9 Web Design Challenges For Business Owners …and how to overcome them
In my experience as a website designer, there are many challenges business owners face with their website. I’m sharing nine of them below, along with some of my thoughts on how to overcome them.
1. Creating an appealing and user-friendly website design that aligns with your business's brand identity
It can be challenging knowing how to design and set up your website correctly and effectively if you’re not a web designer. Some business owners put off creating a website for this reason. If you’re new to your business, I would recommend:
- Buying your domain name: This ensures your domain name is ready for you when you’re ready to design your website. The costs for a domain name usually range from £15-£30 per year, although there may be special offers in your first year of purchase.
- Finding your website platform: Don’t just go with the first web builder you see. You need to consider what you need your website to do and do your research on the best platform for its purpose. Some questions to ask yourself to help you find the right platform for you and your business are:
- Does the website platform offer exactly what I need my website to be able to do?
- Are there any reliable designers and developers that I can go to for help if I need it?
- Does the platform offer support?
- Are the costs of the upkeep of my website within my budget?
- Am I confident that I can use and work with this platform?
Did you know, I have a Plan Your Business Website course that can help you understand and collate everything you need for your business website before you build it? On the course, you can learn how to plan the framework of your business website so you’ll be able to create an effective, awe-inspiring website that makes it easy for your visitors to convert into clients. This course is packed into 5 Workbooks and over 1 hour of video and you can start and save your progress so you don’t have to complete it all at once. Find out more about the course here.
For business owners who already own a domain name and even a website, creating an appealing and user-friendly website design that aligns with your business’s brand identity can still be a challenge. You may be having a re-brand or you may realise that the website platform you have at the moment isn’t working for you. If you really want to feel happy with your website, then consider investing in a web designer like me to design your website. And if you’re not sure what to do, then have a chat with me — I’d love to help.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
To have an effective website that works for your business, you will need to consider SEO, but there’s so much confusion about how and what to do to optimise your website, where do you even start!? SEO doesn’t have to be hard. Start with the basics:
- Understand how your desired audience uses Google to find your services: What are they likely to type into to Google Search engine to find you? What keywords do you want to be found for?
- Incorporating your keywords into your website: Once you know the answers to the points above, you need to incorporate those phrases into your website. Create service pages and blog posts that talk about these points – but be aware… don’t do any ‘keyword stuffing’ (overusing of these phrases) as that can impact your website in a negative way.
- Meta-data: Include your keywords in your website’s meta-data. The meta-data is the mini-results paragraph that’s shown to users when they search your keywords in Google. It can help them to decide if you’re the article they should click on and therefore visit your website. It’s also great for Google to understand what you do as well.
- Set up Search Console: You’ve got your website set up, so why isn’t it appearing in the search results? Well, it could be because Google hasn’t indexed/crawled your web pages yet, so it doesn’t actually know your content exists. And don’t be fooled…just because your website is showing in your Google search result pages (SERPs) it doesn’t mean it’s showing for everyone else in the same position. Google shows content that is relevant to you, and really you need Google to show your content to someone who doesn’t know about you but could be interested in what you do. Once you have your website set up, you should submit a sitemap to Google and for any new pages you create, you should also ‘Request Indexing’ on those pages. If you leave Google to do it naturally you could be waiting a long time. Think of all the websites out there that exist… that’s a lot for Google to cover, so bring your new website to Google’s attention first and it will be more likely to crawl your website sooner.
If you’ve done this process and you still want to improve your SEO, consider asking the advice of SEO professionals. They can also assess where you rank in terms of your keywords. Contact me for more information.
3. Security requirements
This can be scary stuff, but looking into it a bit more, it can be broken down into manageable points.
- Set up Two-factor Authentication on your website
- Consider using a password manager to keep your passwords safe
- Research best practices on what you need to do to keep your website safe
- Make sure you take regular back-ups of your website
- Regularly update your website so it’s using the most up-to-date versions of plugins and other software
4. Legal considerations
Making sure you have the correct legal pages on your website is a must. Pages to consider are a Privacy Notice, Cookie Policy, Website Terms of Use, and Terms and Conditions. You should also register your business with the ICO and look at their website for advice on UK GDPR guidelines.
5. Mobile optimisation
So you’ve spent a load of time designing the desktop version of your website, but you’ve just realised you’ve neglected the mobile site version! Ah, how annoying.
Considering mobile is really important. In fact on WordPress websites, you generally have to consider a desktop, tablet and mobile view. Plus all of the different screen sizes within that.
You may find you need to simplify your content on mobile. That’s OK. It’s fine to have different content on the mobile version of your website than the desktop version, as there’s less space on mobile. Make sure the important stuff is there though.
6. Technical issues
With anything tech, there’s bound to be tech issues, and websites are no different. If you are having trouble resolving tech issues, then reach out to your hosting provider or a web designer like me who should be able to assist. If you’ve picked a platform that is well-known and respected within the web design world, you shouldn’t have a problem finding someone to help.
7. Analytics and tracking
When you have your website set up, make sure to connect Google Analytics and Google Search Console to your website. This will enable you to gain insights into your website visitors, for example, where in the world they are based, what pages they visit, and how long they stay on your website. It can be difficult to understand this data, but the important thing is that it’s set up ready for when you really want to get an idea of your user’s behaviours. You can ask a web designer like me for assistance in setting up and understanding this data.
8. Content strategy
It’s important to regularly update your website and make sure the content on it is relevant to your business, but it can be difficult to think up content for your site all the time especially if content creation isn’t something that comes easily to you.
If you do anything, make sure your main evergreen content is up to date. By this, I mean your homepage, service pages, contact and legal pages.
Then, if you want to build out your content, try to think long-term. What do you want your business and website to look like in a few years? Slowly build out your content to make that happen. If you have writer’s block, then leave it for a bit and wait until something drops into your head and you have the energy to write about it. You could consider investing in a content strategist and writer to plan and write content on your behalf, if this is something you want to develop and you don’t have the capacity to do it yourself.
9. Website accessibility
Making your website accessible for all is a must. There are web accessibility guidelines to follow and making considerations like colour contrast, adjustable font sizes, and ensuring your website is readable by screen readers, are just some of the adjustments to make to your website. You can engage the help of a web designer like me who considers web accessibility a part of the web design process, if you need assistance in making your website more accessible.
Hopefully, this article has helped you make sure you’re considering some of what you need to create and build a website for your business. Please get in touch with me if you’d like to chat through anything or have any further questions about web design.