Looking to set up your startup business website?
Nowadays, anyone can create a website irrespective of whether they know coding, web designing, or web development. Thanks to a team of web developers & web designers that you can hire to do all the technical stuff.
But a lot more goes into creating an eye-catching, user-friendly business website that engages customers and stimulates conversions.
You need to hire a content strategist to help you with strategic planning. A content strategist can assist your team of web developers, digital marketers, and SEO analysts to make your business website stand out from the rest.
7 Fundamentals to set up a Startup business website
- A right web host
- The perfect domain
- CMS
- Quality content
- Webpage design layout
- Responsiveness
- On-page SEO
These are some of the crucial things you must consider before making your business website live. However, there are a few more things that you must give meticulous attention to and consideration.
So ask these eight questions to yourself:
1. Is your website content easy to understand?
It has direct implications on the performance and ranking of your website. In addition, if people find it difficult to understand, it will affect their user experience and ultimately hamper your business growth.
Make sure your website has clear call-to-action elements. It funnels your web visitors to the most significant locations of your business website. In this digital age, to get a successful business website, the content on your site must be easy to understand.
Use tools like Usabilla – to check user experience and Juicy Studio – to check website readability before making your website live.
2. Is your startup business website design dull?
Website design has an immense influence on visitors to the site. Too colorful or a monotonous design can be detrimental to your business.
Therefore, you must ensure the looks of your web pages match your business image.
The landing page is the most crucial webpage as it attracts attention and engages visitors. If the design of your pages is dull, chances are visitors will skip exploring your site. Make sure that the web design makes your content pop and excites them to see more. Use the Check My Colours tool to check the right color choices, luminosity contrast ratio, and brightness differences on the web pages.
3. Are there any HTTP webpage errors or dead links?
A successful business website is HTTP error-free and comfortable to browse. So before making your business website live, do testing for HTTP error codes 400-499 range, which indicates an error on the user end (the web browser). Test it on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari for checking browser compatibility.
Also, check for server-side issues on the website (HTTP 500-599 range errors) to ensure smooth navigation for users.
Inferior quality sites will often have web pages that have dead links. It shows a substandard impression of your website. Use tools like Browsershots– for website accessibility and cross-browser/Cross-Platform Compatibility and Dead Link checker to check dead/broken links before making your business website open-to-public.
4. Is the graphic design relevant to the website?
Whenever a customer/client hears about your brand, the first thing they do is surf through your website. Based on their impression, they make the business call. The graphic design of a website makes a positive and lasting impression on web visitors.
In business, graphics are helpful in every stage of the marketing funnel – to inform, delight, and eventually persuade customers to purchase. So check the graphic design of your business website before launching, whether it’s clean, attractive, and easy-to-read with intuitive navigation. Then, continue only with those graphics that add value to your pages.
If the graphics are distracting, people will not focus on the value of your brand and content. Also, consider hiring only professional web designers who are consistent and creative in graphic design.
5. Do all webpages serve a purpose?
Reviewing the utility of web pages on your business website is equally vital as the web host you choose. Each webpage you add to your website must serve the purpose of helping visitors to your site.
Unmindful additions of web pages can deteriorate the quality of your site. Before making your business website live, check the usability and functionality of each webpage.
Check the URLs and forms to see if they are submitting correctly and if a thank you note pops up. Check the load time for site pages if optimized properly, and remove the pages that lack context or are redundant.
6. Is your website protected from spam & security risks?
It is crucial to consider having an anti-spam solution for your website to keep it safe from spam. For example, add an SSL certificate to your website to avoid the risk of being labeled as Not Secure. Also, before making your website live, take care of all the legal stuff that requires licenses for images, fonts, plugins, etc.
Add Captcha tests to your contact forms. It will ensure that only humans can use your site’s resources and not bots. In the long run, it will save your business time and money.
To ensure the visitors feel safe to share personal information, mention data safety in your Privacy Policy. To enhance data security further, get a compliance certificate from the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) before making the website public.
7. Is your startup business website content optimized for SEO?
Keeping the content up-to-date and user-relevant in comparison to your competitors is a continuous task. However, before making your business site live, use the market analysis to find the loopholes in your competitors’ websites and their areas of excellence.
Hire a qualified SEO content strategist to polish your web content and provide competitive solutions to improve your business site. Do content optimization even after the website becomes public.
Apart from content, check whether every webpage of your site has title tags, meta descriptions. Then, along with headings, body content, image titles, alt text, and URLs, optimize these title tags and meta descriptions. It will help in boosting SEO rankings after the launch of your site.
8. Does it look finished?
Check for spelling/ typos errors and grammar mistakes in the web content. It will enhance the professional outlook of your business website. If you require, reduce the file size of your images with tools like TinyPNG.
Do a speed test to check your website’s loading speed with a site speed tester like Google PageSpeed Insights. Additionally, ask your developer to do a stress test on your site with software like JMeter by Apache. It will give you a rough idea of the website that can crash with a massive influx of visitors during specific times like holidays, sales promotions, or after a major press event.
Lastly, do a backup of the website data, just-in-case, if something unpleasant happens to the website after it goes live. It will calm your nerves and save your time/money.
Conclusion
Make a checklist of all the above questions. It can help you focus on crucial things to consider before making your startup business website live.
Remember, your job is not over with the launch of the site; it has just begun.
Social media integration, upgrading the website’s mobile-friendliness, and measuring its online success through Google Analytics, are tasks, to name a few. Finally, make a copy of the final version of your startup business website and store the ongoing copies, passwords, and other website credentials in a secure database.
Each business website is unique, so be ready to check for bugs after your website goes live!