Need a Website? A Few Things You Must Know.

In short

Before you commission a website, settle three things: the goal (what the site is supposed to do — sell, generate leads, build the brand), the audience (who is looking and for what) and the scope (how many subpages, which features, content, integrations). Only then do you choose the solution: a ready-made template or a custom design. The most common mistake is starting with the looks instead of the goal — a good website is not a "pretty business card" but a tool that performs a specific business task.

Need a website? Great! So where do you start?

To have a website, you need 3 things:

• A domain name. Remember that a domain name is unique, so if your fantastic company or brand name has already been registered as a domain name, you unfortunately won't be able to register it again — unless someone forgets to renew it or gives it up, in which case you can try to take the domain over. I will write about registering and choosing a company name in another article if you wish.
• Hosting, a VPS or a dedicated server – depending on the size of the website or online store, you will need a server to run the site. This is where all the files of your website, the database and the e-mails live. For a simple website of up to 100 subpages, and for an online store with up to 500 products, shared hosting should be enough depending on the CMS. For more complex sites and stores you will need to look at a VPS or a dedicated server, but that unfortunately means higher costs.
• A CMS – OK, once we have the two things above, we need to choose a CMS for the website or for our store. For a company website I recommend WordPress, but if you want an online store, I would advise consulting the agency that is going to build it. Solutions and needs can differ a lot, so the right store management system may be different for everyone. For some, SaaS software will turn out better; for others, Open Source systems.

Domain, hosting, chosen CMS.

So which direction should you take now — base the website on a ready-made solution with an off-the-shelf template that the agency adapts to your needs, or go for a custom design and a custom system? Each of these options has its pros and cons.

Custom design and a custom CMS:

Pros:

• lighter source code (faster page loading)
• looks perfectly tailored to your needs

Cons:

• high implementation costs — several people have to work on such a project (designer, developer, copywriter, marketer, project coordinator), and prices for a good project start from £1,599 net.
• possible problems with extending the site with additional features later (fairly expensive implementation costs)
• after some time it may turn out that both the template and the system itself need updating, which you will also have to pay for.

Custom design implemented on a popular CMS, e.g. WordPress:

Pros:

• lighter source code (faster page loading)
• looks perfectly tailored to your needs
• the system and add-ons are updated regularly. You can run updates yourself
• low costs of extending functionality — only minor template rework will be needed

Cons:

• medium implementation costs — several people have to work on such a project, and prices for a good project start from £999 net.
• after some time it may turn out that the template and the system itself need updating, which you will also have to pay for.

A premium template implemented on the popular WordPress CMS:

Pros:

• heavier source code depending on the template (requires updates)
• the system and add-ons are updated regularly. You can run updates yourself
• low costs of extending functionality

Cons:

• low implementation cost — a developer and a designer don't have to work on such a project. Rates start from £399 net.
• after some time the template may need an update, which you can carry out yourself. The requirement is that the agency does the job properly on a child theme — then there shouldn't be any major problems. If changes are made on the parent theme, all of them may disappear after an update. Of course you can override CSS in the "Customizer" or the appropriate section of the theme, but unfortunately many companies forget about this and work directly on the parent theme's code, which later causes a lot of problems.

A low implementation cost may end in extra charges later — or money thrown away.

It often happens that the price stands in front of the purchase decision for a website or store. I'm not surprised at all — price fluctuations are huge. You can find offers from £59 to £1,999 net for a website, or from £99 to £3,599 net for an online store. So how do you not lose your mind and get confused here? Which offer is good, which is bad, and why?

There is no simple, clear answer to that, but you can do the maths. OK — so what are your expectations of the agency or the person who is going to build the site? Write down what they have to do, how often you will be in contact, and convert it into time. Since an administrator's / developer's hourly rate starts from £10 to £25 an hour, how much time will the person or company spend on delivering this job? Will the time you want to pay for cover your expectations?

So I hope you now see why a website built for £99 won't bring you many benefits: it will be made in the shortest possible time, skipping a great many important elements, so that the contractor still profits from it.

The most common mistakes we point out to clients before building a website:

• Unclear navigation on the website – this is one of the first points we have to take care of when creating our website. The main navigation elements on a site are the top menu and the footer. They may look slightly different in every project, but they should contain the elements that matter most to us. If it is an online store, that means the most important product categories, with the terms and conditions and other information placed in the footer. On a company website the main menu should include a Contact tab (usually the last one on the right) and other elements that are important to you and your customer, e.g. the services you offer, references, about the company, etc. Hasn't it happened to you at least once that you left a website because you couldn't find the contact details or quickly see what the company does and whether it has what you're looking for?
• Call to action – we shouldn't be afraid to call customers to action. Since a visitor has landed on our site, they came with a specific purpose, and buttons that make it easier to get in touch or make a purchase won't bother them — quite the opposite, they will help them quickly achieve the goal they came to the site for.
• Overloading the site with gimmicks – another common mistake when building a website is that the client wants to put practically every gadget they have seen somewhere on it, without thinking whether it will bring any benefit to their customers. They forget that all of this comes with additional code that puts a load on the hosting or server, which negatively affects page loading speed — and that is now very important both for the customer and for Google. Website users close pages after as little as 4 seconds of waiting for them to load, so make sure yours loads fast.
• Illegible, wall-of-text content – content overloading the form. Hardly any user reads a page from A to Z. Everyone "scans" it: they read the headings first, and if one catches their interest, they stop and read it. If they see a block of solid text with no division into sections and paragraphs, they won't engage with the content because it will be too tiring for them.
• No trust-building information – if you run a business, no matter whether for 1 month or 10 years, it is important to display your company registration and tax numbers so the customer can see they are dealing with a company, not a private individual who might take the money and disappear tomorrow.
• Create a profile of your ideal customer – and start building the site around their needs and style. So if we sell exclusive, classic clothing, we can easily determine that the audience will be women aged 31-39, mostly from cities, earning over £800 a month, living life on the go and valuing time, elegance and quality. Now you need to find the common elements and choose the right colour scheme and page layout.
• High-quality photos and descriptions – take care of high-quality photos (properly compressed for the web, of course) and of engaging content that reads well.

Publishing the site is only the beginning.

Simply creating a site and putting it online is no longer enough. You have to remember to put the site to good use for the tasks set before it. Place it on all your advertising materials. Measure user behaviour and win higher positions in organic results through SEO, so that you land at the very top of the search results and gain new customers. Good luck!

Want to commission a website without these traps?

All the points described above — domain ownership, hosting, a contract, development after launch — come as standard with us. At the SEMTAK Marketing Agency, commissioning a website is transparent:

• WordPress website development — with a clear contract, ownership on your side and support after launch.
• SEO audit — if you already have a website and want to evaluate it before a rebuild.