Building a Website For an Unconventional Service

Posted on September 24, 2020 in Local News

It doesn’t matter what type of business you are creating the truth is you need a website. Be it a website for tech gadgets or for Halloween contact lenses, a website is a requisite for your business growth.  Ranging from a blocked drain plumber to a medical professional, everyone needs to be online, now that we are in the modern times where websites are more important than business cards.

Certain businesses like coffee vans may be able to get away with not having a website or be advertising within social media platforms. As they travel around and people are happy to buy a coffee without checking reviews first. Did you know the earlier you start thinking about how you are going to create it the better?

Beginning with your creative brief

Your creative brief will explain how you are planning to discuss your company or the product. It will define your tone of voice, your values, your intentions etc. The creative brief will explain how your website will be in communication with your customers. Some may have drafted their creative brief if you are going through the logo development which you can simply use that for your website. If you don’t have a creative brief now is the time to start.

Creating a wireframe

This is an outline of your site. It’s basically just a piece of paper that shows where things are going on the page. At this stage, there is no thought about graphics or colours.

If you are hiring a designer, they can help you create and grow a wireframe that goes under the design process. When building a website for unconventional services and products then you can use a service such as Shopify or Squarespace which will allow you to produce a wireframe yourself. Doing a wireframe draft is nothing to worry about. This is not a designing process, so don’t waste time being neat and tidy your only aim to get out in the open what is going onto the paper.

Design and build

You are now at the stage of designing and building your website. If you decide to use a service or designer, they will take over from here. Assuming you prefer to do this on your own to keep the budget under control then what you need to do next is pick a platform and then host your site. It’s time to think about your needs. Do you want a blog included? Are you selling products? Needing a shopping cart, online chat? Or are you offering specifically targeted services like pipe relining for a plumber? With so many choices literally hundreds it is best only to choose a few so site visitors are not too overwhelmed.

The three most popular website platforms that are simple and easy to use

Shopify: This is well suited if you are selling products online. You are able to run your whole online shop from this platform as it comes with all the tools you are required to be able to manage the products and your inventory. This is specifically suited for an e-commerce website, for example, the coloured contact lens business you have as mentioned earlier in this article.

Squarespace: This platform is a Jack of all trades, It can be used to create blogs, online stores and pretty much anything else you can think of. It has so many different design templates with so much flexibility. This is a great platform choice for beginners.

WordPress: This is a platform for a simple website. You can get started for free with. This platform isn’t well suited if you are running an online shop but more so for a basic information-packed websites and blogs. WordPress is used by thousands of websites, so it has great reviews.

Test and iterate

Once you have your website up, don’t think the work is done just yet. Once your site is up and live it’s time to check it actually works properly. You need A/B testing which is testing the current website A against the alternative which is the B. Check over which version works better. You can measure your success via increased calls to the business, customers clicking on different pages and increased sales. Installing something like Google Analytics will help you understand what types of visitors are checking out your site and what they are doing when they get to your site.

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