You need to be able to tell your customer what you have on offer and when your marketing have them come somewhere.
This may be a website, a Facebook page, or a Google Business page - regardless, you need to be there!
Even a start up with ZERO dollars can have a website with a
free Google Business Page
Wix
Squarespace
Instapage
or similar template site
Once you have traction and an understanding of how your customers are using the site you can continue to develop it and start to invest more into it.
Key Points when building your site
Design for the User First
This element of modern website design is exactly what it sounds like: You should design your site for the user, not just to boost your rankings. Companies, out of a sense of desperation to get better rankings, tend to do things that are “good” for Google but bad for the user.
However, this shouldn’t be the hierarchy of importance for website design. A website should be user-friendly before a company should concern itself with ranking higher on a Search Engine Results Page.
Google is smart: it can tell when your users are getting good value from your website because they keep coming back and spending more time on it. Place your content above SEO, at least when first starting off, to optimise your site for the user and build a group of loyal, recurring visitors.
Relevant Calls-to-Action
Converting visitors into leads and customers is also very important to modern website design, and here's why: Websites are meant to connect you with the people who are interested in your content, products, and services. Once this connection is made, you want to retain some sort of relationship with these visitors.
Things like email subscription forms, free downloadable ebooks or whitepapers, free product forms, free consultations, or other invites are great calls-to-action (CTAs). These should be strategically incorporated into your website design and are very important for gathering the contact information (typically just an email address) of your visitors so that you can continue conversations with them as leads and convert them into customers.
Include relevant CTAs in optimal places throughout your website – at the end of blog posts, in the sidebars, and in your resources page, to name a few.
SEO-Boosting Elements
A website should be designed for the user first, it doesn't mean that SEO doesn't matter. There are modern website design elements that can greatly improve the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of your site. A lot of these are invisible to the naked eye and also appear in the backend coding of your pages and posts.
Design tricks like meta tags, title tags, heading tags, and other HTML coding go a long way in helping your site climb the ranks of Google's search engine. Make sure you fill out, tweak, and optimise these elements so they are relevant to your site and better your search ranking.
Good Visual Design— Design is an all encompassing word for all the visuals elements of your website — logo, font(s), white space, theme/template, layout and colours. Using a theme that relates to the topic of your website can help to keep you/your content on track. When it comes to design it is important to remember to use white space and think about colour usage and meaning. If in doubt. Keep it simple and as clean as possible.
Content— The key to a good website is providing relevant content that your readers want. Content should answer the question “what’s in it for me?”
Navigation— Navigation is the “GPS” of your website. Navigation or Nav Bars are the buttons that get your visitors where they need to go to get information or do certain things. Usually this bar is along the top, as we in this one, or along the left side of the site.Should be simple to use and uncluttered. It is always a good idea to group like pages under the same topic to streamline navigation.
Remember that your customers need to be able to find what they want quickly and easily
Credibility — A good website instills trust from visitors. Good website design takes this into consideration by incorporating items that help identify that you are a legitimate resource. One way you can do so is by utilising verified links, clearly stating your identity and contact info, good grammar and employing social proof.
Mobile site — More and more people are looking at your site from a mobile phone or web enabled device. It seems like anything with a screen and a microchip in it is capable of getting on the internet these days. Make sure your site is viewable on a mobile internet enabled device.