You’ve got the basics down (simple navigation, consistent branding, effective color scheme) but there’s a lot more to designing your own website to ensure it attracts the most customers and converts to sales. Let’s spruce that website up!

  1. Calls to action on each page
  2. Once customers are on your website, they need to be led on their journey to increase their engagement with your business and ultimately lead to a sale. Putting call-to-action buttons on each page directs your customers through the buying process.

    Some examples of calls to action include: “contact us today”, “subscribe to our newsletter”, “find out more.” Link these CTAs to the appropriate page on your website.

    Make sure that your calls to action match what stage the customer is in the buyer journey. If they’re seeking out more information, encourage them to “find out more” if they’re towards the end of the buyer journey make it as easy as possible for them to “get in touch” with you.

  3. Short load times
  4. When designing your own website, it’s easy to focus solely on the experience of customers that are already on your site. But you also have to ensure that people will get there in the first place.

    40% of online shoppers abandon a webpage if it takes more than 3 seconds to load, so it’s up to you to do all in your power to keep the loading times to a minimum.

    We’ve written a full blog with tips on how to optimize the speed of your WordPress website.

  5. SEO-friendly code
  6. “Minifying” your code isn’t just great for reducing page speeds, it also helps search engine spiders to crawl your website (and no that’s not as creepy as it sounds). Google rewards sites with clean code that provides a clear roadmap of your content.

    WordPress offers plug-ins for you to clean up your code and improve your SEO with little-to-no coding knowledge.

  7. Include a blog page
  8. Keeping your blog regularly updated indicates to your customers and to search engines that your business is relevant and in motion. It’s also a means of encouraging users to interact with you.

    Not only that, providing helpful content helps to establish your business as an authority in your industry.

    RELATED: Check out our guide on how to naturally include keywords into your content.

  9. Original, search engine optimized content
  10. It’s essential to ensure that all content (on your blog and the rest of your website) is 100% original and of high quality. Google penalizes sites that plagiarize content, and may even remove your website from their results. If you’re outsourcing copywriters, use a plagiarism checker (such as Duplichecker) to ensure content is 100% original.

    For SEO purposes, include keywords in your content. These are words or phrases that your potential customers search for online. This will help navigate your customers to your website. But be careful not to overdo it. Google penalizes sites that cram keywords unnaturally. The trick is to make sure your keywords fit and that your article has actual value to the reader.

Bonus tip: Create a coherent business language

Ensure that your web design and all content aligns with your business’s core values. Not only on your website but also across all online platforms. Mixed messages are off putting for your audience, everyone wants to know what they’re buying into.

If you’ve designed your own website but you’re failing to get enough engagement or draw traffic to your website, it could be because your business language is inconsistent or just failing to connect with your target audience. Get in touch for an assessment of your existing virtual environment. We’ll discover what changes you need to make to connect with your audience.