’re also working towards planning out ways on how you can achieve your business goals through it.
  • There are constant revisions before the website is finally presented. Sometimes even the smallest of change involves many layers and masks that need to be altered.
  • Outsourcing web development company also means that, even after launch, your website is maintained time-to-time for all security updates. Thus, saving you and your customers from any future problems.

Instead of seeing your website’s development as an expense, look at it as a one-time investment. After all, running a startup is no joke. There can be numerous potential risks that can come your way – don’t let a DIY website be one!

We know how crucial a role your website can play for your business in today’s time. We’ve spent the last 9 years solving problems for startups and businesses across the world through technology and design thinking. Need a little help with your website? Just drop us a message, the coffee’s on us!

5 Best B2B website designs that convert visitors to customers

5 best b2b website designs

Not only does a website work as the storefront for your business, but it also a representation of what you stand for as a brand. However, for B2B businesses, a website has a much bigger impact. It plays as an important marketing tool that can bring in more clients by generating leads. Here are the 5 best B2B Website designs that convert visitors to potential customers.

Table of content:

  1. Reputation Squad
  2. Powerwest
  3. Pulse 220
  4. Sysdoc
  5. Drift
positive interaction

In this ever-crowded online space, it is vital to seek ways to get noticed by your target audience. How? By standing out! The main elements that make a website stand out from the others are when it:

  • appears at the top of the search results when someone searches for certain keywords related to the business;
  • is visually appealing;
  • is simple and easy to navigate;
  • has great and insightful content.

However, not all of these factors are considered equally important for a website’s success. The relevance of each is sometimes determined by what kind of business it is. For instance, the website layout can be more important than content if the B2B is an online payment platform. Similarly, design and user experience can be a much important element for a B2B media management platform.

B2B Website best practices

The key to attracting good organic traffic that converts into quality leads is by following the best B2B website practices mentioned below:

  • Your website design and other elements should communicate to the website visitor by delivering a clear and unified message. While a  lot of quality information is a good thing, it can sometimes get in the way and make it difficult to communicate clearly with visitors. Remember that the lesser the text, the better it is.
  • Create high-quality content related to the industry you’re in. Developing consistent and educational content can help the website earn quality organic traffic which in turn can boost the site’s search ranking and increase brand exposure. Offering diverse content formats like blogs, how-to videos, eBooks, infographics, etc can strengthen your page in terms of search and user experience.
  • Include clear and convincing call-to-actions (CTAs) that usher visitors to a particular task or explain what to do next. A simple “Contact us” button will not work here. CTAs should be descriptive, specific, and active like “Get your free eBook now” or “Click here to know more.”
  • Ensure your website is visually appealing. The more attractive your website is for users, the higher the chances of them staying longer. This means you have a higher chance of converting them. Use the right color scheme, typography, graphics, images, etc to elicit a good response.
  • Use industry-relevant terms to add value to the SEO of your website and increase visibility on search engine result pages.
sites on world wide web
  • It is crucial to consider the mobile-friendliness of your website because, without it, your organization can lose out on a fast-growing audience.
  • Analyze your website navigation and make sure it’s clean, crisp, and simple.
  • Keep checking your website using available data about time spent on the page, conversion flow patterns, loading times, actions taken, and more to decide what can be improved.

5 Best B2B Website Designs

1. Reputation Squad

reputation squad b2b website designs

Reputation Squad is an online business monitoring solution for small to large-scale businesses. As soon as you enter their website, you are intrigued by fun mouse-over animations that are interactive and help reduce the effort you have to make to look for details, access crucial information, or see different views on the website. Their landing page offers multiple sections that you can scroll down to see. You will also see a clear “Get a quote” CTA on every page you land on.

Mouse-over animation is a creative and unique effect to play around with. Additionally, it will help you in saving more space on your website to show important information in the most clever way possible.

