When it comes to creating a site, so many people put a lot of effort into the design and content. That’s all great until they forget about how important the backend or the behind-the-scenes elements are to ensuring a well-run and functional website. In this article, I will be giving you some helpful tricks so your site looks and works great.

Trick #1: Hosting

Free web hosting is critical. For your site to be functional, you need to know that it is hosted by a reliable, secure, and ideally free host so your data is safe. Website builders like Ucraft, offer free web hosting through the Google Cloud Platform, so you can expect over 99% of uptime. You also will be notified ahead of time of any maintenance issues.

One of the worst things that can happen to new businesses is technical errors that leave your site unsecured or offline. Always make sure to choose the best free web hosting you can. 

Trick #2: Be Responsive

Over 90% of all site visitors are coming in via smart devices. By 2020 this will easily reach 100%. Surprisingly, there are still many people who have websites that are NOT mobile-friendly. Save yourself and your customers from this faux pas, and always make sure your site is responsive across ALL smart devices.

Trick #3: Have a Clear Plan and Follow Through

If your customers can’t easily identify what your company offers and how they can obtain it, you have a problem. Step into your customer’s shoes and view your website from their perspective. Often this may look like a map of the customer journey. Here are some things to consider for this map:

• Awareness – your visitor arrives at your site and becomes aware of the opportunity you are offering
• Consideration – customer takes the time to learn more about your methods of solving their problems
• Decision – final purchase with you (hopefully)

If any of these stages are not clear to your customers, they are likely to look elsewhere. Be sure to go over each of these and make sure they are clear and flow naturally into one another.

Trick #4: Sharing and Action Buttons

A great site is only as good as its traffic. Make sure your site gets out there by having clearly defined social share buttons so your fans can share each page. What’s nice is that share buttons are friendly and non-sales-y so your customer is more likely to engage in this way.

Call-to-action buttons are also important parts of directing your customer. A CTA is part of the customer journey; make sure there is a clear flow so your potential buyer knows what to do.

For example, if you have an online store that sells socks, your site should look something like this:

Awareness: We offer customizable socks for people who like to be unique and feel cosy.

Consideration: Short video on how you can customize your socks easily.

Decision: Enter your CTA. Sign-Up and Get a Free Pair Today.

Trick #5: Be Found – Easily

With all the right design and content, if your site isn’t found easily you may as well not exist. Use  SEO to make sure your site can be easily crawled, ranked, and found by anyone and everyone. Here are some quick tips to help you get started:

1. Local SEO – always make sure your business is registered on Google Business with contact info, your site, and hours of operation. Most people will support locally so be sure to show up in all the areas where you can provide service. If you are not sure how to properly set this up, you can always find local SEO companies that will do the heavy lifting for you.
2. Fastest and most secure hosting providers – choose a great host like the free GCP
3. Analytics – analyze everything and be willing to get rid of anything that isn’t working
4. Compress images for the fastest loading times
5. Use long-tail keywords appropriately throughout your  content and descriptions

These helpful SEO tips will make sure you are ranked high on SERPs, so you are easily found and provide a pleasant viewing experience. 

Take Away

Always create a site that functions as well as it looks. From hosting to being 100% responsive, your customers want a smooth and secure experience. Create a plan and stick to it, taking your customer’s journey into consideration. Your site should clearly state what you do or what problem you solve and how a person can learn more and become a follower and customer. Be sure to get shared across social media and be optimized across the board so you are ranked higher and bring in more traffic. Follow these tips for a phenomenal site.