1. Define your target audience: Understand who your target audience is, what their needs are, and how your brand and website can address those needs. Use your website to connect consumers directly to your brand.

Have you ever came across a post or an ad and felt like it was speaking to you directly? You then click into the website and find more products that resonate with you? That brand most likely has a firm grasp on who their target audience is. Some questions to ask yourself is who is interacting with your company? What are their ages, demographics, location they live? What does your business do for them?

Now that you have your target audience, build your website to talk directly to those answers.

2. Keep it simple and clean: Create a simple and clean design that is easy to navigate and easy on the eyes.

Create a website that is consistent with your branding. Fonts, colors, and voice should speak to your brand.

Let’s say I am destination photographer that shoots editorial style and wants to attract young couples that are getting married in unique locations, If you are a wedding photographer and your website design is hard to navigate and difficult to read, the likelihood of converting your website viewer into a client is low. Instead I will create a captivating website that shows my editing style and unique wedding locations, while speaking clearly about my services and how they can contact me. 

3. Make it mobile-friendly: Make sure your website is optimized for mobile devices.

This is a no brainer, more and more people are using their smartphones to browse the web. In order to stand out against competition your website should be easy to read on all devices.

4. Use high-quality images and videos: Use high-quality images and videos to make your website more visually engaging and interesting. 

This is important. Not only can pictures add interest to your website, it can help define your brand. Make sure these images are clear and professional. “But Whitney, I don’t have professional images for my brand. What do I do?” Though I thoroughly believe in investing in a branding photoshoot. There are things you can do in between. Many websites such as Unsplash and Burst have free images you can use.

5. Optimize for SEO: Make sure your website is optimized for search engines, using relevant keywords and meta tags. 

I know, this one is a mouthful. SEO is Search Engine Optimization and basically it just helps you get more visibility on this thing we call the World Wide Web. Most website hosting has a location to add you SEO. One of the reasons I love Showit so much, is they make adding your SEO easy. In order to get the most out of your SEO and meta tags, I would suggest using SEMRUSH in order to get your keywords in order.

6. Use a Call-to-action: Use a clear call-to-action to encourage visitors to take action, such as signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase or following your socials. 

THIS IS HUGE. I can’t tell you how many clients I have had that do not have a CTA on their website or have their CTA buried. What do we truly want from our websites? To convert our dream customer into a client. The likelihood of converting each and every person into a purchase is low, but what if we had a call-to-action for everyone? Signing up for a freebie, reading a blog, or following a social media account are all conversions. Don’t make your dream client search on how to engage with you.

7. Make it fast-loading: Make sure your website loads quickly, as visitors are less likely to stick around if it takes too long to load. 

This ties into number 4 and number 5. Did you know if you upload a photo or video that is too large it can actually bring down your loading speed on your website? This does a few things. First, it can actually harm your SEO. Yep, all that work you did to get your SEO in order, if your website doesn’t load in 0-2 seconds it will harm your rankings. It also increases your bounce rate. Bounce rate is basically when people get bored and bounce from your site in technical terms. We don’t want that, but we also want pretty images and videos, so what do we do? Hire me. Just kidding, there are ways you can help with this. Compressing your images, adding plugins, and image optimization will all help bring this number down. 

8. Use Social Media: Use social media to drive traffic to your website, and to engage with your audience. 

We are in a day and age where social media is crucial to most businesses. This is a pool that you can basically pick your ideal client from. All businesses are different but most likely, your big hitters are going to be Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. Now, TikTok is also a way to get in front of a lot of people at an alarming rate, but this is where that target audience will come into play. If your target audience is 35+ the likelihood of you getting conversions from TikTok are lower. Facebook and Instagram would be your bread and butter. Make sure you are constantly adding your website links, CTA to visit your site, and easy ways to engage through social to your site. On the flip side, make sure your social are on your website. Maybe someone isn’t ready to purchase but does want to stay connected. Boom, socials. 

9. Make it easy to contact you: Make it easy for visitors to contact you, by including contact information and a contact form on your website. 

This one is pretty self explanatory, but people have questions. Let’s say they have a question on one of your products and your FAQ sheet doesn’t answer it. If they can’t get the answer, they could walk away. If one person walks away because they couldn’t contact you, the likelihood of someone else doing the same thing is high. So add the contact section. Get the Answers. Make the conversions, and also learn what you need to add to your website to keep your audience engaged and educated with your brand.

10. Know what your website is doing: Test the effectiveness of your website.

One of my favorite things to do is look at the analytics of a website. Using something like Google Analytics is a great way to know how your audience interacts with your webpage. It also can help you build out who is visiting your site and how better to target them. 

I know creating a website and a business can be hard, and I hope this list helps. If you have any questions drop them below!