2. Powerwest

powerwest b2b website designs

Australia-based B2B company Powerwest builds and designs power generation solutions for mining and resource companies. The moment you land on their website,  you already know what the company can do for you. They use clear and concise language to communicate their message to the website visitors. Every page on the website showcases high-quality images of job sites accompanied by strong CTA buttons.  Their navigation bar is easy to follow and the landing pages also have minimum texts.

3. Pulse 220

pulse220 best b2b website designs

Pulse220 is an agency that executes meetings, events, and live marketing to help businesses communicate and engage. One basic element that makes their website stand out is the use of card layouts. Card design is a great way to present content in a more organized and user-friendly way. On their website, Pulse 220 has used card design in more than one way: showcasing their team and case studies.

pulse220

On a design end, organizing a large amount of content – whether images or texts – on plane cards is a go-to structure for many websites. The emphasis on organization, clarity, and the ability to be responsive on every device makes card layout a practical method for web design.

4. Sysdoc

sysdoc

Sysdoc helps companies attain successful and sustainable digital transformation and change. Their website is clean and clear but also gives a very modern feel with simple and short animations. The strong visual elements on their website enhance and add to brand credibility. With on-mark copy that explains what the company does communicates quite clearly. The navigation panel accompanies as you scroll through the page, and their CTAs are very well-designed as well.

5. Drift

drift

Drift is a revenue acceleration platform that helps businesses connect with buyers via chat, video, voice, or email. Their website isn’t like any other regular B2B business using stock photography. Instead, they dare to feature their employees on their website and provide visitors with insights into who works behind the company. Human faces elicit an emotional response which further improves engagement.  Every page on their website has images of smiling faces of individuals and even a group of people knitted closely with the website design. Keeping the design minimalistic, they have perfectly balanced out a clean layout with a strong visual experience.

Takeaway

When listing the best B2B website designs, we can go on talking about the various great designs present here on the internet. These 5 examples of B2B website designs stuck with us because of their outstanding features and elements that make these stand out from the rest. There are many elements behind making a website that converts. Some of them including:

  • The use of an impactful CTA with a descriptive copy;
  • Strategic use of visual content and graphics;
  • Optimized content search engines;
  • Consistent testing and iterations, etc.

Are you ready to create yours today? Spark Eighteen is a web designing company based in Delhi, India that specializes in designing B2B websites for years. Contact us today and let’s redesign your website together!

6 things your customers are expecting from your website

things website should have

Let’s face it, your company is already facing problems if you aren’t listening to your customers. After all, the best business decisions are based on real customer data and not blind-assumptions. Especially today, the most important thing a customer is expecting from your business is a website. Here, we will talk about the 6 things a website should have to deliver on those expectations.

Table of Content:

  1. Contact Information
  2. Interactive Content
  3. Responsive Design
  4. CTA Buttons
  5. Great Content
  6. Testimonials and Feedbacks

Today, when a consumer is looking for a product or service, they mainly surf online rather than going to a nearby store themselves. So in order to tell your audience that you are the right business, you need a website.

Sure, customers can easily trust reviews or opinions from other people, but an optimized website allows them to be fully informed about the business they are engaging with in order to make the right decision.

Your website works 24/7 in conveying your brand message and serving your customers. It is here that you attract new customers while also being in touch with the current ones. So to run a successful website, you need to understand what our customers are looking for when they visit it.

Do you want to know what are these important things a website should have? Keep on reading!

1. Contact Information

Your customers visit your website to connect with you. You would not want to make it hard for them to see your contact information, do you?

Your very first page should tell your customers how they can contact you. An email address, a contact number, or your company’s address – make sure everything is right there on your home page itself, clearly!

2. Interactive Content

first impression
Source: Sweor

To create a positive impression of your website in the eyes of your consumer, you need to introduce them to interactive content.

Interactive content refers to anything your visitors can interact with when they visit your website. This can be a short survey or a price calculator.

In addition to that, you can also include various interactive multimedia like compelling videos, images, or animations to create an enjoyable experience for your users.

