Your website is your business' window to the world. Visitors should be able look in and see what you do, learn more about your company, get answers to their questions and get in touch. We have compiled a checklist to help you review your existing website or plan for a brand new one.
Make navigation as easy as possible
Put yourself in the shoes of your visitor. Ask yourself what they are looking for and how will they find it. If they are visiting your site to find an answer to a problem that you can solve, make their path to the answer easy to navigate and uncluttered along the way. Menu options should enable the visitor to progress towards relevant pages, but avoid too many options and layers, as this often results in increased bounce rates (visitors leaving the site). When designing a site’s navigation, it is a good idea to do some research. Ask potential visitors how they would expect the navigation to flow and what would they like and dislike along the way.

Make your site mobile-friendly
Gone are the days where “mobile-friendly” was an option. With over 50% of traffic now coming from mobile devices, the look, feel and navigation of a site’s mobile experience is of paramount importance. What works for a desktop site doesn’t always translate to a mobile version, so take care to test the mobile site thoroughly and make amendments to layout, text size, image size, form accessibility and layering, where necessary.
Optimise your site for Google
Search engines are typically one of the main sources of traffic to a site – either through organic or paid searches. To ensure your site is found by potential visitors, you need to optimise it, which includes adding key words to the content, URL, heading and meta description, ensuring the loading speed is optimised and that the site isn’t cluttered with unnecessary elements.
Create compelling content
The written and visual content on a site can make or break its success. From the language used to describe a product or service though to the animation employed to explain a process; it is all vital to the user experience. If you have skills in creating content, you are at an advantage, but if not, don’t scrimp and compromise on what you make available to your website visitors. Invest in an expert who can provide you with quality content that will resonate and build relationships with your viewers. It will make a huge difference.

Call to action
Be clear in your planning and execution of these. Think about what you want your visitors to do and give them clear instructions to achieve this. For example, if your aim is to generate new business leads, you could try laying down a rhetorical question, appropriate to your audience, and answer it by offering a downloadable asset (piece of content) in return for their contact details.
Branding
Your website is a great place to showcase and strengthen your brand. Stick to a consistent colour palette, set of fonts and general visual style to achieve a slick and polished look. Websites that don’t pay attention to brand guidelines can be easily perceived as unprofessional and confused. Once you’ve agreed your branding guidelines, work them through everything you do, all your communications and your brand will start to fall into place before yours and your clients’ eyes.
Accessibility
Never stop thinking about your users' experience and be mindful of specific needs and limitations some users may have. Colours, font choices, form formats and screen pop ups can all make a huge difference to how users interact with your website. Don't make choices that could exclude visitors and potential clients. Be welcoming and not exclusive.
Get connected
Take advantage of the opportunity you have to encourage engagement with your visitors. Lead them to your sign up page, encourage them to like and share posts and invite them to follow you on your social media accounts. Their relationship with you may start on your website, but it doesn't have to end there. Keep the conversation going as much as you can.
Whether you are just getting your business started and need some help with marketing basics or you are an established organisation looking for a brand refresh, a new approach or just some guidance, we can help.
Contact us to find out how we can help you and your business get things right.
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