You've decided to build a website. Great! Your first step is to determine its structure葉he pages you want to include and the information you want provide to visitors. But how to begin?
Your first instinct may be to make your site different from everyone else's. After all, trying to differentiate your business is what you've been doing throughout your branding process.
Building a website is like building a custom home
When you create a custom house, you can arrange your floor plan however you want, paint the walls as you please and fill the house with furniture you love. Your goal is to create a unique space that stands out from everyone else's.
In the same vein, there are elements of your website where standing out makes sense. For example, the overall look of your site and your copy should be different from other sites容specially those of your competitors.
Differentiating your website is good for your small business葉o a point. What you don't want to do is reengineer its basic structure.
Standing out isn't always the stable way to build
Underneath it all, even the most unique custom home has the same foundation and spacing between studs in the wall as every other house on the block.
By following underlying principles of construction, builders help ensure that the house is structurally sound. Why not use the same approach when it comes to your website? That way, your site is far more likely to work well for you.
To use site building rules, of course, you need to know what they are.
Rule 1: Do competitive research
Before someone sets out to build a custom house, they'll probably do quite a lot of research様ooking at other houses, determining the architectural styles that appeal to them, and perhaps even checking out homes in the neighborhood where they want to build.
The same goes for your website. You need find out what you're up against. Once you're familiar with competitors' sites, you can make sure that your site will not only be different in the right places, such as look and feel and content, but that it will also be comparable in the right places.
Most likely, your competitors have been building their sites for some time預nd probably updating them to answer customer questions and market their businesses more strongly. You don't want prospects to pass you by because your site doesn't answer an important question that a competitor has addressed.
Visiting other sites and making notes of basic structure, business information presented, customer questions answered and even relevant tools and articles gives you a jump start on creating a site that facilitates apples-to-apples comparisons.
Rule 2: Plan your site architecture
As you may suspect, planning your site architecture is like drawing up architectural plans for a custom house, where you plan just what you'll include and what will go in each space. For example, do you want a library? A formal dining room? And where will you put the piano?
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