If you own or operate a small company and don’t have a fully functional website that keeps up with the times than you may very well lose business to your competition. Moving forward, it’s important for you to build a comprehensive website that will impress your potential customers or clients. Your best-case scenario is to work with a professional website development company. However, you should be well aware of some basic website development factors before you start the process. That way, you’ll be able to tell if the website development company will do a good job on your project.
You need to keep in mind that there is a great deal of website development companies out there, but not all of them will do a great job building your website. Prior to starting the design phase of the project, your developer must build a solid sitemap structure. In essence, it’s the foundation of your entire website. Without a good sitemap structure, the people who view your website will be confused by both the topics and the content. Here’s the bottom line. The sitemap should be branched like a pyramid from the top down in order for everything to have a logical meaning.
When the home page appears at the top of the pyramid and the categories work downwards from the top, the data on your website will flow in the proper order. In addition, Google and the other major search engines rank websites higher when they have a well-designed sitemap. It is incredibly important that your website development partner build the proper navigational structure for your website. A well-structured sitemap is basically useless if your website doesn’t include navigation tools that are easy to use and simple to understand.
In order to be appropriately organized, navigation needs to have its own categories and potentially sub-categories. You also need to ensure that your website developer is taking the proper security measures. In the minimum, your website should have an SSL certificate. What is SSL? It encrypts the communication that happens between your customers or clients and your website. That way, the private and financial data of your customer or clients, employees, and even yourself are protected.
It should be noted that SSL certificates do not fully protect your website from being hacked by cyber thieves. However, it will go a long way in proving you with protection. There are other measures that your website development company can take regarding cyber security. Make sure to have the website development company describe them in detail before deciding to hire them.
TIP: Did you know that having an SSL on your website is also great for Search Engine visibility? Google loves to see website with an SSL and tends to rank them higher than non SSL websites. So even if you aren’t selling anything online, its best to have on anyway.
If you need some help with a website development project for your small business, please contact us today. We look forward to helping you. Your Page Today LLC specializes in custom website design, custom website development, search engine optimization, monthly or weekly blog writing services, content management solutions and ongoing maintenance and support such as website security and data backups. Our company began its journey as an owner operated web Development Company in 2001, back when websites were just that; web pages.
With well over 18 years of hands-on experience in the world of website design and development, we have the expertise to not only get your website up and running but get it visible to those ideal prospects who ARE your target audience.
