Well before we get started, let’s talk about what exactly a website is. “A website is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server.” (Wikipedia) Some of the most common and well known include Facebook, Instagram, Google, Amazon, etc.
So, what is the purpose of a website?
In general, there are two purposes for a website, to inform or educate and to persuade the user into something. When you want to learn more about a specific item or business you usually use search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo, which again are website also.
So, let’s analysis this further. We’ll use Google website as our example. The return search itself provides you the viewer with further information. In almost any case you will find two to three search results at the top with the word “Ad” at the top left. If you the viewer are a business owner, you can’t help but to think to yourself “how do I get to the top of that search result for my product or service.” So by Google providing you the viewer with free information about the subject they have just persuade you as the viewer into looking further into Google Ads, which is how they make their money.
There are 5 types of websites:
- Ecommerce:
An E-Commerce website uses a shopping cart component to allow users to add and remove products to their cart, show product prices and details, offer deals, and establish discount. A user can view about a product and purchase it all in one place with an E-Commerce website.
When creating an e-commerce site, it is important to think about how your visitors will be interacting with your site. Products should be easy for users to find, product pages should provide as much detail about the product or service along with great quality images of the product. As your marketing and advertisement budget grows you may want to invest some money in photoshoots of your products and maybe even some graphic design services for ads and photo editing.
- Personal Website:
Personal website are good for someone that would like to establish their own personal self as a brand or list their opinions on specific matters.
Often personal websites are shared with family, friends, colleagues, or others that share the same opinion or view on a subject. Therefore, personal website is usually fairly simple to complete, and they are made-up of mostly text, images, and maybe a contact form. They often do not need optimization, a huge budget, or a lot of time to complete. They are however, often updated with new content to keep the viewers returning. The money for these sites, if any, is generated through guest appearances, paid advertisement, or subscriptions. Subscription websites are a little more complex though.
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Portfolio Website:
Portfolio websites are similar to personal website, whereas the website is about a specific person. However, portfolio websites are often used by designers, writers, videographers, artists and other creative professionals to show case their work. This is often done using slide shows, galleries, or portfolio animations. Usually, portfolio sites are easy to create, but also can become more complex depending on the design and functionality of the site.
- Business Website
Small Business to Corporation websites Business websites are typically larger in size. Business websites provide an online presence, allowing people to learn more about the company, its employees, products, services, and culture. The goal of a business website is to turn visitors into customers, investors employees, ambassadors, etc.
Business websites should match s company’s other marketing and branding materials being. For example logo, color tones, pictures, etc. The tone of the company, vision, and mission should be transformed throughout a business website. Blog Websites: Blog websites are frequently used as a platform to voice an individual’s opinion or a company’s valuable content to the customers blog sites are often updated with relevant articles, videos, and photos meant to inform, entertain, and educate your audience. Blog websites can be used as a stand along site, centered around its content, or built within a larger website.
Should you have a website?
If you have a brand, business, product, or service to market the short answer to this, is YES, but why?
Let’s face it a website is the core of your online marketing activities. If you look at all the marketing channels and techniques, what they actually do is bring visitors to your website, and the main purpose of a website is to turn these visitors into customers. In marketing terms this is called conversion. A bad website will basically cause you to waste money on other marketing methods because you don’t need more visitors if you can’t turn them into customers. So, the better your website is the more visitors that are converted into your customers. This doesn’t really matter if you sell consumer products online, provide local services or build houses.
Many people in the industry call themselves web designers, but they are really just some geeks with just coding knowledge. Without much planning they will pretty quickly create a website for you with lots of information, photos, contacts, but the question is that really the way to turn your visitors into your customers. When looking for a Web Developer you should be looking for someone who is serious about your business website needs.
Here at Alpha Omega Ads, we use a 7-phase process to create a successful website that informs, educates, and persuades it’s viewers.
Here is a video to help you with understanding what goes into a successful website:
Phase 1 Analysis:
Information gathering, identify things like the website purpose, website goals, target audience. We look into some of your competitors and see wat may or may not be working for them and why.
Phase 2 Planning:
Throughout this stage we will plan your sitemap, website structure, and technologies that are and will need to be used.
Phase 3 Design:
When designing your wireframe and visual style will make sure to focus heavily on usability of the user interface (UI) for the best possible user experience (UX).
Phase 4 Gather Content:
The content used is a very important part of the process is choosing the right text, photos and videos all optimized not only for your visitors, but also search engines.
Phase 5 Development:
Development here we actually create website using Hyper Text Make Up language and Cascade Style Sheets with some help from databases and other technologies as well. Our websites are coded to be accessible from a PC or mobile device.
Phase 6 Testing:
Throughout this stage we test all the technical features like code and script, compatibility with all the major browsers, and debugging any issues. In this stage, we also ask ourselves if the website really fulfils its purpose.
Phase 7 Deployment:
Once we have launched the site our job is definitely not done yet. We monitor what is happening from the start up to 6 months after your launch of your website. Enabling us to fix any possible deficiencies in your site.
After your website has deployed future maintenance and updates can be set up for additional charges, based on your daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual need.
As you have just seen web design is very complex process, but we believe this is how website should be done and our customers agree. If you share our passion for high quality websites? Let’s get in touch.
Did you want to schedule a meeting to discuss your website need? Get in touch with us schedule an online consultation.