3. Responsive Design

poor design
Source: socPub

Your customers want your website to work quickly and efficiently on every device be it a laptop or a mobile phone.

Trying to purchase or read from a website that doesn’t work sufficiently on a mobile phone is the most frustrating thing. Users don’t even take a second to exit from such websites which makes having a responsive design one of the most important things a website should have.

The average time that a customer stays on a website is 15 seconds. So you basically have to expect them to find everything in this time frame no matter what device they are on.

Also read: How to create a successful business website?

4. CTA Buttons

It’s obvious that you would want your customers to interact with your website whether it is for a sign-up on your newsletter or action to purchase your products.

When you include buttons like “Sign Up Here” and “Buy Now” you are directly telling your customers what they can do next.

Just keep in mind that you do not create a mess with a hoard of call-to-action buttons on your page. Use 2-3 of them on one page and make them clear and accessible. Try testing different formats like pop-ups, social sharing, or slide-in forms, and see what type of CTA works best with your audience.

5. Great Content

great content
Source: Hubspot

Blogs are a great way to share industry-related news, tips, tricks, and other relevant information about your industry. Not only that, but writing blogs for your website can be highly beneficial for search engine rankings, social media posts, and email sign-ups.

So if you want to attract new people to your website you need great content and blogs are the way!

6. Testimonials And Feedbacks

No matter how much you assure people how great your product or service is, your audience will rely on proof rather than promotions.

This is why testimonials and feedbacks from past customers are important to be displayed on your website. It does not only validates your work but also builds trust with potential clients and customers to do business with you.

Simply email all your current or past customers to write honest feedback about your company. If you’re struggling to do so, try offering incentives such as free eBooks, discounts, or other gifts to encourage them to write a line or two.

It’s onto you…

Here was our list of things a website should have.

In the end, we would like to say that all you have to do is make your customer’s life easier by creating an engaged and dedicated website. If you don’t know what people think about your website, ask people around you or look at your website from the eyes of a customer – is it able to fulfill the problem of why that person has come to your site?

If you figure out where you’re lagging behind, start tweaking and changing to make your site perfect.

Directly asking your customer can also be a great way to clear all your doubts. Take polls on social media or see what your competitors are doing on their website.

Your website should be evolving constantly as your business does. Avoid all wrong moves and reach out for the right ones!

For further help, reach us here.

Top 5 Award-Winning Ecommerce website designs

top 5 award winning best ecommerce website designs

The growing popularity of the internet and technology has made it quicker and easier to buy and sell online. Having an eCommerce website, your customers can quickly connect to you and buy your products. Here, we will have a look at the top 5 award-winning best eCommerce website designs that might inspire you in enhancing your eCommerce website.

Table of Content:

People are not wrong when they say your eCommerce website is a reflection of your physical store.

Just like your store, your eCommerce website needs to be user friendly and easy to navigate for your customers. This means your website should have easy navigation, great visuals, and should be highly optimized and mobile-friendly – the list goes on!

To make you feel less overwhelmed, here is the list of top 5 well-designed businesses with the best eCommerce website design:

1. Apple

apple website

You cannot expect Apple to not excel in designing, whether with their product or website.

3D touch, clever animations, and dynamic images – you’re not entering their website, but you’re submerging in it.

Above all that, their clean and simple navigation system is amazing. The use of silhouettes to differentiate between products is nothing but highly impressive.

apple image

2. Frank And Oak

frank & oak

Frank and Oak is a modern online clothing shop that focuses heavily on lifestyle and media.

They use their UI to grab user’s attention and provide a great shopping experience from a UX perspective making it one of the best eCommerce website designs.

You’ll be captivated by their use of bold photography and the clean sans-serif typography that captures their brand’s personality and target audience so well.

3. Pearls Only

pearls only

The jewelry selling website has a quite unique way of welcoming their visitors to their online store that looks quite irresistible to pass on.

They promise their visitors a free discount offer in exchange for their email address. Would you spin the wheel?

