Getting a website sounds simple: pay someone, wait a few weeks, and you’re online. In reality, there’s more to it, and the things nobody explains up front are the ones that cost business owners the most. Here’s what to know before you start, in plain English.
1. A website is not a one-time thing
A lot of business owners believe that once a website is launched, it can run indefinitely without any need for intervention. Wrong.
Owning a website is much like owning a car. Sure, your brand-new car may run excellently within the first year after you purchased it, but without proper maintenance, it will soon show problems like breaking down in the middle of nowhere, out of nowhere (OK, that may be an extreme example, but you get what I mean).
Your website may work fine in the first few months after launch. But with how fast technology evolves nowadays, your website can suddenly stop working. And imagine if a potential client was searching for your business online and came across a non-functional or buggy website. Imagine how that would reflect on your business.
2. A website consists of several moving parts
Most business owners believe that a website is a single piece of software. Wrong. Let’s go back to our car analogy. Yes, you bought the car as a single product. But if you pop the hood, you’ll see several moving parts, acting as one machine to take you from point A to point B.
Your website is similar. Running a website is essentially running several moving parts acting as one, and your developer builds this so that each part works coherently with the rest.
3. Most users are now browsing on their mobile phones
That is just a fact. Go out and you’ll hardly see anyone who isn’t on their phone. Most people now search for products on their phones. If your website is not compatible with mobile browsing, you’ve just lost a potential customer. A good web designer knows this and keeps it in mind when designing your website.
4. The difference between a web designer and a web developer
It’s a common misconception that a web designer and a web developer are the same thing.
To help you understand better their differences, here’s a good analogy. Let’s say you want a house built. You approach an architect and tell them your needs and preferences. The architect takes all those details and creates a blueprint based on that.
Once the blueprint is ready, a builder (perhaps a team of engineers, foremen, carpenters, etc.) builds it into a physical building.
When you visit a website, you appreciate a good design and a seamless experience. This is where the web designer comes in. They work out the best user experience and interface for your target users. Their role is to understand your website’s end users and design an experience that entices them to buy your product. What age group are they in? Are they mostly male or female? These are some of the questions a web designer addresses.
Once a web design is ready, a developer translates it into code that your web browser (e.g. Chrome or Safari) can understand, so it displays correctly to your user.
5. Why website security matters
You might wonder why security should matter when there’s nothing worth hacking on your website.
Let me give you a pretty bad scenario. Say you own a dental clinic with a website at exampledentalclinic.com. One day, it gets hacked. The hackers replace your beautiful web pages with ones containing explicit content.
Because you have no website team, it takes weeks for you to notice. A lot of potential customers visit your website and are shown those explicit web pages.
Not only is your reputation damaged, but you also lose customers, and may even face legal issues. Security matters.
6. Know what you're paying for
- Web design
- Web development
- Copywriting
- Stock photos
- Domain registration (www.example.com)
- Hosting
- Security
- Backups
- Content updates
7. Identify your website goals and target users
Ask yourself: Why are you getting a website? Is it to look credible online? To attract potential customers? To sell products or services? To share information?
Whatever the reason, the goal is the very first thing you must determine. Most websites fail because they were built without a goal in mind.
After identifying your goal, identify your target users. Knowing who they are helps your web designer and developer build a site that gets your users to do what you want, whether that’s calling, booking, or buying—ultimately helping you meet your goal.
With these two clearly defined, you will have a website with a clear purpose that reaches the right audience.
8. It's NOT easy to DIY a website
Yes, website builders can be enticing. You think you’ll save money DIY-ing your website. The thing is, these DIY website builders advertise their products as if DIY-ing a website were as easy as learning your ABCs. The truth is, much like any DIY work, there’s a learning curve, and, depending on how quickly you adapt, you lose time — time you could’ve spent running and optimizing your business.
Apart from that, DIY website builders usually rely on templates. These are premade designs that don’t necessarily fit your brand and your target customers. Templates mean other businesses are using the same design as you. It’s like going to a party and discovering two other people wearing the same dress you’re wearing.
As discussed earlier, you need to define your website goals and target users. A premade design does not address either. It doesn’t fit your business, and it’s not made to meet your customers’ needs. It’s like buying a premade cake from a franchise bakery for your wedding.
9. Understanding search engines
What is a search engine? In the simplest terms, it’s an engine for searching things on the internet. Duh.
In more depth, though, search engines use robots that scan the internet for websites and list them in their records. The most famous examples are Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
When a person searches for something on Google, the engine looks through its records and returns the matching ones to you. It’s almost like a librarian, retrieving books from the library based on a topic you want to research.
Now say you’re a dentist with a website. It’s natural you include information about your services and anything else dentistry-related.
But you can imagine how big the internet is, right? Google can’t show a list of all websites relating to dentistry in one go. That would just be impossible. So instead, Google looks for the websites with the most related contents and lists them first. Google does this using “keywords”.
A keyword is like a search word or phrase a user types into Google.
If your dentistry website contains very few of the keywords your target users are most likely to search for, your website will fall to the bottom of the list, decreasing your chances of being shown on Google.
10. Speed matters
You know how scientists keep saying that people’s attention spans have declined? Well, it’s true. Gone are the days when people waited patiently for their computers to boot up. Gone are the days when people waited patiently for their mail to arrive in the mailbox. Gone are the days when people sat patiently, waiting 10 minutes for a web page to load. Today, people expect speed and instantaneity. Imagine someone clicks to visit your website and it takes 10 seconds to load. By then, their interest is already somewhere else.
Think of your website like your car. Buy it with a purpose, understand what’s under the hood, and keep up with the maintenance. Get those basics right, and it will take your business exactly where you want it to go.