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How To Create A Successful Website: 10 Components Every Site Needs

Creating a website is not an easy task if you don’t know what to start with. What do you need first? When building a website, it often takes the most time and money before it starts giving results. Yet, that doesn’t mean your efforts are wasteful or pointless. In fact, there is so much potential when it comes to creating successful websites. In this article, we will focus on some of those basic principles of web design. Let’s get started!

1. Know Your Target Audience

When looking for a business in any industry, one of the main things you have to do is target the right market. One way to find the perfect customer is by researching them online. Use tools such as Google Trends to analyze current trends and see what types of questions people are asking around your site. This can help you identify which categories of people may be interested in this type of website. Once you have determined how many visitors your website currently has, you can then figure out where they come from. You may want to think about adding new features to attract more traffic. For example, if you sell crafts or handmade items, you might add reviews and ratings to let customers know their needs have been met. Having answers to these questions will make you more effective at marketing. Just remember that the best place to begin when thinking about finding the perfect audience is making sure you know who you are doing it for.

2. Build The Foundation Of Web Design

The foundation of good design is simply having something that looks nice. If your website was just the logo, it would be hard to tell that someone made it or that its purpose will actually make sense. Fortunately, there are several ways to create visual elements. Whether it's adding color to your text or using fonts that stand out naturally, there are plenty of options to choose from. With clear visuals, users are more likely to trust your brand and purchase products on your site. Even though the design doesn’t matter in terms of ranking, it does impact your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that relies on user experience. Building a visually appealing website isn't enough, though—you also need a well-formatted content for it to look professional.

3. Research Tools & Resources

Search engines will crawl your content before showing it to users. While SEO won’t directly affect visitors, it can still help you find new leads and increase engagement through keywords. Most importantly, it lets you determine whether your website is optimized for mobile devices. After all, Google says that 80 percent of internet users use mobiles to browse online. Before getting too technical, you must decide the technology your site uses. Are you going to build it using CMS, Joomla, Drupal, PHP, MySQL, etc.? Some people opt for no coding software like WordPress, but others prefer code editors. Choose one based on your needs and budget.

4. Understand Search Intent

To ensure both the mobile user and desktop version of your site are performing at optimal levels, Google now recommends including specific mobile-friendly features. Mobile web usage is on the rise, and users expect responsive sites that fit into their device, regardless of page size. Because of this, Google now requires sites to follow certain standards to ensure mobile browsers work properly. These requirements include:

Responsive layout: Users can easily view the content while viewing it on both mobile websites and desktop versions—no matter what device they're on.

Caching/browsing: Responsive designs do not limit the number of views your site can generate (in fact, they increase that rate).

Responsive media queries: Users must be able to apply these same rules to their browser if they are viewing your site on a different operating system—regardless of the country they are viewing from.

5. Optimize Page Speed And Security

Because of the importance of speed and performance today, search engines are increasingly favoring websites that maintain high load times and secure security measures. Using HTTPS, SSL, and PCI DSS is essential because it helps protect information and visitors' privacy. It also ensures site owners receive refunds for fraudulent activity. Ensure that these three points are present on your site because non-compliance can hurt rankings, conversions, and traffic.

6. Focus On User Experience

In order to provide great value to users, any site owner needs to know what their consumers expect. First, search engines must be working to understand user intent before allowing them to display ads. Second, users may expect a site of a specific type or brand, so knowing what your consumers are searching for is important. Third, you must consider a wide variety of factors—from location to devices used—to provide a relevant user experience. Knowing the characteristics of your target audience is vital to providing a pleasant experience and making your site easy to navigate and discover.

7. Consider Location Matters

Location plays a large role in determining search behavior. According to HubSpot, 70% of smartphone searches happen in maps rather than in search engines. So, with over 60% of all online shoppers using smartphones, location is certainly an important factor to keep in mind. That said, if you’re targeting a particular group of users within a city, state, or country, it would make sense to invest more energy in local SEO—particularly if you want some of the benefits of having a presence in multiple areas. However, unless you’re an international company, don’t try to go global with your SEO. Remember Google considers that practice a bad idea. International brands lose visibility because it makes people feel like they have to check URLs to learn about other countries in order to shop. Instead, focus on optimizing for local keywords that show up in maps and other places where people typically access the internet, especially if possible.

8. Offer Freebies

There’s no better way to offer freebies than to provide valuable, useful content. Content is king at the moment. Consumers are demanding quality and usefulness, making freebies a priority. As long as your content focuses on sharing and delivering educational information instead of selling, it should be a major part of your overall content strategy. But beware—many businesses and individuals use these opportunities as a chance to promote their product or service. Be careful, and be patient with their decision. Also, take care of content creators who aren’t satisfied with free giveaways or content that’s designed to exploit them. Givebacks can seem like a simple way to make your business shine, but it can also backfire.

9. Stay Local

Even if you’ve mastered local SEO and are targeting only within your own geographic area, don’t forget the world outside of your site. Global SEO is becoming more complicated due to increasing demand from companies across the globe. Staying close to home helps you reach customers who are already familiar with your brand. Think of why you’re making your next move – will having your company’s name appear on map listings help boost sales or bring additional revenue? Or is local SEO more important, or would you rather gain direct contact with customers? Sometimes the answer is yes, while at other times it’s a no. Whatever your case, stay local. There are many people who don’t even know you exist. They could be the ones who drive potential buyers and turn leads into loyal supporters. Being active by being local and reaching out to your competitors is key.

10. Add More Pages Than Needed

While there’s no shortage of great resources available online, the truth is, none of them are necessarily suited for small businesses. Therefore, to add pages on your site, you may have to seek out additional support from designers or freelancers. Although these services are expensive, the return on investment can be significant. Another thing to take note of is when to scale back. If your page count increases rapidly then your site is likely to become overloaded and slow down user experience. Take a break from excessive page counts as soon as possible. You have to create the best possible website to allow for the best possible experience for everyone that visits your website. Keep things fluid so you don’t end up chasing every visitor away with a broken site that doesn’t improve your bottom line.