4. ETQ Amsterdam

etq amsterdam

ETQ is a footwear label brand based in Amsterdam that takes a minimalistic approach using their own merchandise as the primary aesthetic of their site.

Simple yet compelling visuals accompanied by strong typography help the user to focus on nothing else but the brand products making this another great example of the best eCommerce website designs.

5. Quip

quip

The UX of the toothbrush company Quip is so uncomplicated that visitors might want to come back to purchase again.

With captivating homepage, bold images of the products and a neon green CTA’s in the middle is enough to grab any one’s attention.

Did these website designs inspire you to make improve your eCommerce website design? You don’t have to think a lot. Just imagine your online store as a replica of your physical store. How will you decorate your store to pull customers?

Just think of the ideas, the rest is our work!

Want a stunning eCommerce website developed for your business? Reach us here.

How to create a successful business website?

how to create website for business

Do you have a website for your business? There’s no excuse for not having one. In today’s age, not having a website is quite equivalent to not having a shop, office, or contact number. Your customers and clients are looking for you online – outside just social media. Chances are they’d not take your business seriously if it doesn’t have a website. In this article, we will talk about the benefits of having a website for business and ideas for creating a successful business website.

business without a website

Source: BlueCorona

Benefits Of Having A Website for Business

It provides a home to your business:

Whether your customers want to purchase or learn about your products/services, they’ll directly visit your website.

The website provides your audiences with:

  • Your contact information,
  • Your blog posts,
  • Links to your social media pages,
  • Your products/services,
  • Projects, etc.

Your website is the place where your audience can engage and connect with your business.

You can easily provide details and information to cover more areas keeping in mind what a user searches for. The ultimate goal is to answer as many user’s queries as you can.

It is easily accessible:

Your website works for you 24*7. It provides information about your products and services to the audience – at any given time of the day!

Imagine this, you’re looking for a bookshelf to buy. Would you rather drive around and look for a store that sells bookshelves or search one online from the comfort of your couch?

Most people will prefer the latter. That’s why it has become important for businesses to build a website – to showcase their products.

Your customers want to see your website:

website engagement

Source: Local Search Association

Your website is your number one marketing asset in this digital age.

People spend an average of 6 hours 42 minutes on the internet. By now, they expect your business to have an online presence.

Your About Us page is where visitors will go to learn about your organization and what sets you apart from your competitors. This is the place where you can highlight all your company’s achievements, your team culture, and philosophy. This will help your customers and clients build more trust in your organization.

Builds credibility:

As mentioned above, without a website for business, people may find it hard to trust your business.

With a website you can:

  • Build audience trust with testimonials
  • Showcase your expertise with great content
  • Catch attention with authentic images and videos
  • Highlight your certifications and partnerships

All these things help build credibility that sets a high expectation for the level of satisfaction your potential customers will have with your business.

Answers all questions:

This is especially important for B2B companies. People visit your website when they want to do something, or know something.

To know something about your business, they’d not want to navigate from one place to the other, They want all their queries to be answered at one place – which is your website.

Your website’s landing page answers all such questions including:

  • Who are you?
  • What do you offer?
  • How to contact you? – and many more.

Now that you understand how web presence can benefit you in many ways, let’s move on to tell how you can create a successful website for your business.

Ideas To Create A Successful Business Website

A successful website may translate differently from industry to industry. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to build a website:

Step 1: Define Your Customers

Identifying who your customers are and what encourages them to buy your products or services is essential for creating a website design.

Knowing your target audience is the foundation of your marketing strategy. This not only necessitates understanding who your ideal customers are but also knowing the core pain points that your product solves.

Different sets of people respond to colors and fonts differently. This is true especially for men, women, people of different nationalities, cultures, etc.

For example, Nykaa is an online beauty store that offers a wide range of Indian as well as International brands. The company’s website clearly exhibits the lifestyle of its core customers – the modern Indian women.

nykaa

Step 2: Create A Sitemap

As the name says, a sitemap is nothing but a map of your website.

