If you’re taking on the task of designing a new website, be it for your business or another purpose, you’re going to want to plan this content out before you get started with the web design. Otherwise, you could wind up putting a lot of time and effort into creating a website that doesn’t perform well, doesn’t meet your needs, and isn’t a hit with your visitors.
To help ensure that none of these things happen to you, here are three things to keep in mind when designing a new website.
Your Target Market
One of the very first things that you’ll need to know before you start planning the design for your new website is who your target market is. Depending on who you’re envisioning visiting your website regularly, the decisions that you’ll want to make about your design will vary.
For example, if you’re anticipating that you’ll be targeting a younger audience, you may be able to be more creative with your design. But if you’re going to be targeting an older demographic or a more professional audience, you’ll want your design to be much more straightforward and clear. This way, when your visitors come to your website, they won’t be distracted by anything and will be able to get right down to the actions you want them to take.
Your Brand Image
Something else that you want to be clear about and have at the forefront of your mind when designing your website is what your brand image is and what you want to convey to your audience in this respect.
If your website is a brand new idea, it might be hard to come up with these things at first. But for your audience and visitors to best recognize you across all online platforms, you’re going to want to make sure that the brand image that you portray in your website design bleeds into your social media presence and overall branding in other marketing areas.
Search Engine Optimization
Designing a website isn’t all about just how well the site works or what it looks like. For your website to get found by people searching for topics like yours, you’re going to want to have a strong focus on search engine optimization from the inception of your website.
To do this, you’ll need to think about things like how responsive your website will be to mobile visitors, what other sites you’re linking to and who’s linking to you, how well you’re been able to optimize your website, and what keywords and phrases you’ve included in your content to help you show up in the SERPs.
If you’re designing a new website, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you get the setup and design right from the outset.
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