Building an empire starts with a concrete foundation. And just like an empire, your startup needs to have solid ground in its wake; before it can run, gain momentum, and eventually lift itself off the ground to soar to the heavens!
As exhilarating as this sounds, there’s a lot of work that needs to be put in building this concrete foundation.
And of course, one of the first areas that every digital entrepreneur needs to look at is the startup’s website.
Though it might be tempting to just start up a website from a who-knows-what website design company, and signing up to the cheapest hosting provider, you’ll find that it might limit the growth of your startup in the long run.
Go figure:
So in this blog post, we’ll be taking a look at the 5 top factors to look out for when putting up a website for your new startup. Be it a jewelry store, or any other e-commerce store.
- Hosting
Remember, your number one objective as a startup is to experience exponential growth as fast as possible, and in a sustainable manner.
Unfortunately, most people don’t understand that most times, cheap is expensive in the long run.
Here’s the kicker:
So you might just save up on hundreds of dollars by selecting the wrong hosting package, only to splash thousands of dollars later down the line because of all the instability you website faces!
This could be factors such as painfully slow loading times, which is poised to become a direct ranking factor as of July 2018 (I’ll be discussing more of this in a later blog); which by the way, is determined by the quality of hosting services that you use.
And it doesn’t end there:
Did you know that some of the packages that you sign up for actually have a limit for the number of visitors that can come to your website?
And if that’s not enough:
Some actually limit the amount of data that can be transferred between your site to them.
Which then means that if your startup outgrows the current hosting package that your own, unfortunately some people will fail to have access to your website!
- Code
Another key component in your website performance is code. In fact, code tends to impact everything from the way you access your website, to the way search engines gain access to it too.
It even gets more complex:
Code also determines how quickly your web pages load, as well as the quality of mobile experience that your website is able to provide.
So it goes without saying:
Clean, fast code is extremely vital. And you need to keep this in mind especially when you’re using platforms such as WordPress, or even other CMS platforms that normally have a lot of bloated code within their systems.
On the other hand, if you’re a DIY kind of person, then you’ve got to come up with your own creative templates for new pages utilizing important elements.
Why is this the case?
Because it will help you from typing out the same code over and over.
Which if you ask me, is pretty boring!
Moreover, make sure you familiarize yourself with dynamic web pages that enable you to edit elements such as the website’s header in a single place, instead of having to make the same manual changes in each and every page.
Design
Okay, so search engines might be a little blind when it comes to design, but they can automatically interpret your websites basic layout, as well as navigational structure, as long as you make sure it’s marked up correctly.
Here’s what I mean:
For example, you can utilize components such as UX signals to directly improve your engagement signals as well.
In fact, as per the current setup, user experience is a direct ranking factor for mobile pages. However, that doesn’t mean having poor UX as well as engagement signals won’t hurt your desktop ranking as well.
Because let’s face it:
If you have high bounce rate couples with sluggish load times, there’s no valid reason for Google to recommend your website to any of its users.
Finally, though I opted to minimize this one because we’ve heard this song over and over, there’s content. You need to strategize your content based on effective SEO measures to improve the ranking of your site.
That being said, if you’d like to get more concrete advice and steps to build an effective website for your startup, contact 4Spot Marketing today. You can email us at Info@4SpotMarketing.com or call us at 702-721-9763. We offer a free consultation to determine what approach will serve your company best.