How to make your website appeal to the masses

At present, there are more and more people suing the internet and going online than ever. People who have never searched for a company online let alone shopped online are having to get to grips with it after being plugged in to a third lockdown.

It may be that your website was predominantly aimed at younger people, but you may find that you are having to rethink things a little as you also now have an influx of older people. Some of these older people may not be as tech savvy and your website needs to be easy for them to navigate round. Simple points such as the size of font on your page can make a big difference to many elderly viewers.

You do have to get the balance right and try and make sure that your website is not aimed at one particular audience but infect everyone that wants to visit it. This should ensure that no one is missed out and that everyone has the opportunity to buy products or services from you or make an enquiry.

Your web designer will be able to  advise you on what sorts of layouts work best for your business.

How to market your new website

Marketing is very important when it comes to websites. It can make a huge difference and should be done immediately when the site goes live. There are a number of ways in which you can market a new website, some which incur a third party cost and others which just involve time. Working with a web agency who specialise in marketing will give you the best opportunity to get the most for your money and increase your return on investment. They will be able to advise you where’s best to invest in and what returns you can expect. If you only have a very small budget for example then they make advise you to do a lot on social media which is often free. Sharing posts and running competitions can very quickly gain you followers who may well turn in to customers.

Adwords can work great as it can get you almost instant traffic to your site in the day of launch. This can be costly but many businesses say it is worth the additional expense due to the number of sales it brings in. It is very important that the campaigns are set up correctly so you may want to enlist the help of an Adwords specialist for this.

Using social media to market your new business

So many people are finding themselves out of work at the moment. It may only be a temporary thing that you  are on furlough or it may be that the company you had previously worked for has been forced to close so you are out of work. If this is the case this may be the perfect time for you to change your career. If you have always wanted to set up your own business and can offer a product or service that is in demand at the moment or that can help solve a current problem then grab the opportunity with both hands.

When launching a new business, you need to get the marketing right. Without the adequate level of marketing it is very hard for anyone to get a business off the ground. Even if your marketing budget is tight there are still things you can do to try and spread the work about your business. Social media is great for this. You may be surprised at how many of your friends and family are willing to help get you off the ground by either buying one of your products or services or sharing your business posts with their friends. This alone can literally grow your customer base overnight.

How to save money on a new website

If you want to have a new website or have never had a site and would like to get one created then you will need to find the funds to pay the designer and programmer or the agency that you choose to use. Websites vary in cost drastically from around £500 upwards of £50,000 depending on what it needs to do. For example, a website that needs to have a highly secure built in area such as the Government tax credits website would cost a lot more than a site that is only providing information.

There are many elements to a website which impact the cost and if you need to save money on the price then you may need to hold back on some of these elements and add them in as a phase two of the project. This will allow you to get the site live and then once it has started to make money, invest more down the line.

Always be upfront with your web designer / agency and tell them what your budget is as there is no point in them creating an all singing and all dancing website if you simply cannot afford it.

How to target different locations with your website

A website is a great selling tool for your business. The beauty of selling online is that you can reach people that you may not have reached had you only got a physical store, as location is anot as much of an issue with many products. If the products can be easily posted out then you can pretty much sell to the whole of the UK without having to incur extra costs.

It is important to have a strategy in place to target other areas and how you are going to spend your marketing budget to achieve this.

You may want to start off with smaller areas that may be easier to achieve good results in and then look to expanding to larger cities or counties as these will be harder to rank for as there is often more competition. You will need to ensure that you have content on your website that refers to these areas as this will help to get your website ranking higher if someone searches for a product or service that you offer in that area.

You cannot just duplicate pages and change the location as this can be seen as duplicate content and your site may be removed from the listings or demoted.

Do you need to understand web design if having a website created?

If you are considering or in the process of having a website created then you may wonder if you should spend some time doing research and learning a bit about it all.

If you are outsourcing the website design and programming to a company or individual programmer then you will not need to worry about understanding the technical side of programming, but if you can have an understanding of the process and basically the order that it is done in then this will help you communicate and understand your web design / programmer.

The first thing to consider is your target audience and what you want to accomplish by having a website – this may be selling a product or service online or purely to encourage people to contact you to discuss what your business can offer. You need to be aware that programming can be quite technical and although something may look easy it may take many hours of programming, What many clients do not understand is that changes made after something had been programmed can require a lot of extra work and if this was not agreed upfront or had been changed along the way then the programmer may have to charge you additional fees.

You should also try and have a brief understanding of what online marketing is and Search Engine Optimisation as this should be built in from the offset.

Be sure to have a graphic design portfolio

If you are a graphic designer, whether that be for print work or website work, it is important to have a solid portfolio of your work to show potential customers what you can produce. It may be that you have no qualifications relating to design work and therefore the only thing that potential customers have to go off is your previous works.

You can rave all you want about how good you are at graphic design, but examples of your work are the best-selling tool you can have. Ideally when creating a portfolio, talk about what the brief was for the project and how you met that by the design you created.

IF you are redesigning a logo for a client then creating stationery, have a copy of their old logo and then the new one.  Discuss why they wanted to change it, then state what you did (that is within the brief) that created the final artwork.

Try to keep your portfolio up to date and archive case studies that become to old and may now appear outdated. Your potential clients may even want to speak to some of your clients for a reference, so it is always a good idea to have permission to pass on details of a few of your clients that may be happy to be contacted.

Designing a website that is easy for children to use

If you have been tasked with designing a website that is child friendly then you need to think carefully about the layout of it as well as the safety aspect. Depending on the age of the children that the site is aimed at and the content on the site, you may need to build an age verification or parental login area.

If you are designing a site that is aimed at 5-8 year olds then you should make it very graphical, with bright colours and lots of interesting areas for them to browse. If it is an educational site then you need to ensure that the information is easy to find and displayed in a way that is going to appeal to their age. It may be that you make it interactive so that they can press buttons or submit answers through the website. Adding videos and moving graphics can also help to keep them engaged.

Safety is of the upmost importance when it comes to online activity. If there is anyway of people communicating with each other, this need to be programmed in such a way that parents are able to monitor this and put restriction on who their child can communicate with.