Creating a sitemap is a great SEO trick that will help in optimizing your website. With Sitemaps, search engines are able to read the content on your website and index it accordingly. This, further, increases the chance of boosting your SEO ranking.

A sitemap is a core structure without which your business website may look flimsy.

sitemap

Source: Hubspot

A great sitemap:

  • Offer better visibility to search engines
  • Makes website easier to navigate
  • Categorizes content

How to create a sitemap? Thankfully, there are various sitemap generators that will make the process quick and easy for you.  Some of these include Screaming Frog, XML Sitemaps, Inpyser, etc.

Step 3: Create Wireframes

A wireframe is nothing but a skeletal outline of a webpage.

A wireframe of a page provides a clear layout, structure, behavior, and architecture. In other words, it answers questions like:

  • How the items on the page can be organized?
  • What content goes where?
  • How much space should be allocated?
  • What functionalities are available?

You can easily draw a wireframe by hand or create one digitally, depending on the details it requires.

How to create a wireframe?

Here are the steps to follow when creating your first wireframe:

  1. Take inspiration from other similar wireframe products. You can easily browse through websites like Dribble and Behance to see what other designers have done.
  2. Grab a pen and paper and start drawing a rough sketch of your page’s wireframe. Keep in mind the following things:
  • What are your business goals?
  • The action do you want the user to take on this page?
  • What are the call-to-actions?
  • The buttons and touchpoints will a user see?
  1. Once you get the foundation in place, it’s time to fill in the details. How? Think about the layout of the page, how much spacing it needs, and what information goes where.

Make sure your wireframe is as clear and simple for you or anybody to understand.

Step 4: Work On UI/UX

What are UI and UX?

User Interface (UI) works on controls like buttons and actions that people use when interacting with a website. On the other hand, User Experience (UX) works on user behavior and feeling while using the website.

In other words,

UI is how the bike looks, UX is how you feel while riding it.

This is the time to give your website life with colors, fonts, illustrations, elements, images, videos, content, etc.

The UI/UX design helps enhance user experience and customer satisfaction on the website that helps in achieving any business’s primary goal – to increase growth and sales.

Pinterest’s exemplary user interface is a great inspiration. The website shows results in a card design with a waterfall flow providing users with a unique, smooth, and lucid experience.

pinterest ui

Step 5: Development – Frontend and Backend

To simply put, Backend is focused on data, modeling, visitors, and backend of a website.

On the other hand, the frontend’s focus is to build what customers and users interact with while they are on the website.

A front-end developer makes sure whatever you see on the website. They assemble all the pieces including the text, images, and logo to create a visually pleasing experience.

A back-end developer, however, is helping you navigate through these pages via your mobile or desktop devices.

Step 6: Optimize Your Page

The process of optimizing your web page for search engines to rank them higher in the search results is known as on-page SEO.

On-page SEO helps your website grow organically.

Here’s how you can optimize your website:

Conduct keyword research:

Researching for keywords is important as people search using keywords that can be relevant to your business. To stand-out and be on top of the result page, you need to use those keywords and phrases in your website.

Free tools like UberSuggest will help you find the right keywords related to your business and niche.

Let’s say, you sell “food storage containers”.  So you begin typing the keyword in the search bar.

ubersuggest

The website will provide you with a list of keywords with their search volume, CPC, etc. You can choose your desired keywords and use them on your website either through blogs or product descriptions.

ubersuggest neil patel website for business

Make sure your page loads fast:

mobile users

Source: Google

Google made page speed a ranking factor because they know that people don’t like to see slow-loading pages.

Here’s how you can save your visitors’ time:

Reduce image sizes:

Using a large size or high-resolution pictures is a major factor that slows down your website speed. Plugins like ShortPixel in WordPress optimize and compress images easily on the go.

Cut down useless HTML:

Every character of HTML takes time to load. Aim to use a text editor on WordPress rather than the visual editor. This will minimize all the useless HTML that is on your website.

