Designing your Website | Where to Start
The best way to start designing your website is by developing a map of the pages and content that you want to include. This will depend upon your type of business, and how informative you want your Website to be. Below is a list of possible pages you may like to consider.
Essential pages
As a bare minimum, your business Website should include the following pages:
Home Page
The home page is your landing page. It is very important for this page to be clear about who you are, what you do and how you can help your intended customers.
About Us
This should include detail about your business. Examples include who you are and how you can help your customers.
Our Services
This is a listing of the different services or products you provide, along with a short description of each. If your products or services require more in-depth descriptions, link to separate pages for more information.
Contact Us
This can range from a simple listing of your contact information to a more complex "intake form", with a range of questions on your prospect's needs. It can include a Google map to help your customers find you.
Create a different name for these Website sections if you'd like to add more personality to your site! For example, your
About Us page can be titled, "Who We Are," or "About Us."
Site Map
The Site Map may not seem important when you are building your site but it is essential for the function of your site and your search engine optimization.
Service Based Businesses
Clients
Your clients can be presented in terms of specific client names or a more general industry listing.
Testimonials
These can be on their own page, listed on the client page, or distributed throughout the site.
How to get started with your service
This is important if you think that the client or customer may be a bit lost in what to do next.
In service-based businesses, it's important to ground your claims and add to your credibility with a demonstration of your capabilities or skills. You can do so with these types of pages:
References
These are more formal and longer than standard testimonials.
Portfolio
This is appropriate for artists, designers, writers, and other creative professions. This often comes in the form of a gallery.
Sound Clips
This is appropriate for entertainers, bands, DJs, and speakers.
Video Clips
This may be appropriate to show your product working or it may be something like a description of a process. As people are getting lazier they tend to want to watch a video before reading reams of text. These video clips can be in many different formats, and they can also be scattered through your site.
Samples of our work
These are for other professions, as appropriate.
Resume(s).
If you have a product based business, to provide your customers with quick and easy access to your products, your site should include:Product Description(s)
Include photos, details, pricing, and "Add to Cart" capabilities.
A Shopping Cart
These days it is easier and safer to use external shopping carts such as KickStartCart.com these type of shopping carts actually handle the transaction on their site and the money goes directly into your bank account. This eliminates the security concerns involved in doing transactions through your hosting server.
Adding credibility
Once you have these basic pages, the next step is to add credibility and information to your site. PR, news, and information pages can do this for you, providing visitors an incentive to return time and time again.
News
Includes current as well as past articles on your company.
Pressroom
This is for press releases produced by your company.
Newsletters and/or Articles
These are written by your firm or principals and help provide you with "expert" status, as opposed to articles written by outside sources.
Media or Press Kit
This area would contain a company backgrounder, logos, photos, and tools that others may use when writing articles about your company.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
It is advisable to have a few questions and answers to help people but you also want them to contact you so don't forget to include a link to your contact us page.
Additional business pages may also be appropriate, depending upon the type and size of your business:
Company Mission
Company Vision
History
Case Studies
Why Choose Us?
Bios of your Team Members
Jobs or Opportunities
Downloads
These include PDFs, brochures, presentations, and software demos or programs.
Statistics Research or Studies
Either conducted by your firm, or related to your firm, clients or industry.
Pricing
If you sell products, your pricing should be listed in your shopping cart. Also include a list of you shipping and handling costs. For service-based businesses, whether or not you list your pricing depends upon the standards in your industry, you don't want to price your services on your site if you don't have to.
Additional Information Pages
Resources
Other services that are compatible with yours, or links to places online where you can learn more.
Links
Exchanging quality links with other sites can be a good way to increase your search engine rankings.
We hope that this list is helpful in your website planning process!