How to plan your website?

Would you consider developing a house without having some kind of plan? No, right? It is the same in the case of websites.
If you are a business owner and still “Invisible” on the web, creating a website should be your first priority. In this era, the Internet is an imperative tool for all business people, and online communication with the help of a website proves to be a great way to expand your business with potential users. However, proper planning is a must while building a website.
Well, you must have heard a proverb, "If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail" by a great businessman, Mr. Benjamin Franklin. Thus, planning should be a crucial aspect when it comes to creating a website. Especially if you’re charging for it. To make this task easy for you, we as a Web Design Jacksonville service have listed some factors that you should consider while planning your website.
Today, things have changed and the possibility of online business is something you cannot ignore. Because the advantages of creating a well-planned website are numerous. It involves many things such as competitor analysis, user-centered structure, attractive designing and we are helping you with planning the best website. Let’s see what things you need to consider when planning your website.
Things You Need to Consider While Planning Your Website
The website which you are going to create reflects your business and it also reflects you. So, it's important to consider the following factors more than the design itself.

1. URL
   A URL is the most important aspect when building and planning. It stands for Uniform Resource Locator and is an activity used by browsers to retrieve any published resource on the web. As we have a proper address of our home, the URL is used to specify addresses on the world wide web. So, make sure to keep your URL structure short and simple.
   It should describe your business instead of your name or any personal details and should be easy to use by choosing a good address, you can maximize the quality of search engines.

2. Sitemap-structure
   It’s a kind of flow chart of the pages on the website. It is important to design a good structure so that every user who views it, would not be confused with the content of the topic. It helps users to navigate large, complicated sites by showing them a whole structure. Web designers use it as a master diagram of the website. It plays a vital role in planning and ensures that everything will logically make some sense and the information on the site flows correctly. Sitemap helps web designers to include additional information about each URL.
   Note: Google values sites that have a well-designed hierarchy and much more. That is why it is important to create the best structure of navigation.

3. Reliable Hosting
   When you start a business in the real world, you need a physical location to set up a store, and sell your products. The same rules apply in the internet world when arranging a website, you need a location. Every website is hosted somewhere. Hosting provides your website a location on the web. Reliable web hosting means dependable web hosting.
   Every website has “scheduled downtime” but nowadays every web host reports “100% uptime” which means the websites they host are never down unexpectedly. As you pay for location in the web(hosting) you need that location consistently available without any errors to the users. It depends on the web host, their experience, their hardware, software, and how helpful and available their team is to you. If you have not decided yet on a hosting provider, a professional website designer will do all the work for you.

4. Key business information
   Make your website simple and sorted. Don’t post unnecessary content, for example, vague headlines, social media icons in your header, dates on the blog, long paragraphs, ads for your product. This may give a bad impression on the reader.
   The common mistake people make is that they build a website according to their own choices, desires, and what they like instead of focusing on what their users need. So, make sure that whenever you build a website, keep your users in mind.
   Also, ensure that your website clears the doubts of the customer instead of confusing them. For that you need to give a clear description, a simple web address, an easily navigated site map, quality content, know the basics of SEO from Jacksonville SEO company. If you are doing a business of selling a bag there should be details of everything, for example, the material of bag products, the location of branches, the variety of products and many more. If you have a web store, you need quality product images, reviews, and ratings from users it will help to gain more customers.

5. Contact information
   Without having any verbal communication or proof, we cannot confirm our transaction or deal. For that contact information is necessary. Each website contains a special section for contact details. The reader may get confused when they cannot find any contact details. Information like phone number, mail, address, a contact form should be easily available on it. It can be in image format or text but it should be easily accessible.

6. Easy navigation
   As we read above that the sitemap is useful for easy and understandable navigation. The navigation helps to categorize and organize web pages with higher and lower priority. It is one of the most important factors in User Experience. It also has two types like primary and secondary navigation. Proper navigation is necessary to help your users reach where they wish to and get the content easily.

7. Security
   One of the easiest things you can do to protect your website, yourself, and users, is to install an SSL certificate. You are unaware of SSL but you come across SSL all the time when you browse the web – it’s the reason for the “s” in “HTTPS”. It helps in encrypting the communication between your site and the customer. It encrypts account details, credit card details so that customers feel secure while doing transactions, it’s necessary to have SSL certification. So that data hackers can’t read it or use it without the private decryption key.

8. Integration with social networks
   Nowadays, there are a large number of social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, YouTube, Linked In, Instagram, Foursquare and you should have your account on them. It means that your brand should have a presence on them. Your brand should be available to all social networking sites. This will help people to find you and contact you.

9. Mobile version
   Your website should have easy access. Mobile phones and tablets are used to browse more than computers or any other device. That is why your website should be easily accessible in a mobile version too. The designers should design a web page in such a way that it will be easily accessible on any screen.
   The above-mentioned points are the basic things that you should have while planning a website but even the following factors are crucial to your website.

• Choosing a relevant domain name:
Websites have an incredible domain name. The domain is nothing but the name or tag which is owned by a particular ruler or government. Finding a correct name for your website is extremely important as it looks like a brand a bad domain name cause huge damage to the traffic on site.

• Well planned design:
As we say first impression is the last impression same goes with the website. One of the most important parts of developing a website is designing. A well-designed website can help you to build a good impression on visitors. This also includes the appearance of the website such as font, images, videos, logo, layout, and so on.

• Relevant content:
When you are done with the designing part your activity should consider creating content. Make sure that visitors will find the content valuable and unique. Having effective content will eventually improve your ranking.

• SEO friendly:
If the website is not SEO-friendly, then it looks unrelatable. SEO helps you to get the most appropriate visitors, that is why make sure your website is SEO-friendly.

• Include Call To Action or CTA:
This kind of option ensures visitors stay on the website for a longer period. The best way to get leads is by providing a call to action. These calls to action should make low risk and create a sense of urgency. The options could learn more, see more, see how, check now, sign up, query form and download now, and so on.

• Proper functionality:
It’s important to always think from the user’s perspective which will help you to realize which functionalities you need and which you don’t. Always make sure that all of the functions are running properly otherwise any sort of practical issue will spread negativity.

Conclusion:
We expect that you must have understood how to plan a website for your business in today’s world. Finally, as a Website Design Company, our Web Design Jacksonville experts would emphasize the fact that quality matters more than quantity.