Website Best PracticesJennifer Dye, MBA, CBA

Small Business Development Center – Highline College

5 simple steps to an online presence

1. Choose and purchase your domain name2. Select a website builder or hire a pro3. Select your template or theme4. Create content 5. Link to other social media and publish

Choose and purchase your domain name

Your domain name should be short, descriptive, easy to remember, and incorporate keywords.

Domain names can be purchased from a variety of companies for very little. Buy the longest time frame you can afford!

Silly examples

Select a website builder or hire a pro

• Wix• Weebly• Wordpress• Squarespace• eHost.com• web.com

Do your homework!

Select your template or theme

• What is the “feel” you are looking for? There are templates designed for specific industries, but you don’t want to use the same one as everyone else. Look at colors, movement, and usability.

• Plan your sitemap, i.e. how many tabs, what needs to be included. Home, About Us, Products, Services, Contact, etc.

• How much content do you currently have that you can import from your files or social media accounts?

• IN THE BEGINNING, LESS IS MORE!

Theme Examples

Create content • Less is more! If you want your website to have impact, minimize your use

of images and keep your content concise.• Use your own high-quality photos. Royalty-free, generic stock images

don’t appeal to anyone. Nor do they differentiate your brand from competitors—especially since those competitors are free to use the same images!

• Choose your menu style carefully! Hamburger menus hurt UX metrics, cutting discoverability almost in half. Alienating your site visitors immediately after landing on your URL is not good. There should be no more than 7 pages, 3-5 is optimal.

• Incorporate videos! Video is killing the image carousal, and this is a good thing. Carousals are bad for SEO. Videos, on the other hand, are beloved by Google.

• Incorporate reviews! Third party review sites (Yelp, Angie’s List, Google,etc.) increase traffic and build your reputation

Link to your other social media sites

• Linking to your Facebook, Twitter, etc. increases ranking• Consider the use of a social media manager like Hootsuite,

Tweetdeck, or Sproutsocial to miminimze the time-suck.• Your digital marketing should not take more than 15 minutes

a day! Use a calendar like Thrive Hive Marketing Calendar.• How do your customers find you? Ask them!

Worst Website Examples - Discussion

http://www.lingscars.com/

http://superior-web-solutions.com/

http://art.yale.edu/

Resources

• http://www.acscreative.com/get-web-design-best-practices-2017-part-two/

• https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2016/12/21/the-five-most-important-website-design-trends-that-will-emerge-in-2017/#4daec36d4552

• https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/website-navigation/• https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner• http://www.onlinetechnologyworld.com/10-worst-websites-2

016-avoid-building-one/