Branding your business website is paramount, just as content and SEO.

It provides your leads with a unique branded experience, consistent with your physical shop, social media or any other aspect of your company.

You are essentially inviting a customer into a world populated by your colours, content, symbolism and message.

The website should be designed with the user in mind and how they interact with your site (more on this later). When branding your website, keep these key things in mind:

Being clear about your product and services can help you set your website apart from others as well as increase customer confidence. You don't want customers to be confused when looking through your website, so make sure everything is labelled and easy to find!

In this new online Era, you're expected to clear up what services you offer, not just how they benefit your leads but also what their actual price is.

We've all been there, frustrated with trying to find prices from a company focused in only providing you with empty promises and pushing you to provide too much personal information to get a quote.

Make sure you have a great website design that will represent your company in the best light. Customers are visual creatures and if they don't like how your website looks, they're not going to stick around long enough to learn what you do.

Always be sure to keep your website updated with fresh content. This could be anything from blog posts, instagram or facebook feeds & anything else that could help make your content dynamic.

This helps provide your customer with a sense of trust that you're always working on your business and not just resting on the sidelines.

One of the main reasons people will visit your website is to either purchase a product or service from you, or to book an appointment. If you don't have this feature available on your website, you could be missing out on a lot of potential business.

Make sure that the checkout process is easy for customers to use and understand. Also, have fun with your purchase process. Long are the days customers expect a corporate like treatment.

Users want to shop locally and expect the businesses to have a "personality", make sure your website reflects this.

You can also increase bookings by having a booking system that includes things like appointment slots that are filled up quickly, or automatic reminders that are sent to customers before their appointments.

Make it as easy as possible for customers to book appointments with you!

Content is king, but keeping seo in the back of your mind will ensure that your website climbs the ranks of search engines.

There are a number of factors to consider, but basics like using keywords throughout your text, and making sure that titles and meta descriptions are attention-grabbing will help you on your way.

SEO is an ever-evolving beast, so you must stay up to date with any updates to algorithms that could impact your website.

This in itself can become a full-time job, if you want to focus more energy on your business instead, make sure to find a tool or service to help you maintain and create your web content.

There are many global and local professionals who can help with it, to learn more feel free to contact us to find an SEO Expert Package that fits your needs.

Ever heard of lighthouse?

To put it simply, lighthouse is a google backed tool that audits your website for performance, accessibility, progressive web apps, SEO and more.

Essentially Google, and other search engines, have no interest in ranking you if your website is slow or not unresponsive.

Make sure to check out lighthouse and implement its recommendations for a better user experience and higher search engine ranking.

Having troubles with your website speed?

Ever heard that info is money? Well in this case it couldn't be truer.

Having as much customer data will enable you to adapt, iterate and improve your online experience.

The next step is to install some analytics software. This will give you a wealth of data on how your website is being used, how people are finding you and where they're exiting your website. You can then use this data to improve your website's design, navigation and content.

Even as little as moving one button from the right to the left could drastically improve your conversions.

Google Analytics is the most popular free analytics tool, but other up and comers are MixPanel, HotJar and CrazyEgg.

Obviously not having a website available when your customer needs it the most could be troublesome. This would mostly be an issue for any business hosting the website themselves.

Luckily "serverless" have become more accessible for small business like yours.

Not sure if you're at risk?

Customers need to be guided on what action to take next, this is where clear call to actions come into play.

It's best to have them in multiple places on the page as not everyone will see them in the same spot. Make sure they're also easy to follow and understand.

The key truth to know here is that usually, each service can help you with about half of the 10 key principles we just discussed.

You have tools such as Wix, SquareSpace, GoDaddy or Wordpress

These tools can seem easy to use and affordable at first, but most tend to pay through the teeth to get yearly memberships with hidden fees here and there for special features.

As has been said, website building tools typically don't perform well in all of the essential principles. The ones that specialise in SEO are more prone to failure when it comes to user experience and looks. Others have stunning aesthetics but lack functionality, resulting in a high drop-off rate among consumers.

The most important key aspect of your business, is time.

Your focus and time spent on your services, products and operation have most likely played a key part in its early success. Spending months or even years learning the basis of what makes a website click could turn out to be a bad investment.

This is where we advice you to turn to specialists in the area, teams that can take the headache away and help you succeed without getting in the way.

Usually you can find global or local web agencies ready to help, you'd be surprised how little some of them charge you for services that are tailored to your needs.