Guide to Building an Effective Website

Businesses in the modern world need a presence on the Internet, which translates to more effective marketing and more customers.

Today, when you are about to start a business, you have to spend a whole lot of time in just thinking about how you will get your website up and what experience you will be giving to your website visitors.

You have to look for the most reliable website designers, so you can get a website up that represents you in the best possible way.

However, when you work with the most skilled designers, you have to pay quite a huge amount for their work. Even then, you may not be sure that the final product is exactly what you want it to be.

Fortunately, there are many ways to work around that problem. You don’t have to spend a fortune to get a great website up. On the other hand, an affordable website does not mean a compromise on the quality of your website.

Here are some tips to help you get a startup website up and running without breaking the bank:

Use Website Builders

There was a time in the past when you had to know coding and programming in order to build a website. Today, you can simply start off with website builders. According to Jeremy Wong, You don’t need to know the code, you don’t need to manage the hosts/servers, and you don’t need to have a lot of money. A website builder provides you a graphical interface where you work on templates to build your own website. You just pick the components up and drag/drop them in order to create a website that is a true reflection of your thoughts.

Play With Text and Font

A top designer from VH1 and MTV, Ryan Shafer, says that making a website attractive and appealing is all about playing with the text. The more you play with the text, the less work you will have to do with the design. In the words of Ryan Shafer, “I encourage all budding web designers to embrace that the web is fundamentally about typography design”. This shows that you don’t have to play around with complicated plugins and put on the most expensive images on the website to make it look awesome. Also, keep in mind that picking images from other websites has caused a lot of trouble to a lot of people think about lawsuits.

Simplicity Is the Key

The simpler the design of your website, the more you can negotiate with your web design firm on the rates. You don’t have to go for designs that are too complicated and hard to pull. As per Gariella Vivaldi, a representative of Etc-ecc, simplicity is the most important factor on a website. She further adds that the websites should be built on simple and plain templates. The templates should be simple yet visually appealing.

Keep the Website Lightweight

Once again, the more work you put on your website, the more you will have to pay for it. You will have to buy various tools and pay your designer extra for the additional time he/she spends on working on your website. Daniel Florido, director at Pixelstorm, says that a lot of people put too much fancy stuff on their website and this finally makes their website quite heavy.

The end result is that the website becomes so heavy that it takes ages to load. With only the right research and resources, an efficient website can be built, which has all the essential elements but is lightweight enough to give the best navigation and user experience. A website should be more about letting people get to information they are looking for easily.

Choose the Right Hosting Plan

There are many different types of hosting plans, such as dedicated hosting, virtual private server hosting, shared hosting, cloud hosting, etc. All of these plans are different from each other based on how you access the resources. The most affordable option for starting websites is to go for a shared hosting plan. In shared hosting, your website is hosted on a server that is being shared by several other websites.

Since you are sharing the resources with other websites, the costs are pretty low. You get access to limited resources but that’s where the real patience lies. When you are just a starting website, you don’t need too many resources, so shared hosting is the way to go. You can always compare various hosting plans on the Internet to see how affordable shared hosting is.

Use Social Media Marketing

One of the most important things in today’s world of internet is to market your website and brand through social media. Many people would get their website up, pay firms for SEO, spend money on PPC, and use a lot of other such marketing approaches. What they don’t realize is that they could tap into the power of social media without spending any money. From startups to well-established websites, all have realized and recognized the power of social media. Consumers trust the opinions of those in their social circle, including friends, bloggers, and celebrities, more than the messages they get directly from businesses.

The recent statistics about social media give an even closer look into the power of social media and its influence on customers all around the world. Here is some insight:

Nearly 33 percent of the customers find out about new brands and products through social media.
72 percent marketers are harnessing the power of social media to create a pool of loyal fans.
92 percent marketers have given their agreement to the fact that it’s social media marketing that has exposed their brands and products more than they had wanted.

Final Words

Those who have money can go for expensive services for every web aspect, but if you are just starting a business, you need to cut down on your costs. Since you will have to invest money in creating a website, use the above methods to develop your website and market it intelligently in order to save money and still have an effective online presence.

Effective Digital Presence: Guide to Building an Effective Website Yourself