Place the keywords in your H1 tag:

Header tags like H1, H2, H3, etc. communicate to the search engine what your website is about.

All of this begins with the H1 tag. So, it is important that you strategically place your keyword in the H1 tag.

H2 is a subheading and should contain similar keywords, then H3, and so on.

Step 7: Testing & Quality Assurance

Finally, before you go live with your website you test your website in order to discover any mistakes or errors that may not have been noted during web development.

All this is done by a QA Tester.

You can also reach out to people around you to get quick feedback about your new website.

A friend who just cannot stop shopping online would likely give you an honest review of your new eCommerce website.

Similarly, you can get inputs from various other people who are consumers themselves. After all, you’re creating a website for your audience, and who can give better feedback than the audience themselves?

There you have it. Your ultimate guide to building a successful website.

Now that you understand the importance of a website and how to create one – why should it delay any longer?

We, at Spark Eighteen, understand the significance of a website for business and therefore are ready to provide any kind of assistance in the way. From web designers to developers, our team is there to guide you through the process.

Feel free to contact us.

Why a good design is important for your brand

why a good design is important

As a marketer or a designer, one might know what impact can a visually pleasing design makes. A good design is much more than just a good logo or page layout. The importance of a good design goes much deeper than that. You might want to know what important role it plays as a marketing and branding tool.

Take Apple, for example. Apple, like any other big company, has played a hugely influential role in a way how products, applications, and websites are designed. For years, the company has effectively used design for its competitive advantage. Other companies like Airbnb and Xero are just more examples of design-led success.

airbnb spark eighteen

Here we list out some reasons for you to understand better:

It Will Drive Conversions

A good and creative design helps in driving conversions. A good design will not have any obstacles and difficulties that stop users from taking the desired action. It will help the users to understand conversions and take relevant actions.

Motivates The User To Take The Desired Action

Whether it is purchasing your product or availing your services, the high-quality design will motivate your target audience to take the desired action. One of the main features is that it intrigues any person who looks at it. This further creates a desire for the offering in the mind of the person.

Use innovative and creative tactics to help your audience understand how your product or service will help simplify their lives.

Apple, for instance, has been a master of this idea. While launching new products, they beautifully showcase it all on their website.

apple iphone 11 pro spark eighteen

Creates A User-Friendly Space

Connecting to users is important and should be easy. Your website needs to be very user-friendly which means, it needs to load faster, must be updated with the latest web technologies, etc. A good design might help you with that.

Also remember, that most users use their mobile devices to browse. Make sure your website’s design is mobile-friendly and is known with the format.

Creates A First And A Lasting Impression

Your website reflects your brand. So when users come in contact with your website, it comes in contact with you. They instantly judge your brand by your website design. This is how design helps you create that lasting first impression.

Fact: According to studies, it takes a mere 50 milliseconds for people to form an opinion about a website.

Think about what may attract your customers and take action accordingly. Create a trustworthy and uncluttered design so that way it is easier for your customers to navigate.

Go for bold (but not on your face) color choices and make your content stand out front.

Make sure the people who visit your website, come again and again.

Increases Your Website’s Visibility

There might be thousands of companies like yours reaching out to that one particular group of people through online marketing. What makes you stand out from them?

Your website needs to catch the attention of the right prospect and hold it. Your design may vary depending on the goals of your campaign and target audience.

Always remember, a good design communicates with your users and helps them understand more about you.

Consistent Design Make Users Recognize You

When you have a consistent and strong design, it helps users recognize you.

For example, take McDonald’s. We can recognize the golden arches of McDonald’s from very far.

mc donald spark eighteen

Consistency is important. Stick to the style, pattern, color scheme, etc rather than changing the layout now and then. It will create a more personal and loyal relationship between you and your customers.

Design, in the end, is the face of your brand on the internet.

Make it real and accurate. Make sure you show all the relevant things you want your customers to see out there. Make it bold but at the same time don’t make it complex.

Ready to take the next step? Connect with us today and let’s work towards building the best visual identity for your brand.