Building a professional website and doing it right takes time, effort, and investment. Unfortunately, there are no real shortcuts to amazing website design. Many small businesses turn to cheap website builders for their websites, which can work fine but will often stifle growth.
Your business needs a website that is unique to you, can easily grow and will nurture prospects into warm leads. To do so, you’re going to need support from people with key skills.
Who is involved in building a business website?
Building a great professional website that will do your organization justice requires skills from three key professions:
Web Designer
A web designer creates the initial magic, refining your brand into an aesthetically pleasing, logically functional website.
They bring together visual elements such as text, graphics, video, imagery, and much more into one cohesive concept; a concept that represents your business and serves to perform your key actions, be that converting into sales on-site, getting in touch, etc.
Web Copywriter
To accompany your designs, you need carefully constructed messaging – this comes from a web copywriter.
All of your website’s content needs to communicate in your target audience’s language. Without excellent copy, your website’s imagery serves only as vanity points.
Say you sell artisan baked goods – you can have all the high-res, beautiful imagery in the world, but without great copy backing it up, it’s irrelevant.
Web Developer
Once your designs and copy are perfected, your concepts are passed onto the web developer who brings it all to life with careful and clever coding.
Websites need to be coded correctly to avoid technical issues and glitches further down the line. This work must be done by a highly-skilled, experienced developer, as this will have a significant impact on how your website performs and the overall user experience.
Our team of designers, copywriters, and developers is on hand to build a website that drives your business’ performance. Get in touch today to find out how.
What kind of website do you need?
This is an essential question to ask. Many businesses built websites because it was the done thing and because their competitors were doing so, but now, more than ever, it’s essential that you know exactly why you’re building a website.
- Are you looking to drive sales?
- Do you want to warm up prospects?
- Do you need to educate your audience?
- Are you looking for an eCommerce platform to sell directly off?
Define your end goal before you get started. If you’re not sure how to go about this, contact experts to talk through your website’s needs.
The website build process
Once you’ve decided you need a website (and what its purpose is), it’s time to build it.
Choose your content management system (CMS)
Getting this right is essential. Your CMS is the platform on that your website is built.
You might choose HubSpot or WordPress for lead generative, content-based sites, or you might decide to choose Shopify, Magento, or WooCommercefor an eCommerce site.
Plan out the website
Once you’ve established this, it’s time to get planning.
Your website designer will create a framework (or wireframe) of how your website will look. This might take the form of a flow chart and is done to determine how the user journey should play out, from the homepage to service pages and more.
This is also where the barebones of graphics and content will be planned, and key SEO messaging will be established.
Create designs & copy
This is the stage where everything starts to become a little more tangible.
The designer will put together color palettes and layouts that are designed to suit your sector, but also to help you stand out from the crowd.
They’ll also develop key graphics and create style guides for your website (including fonts and other key design elements).
The copywriter will also be heavily involved at this stage, crafting your key messaging to accompany your designs, as well as fleshing out key sections of the website with carefully seeded SEO keywords and relevant content.
Website development
Once signed off and agreed, it’s over to the web development team, who develops page templates and programs your website to fulfill its specified function.
Final launch
Now that your website has been constructed and is ready to go, it’s time for launch!
Launching your website in the right way is just as important as building it. You’ll want social posts, email campaigns, tailored SEO, and targeted PPC throughout the process. What’s the point in having a new website if nobody ever sees it?
This is where your ongoing marketing is key – your efforts don’t stop once the website’s launched. You’ve invested a lot into building your website, you must continue to update it with great content and keep improving it over time, and otherwise, it’s a waste of money.
How much does it cost to build a website for SMEs in the UK?
Website costs vary dramatically depending on the size and function of your website. Advice that we always give to our partners: you don’t get a good website for a grand.
A great website will drive your business’ growth; think of it as an employee who works 24/7/365. Properly invest in it, and your website will provide a substantial ROI.
Properly constructed websites for SMEs will average around £8,000-£15,000 but can be more or less depending on the size of your website and various other factors.
While this may seem like a lot of upfront investment (and it is), the potential value of your website far outweighs the initial costs. Take one of our partners, Premier Labels, for example. Following a full website rebuild and a marketing overhaul, they were able to drive a 98% increase in website conversions following a 747% increase in overall website traffic.
