Website Design – 5 Myths

Myth 1: A custom-designed website is too expensive.

Great websites with intuitive and easy-to-follow navigation can be created at a reasonable cost. There are factors that effect pricing, such as number of pages, shopping cart and online ordering functionality, e-commerce and other custom-designed site features.

If you’re thinking of building a website yourself, keep in mind the steep learning curve of doing it yourself and the resources you’ll have to put together- graphics, design, branding and search engine optimization.

Myth 2: A website template will work fine.

Building a website is so much more than learning to use online templates. Search engine optimization techniques have to be employed correctly for the website to rank in search engine rankings. Keyword phrases and words have to be researched and used in the correct ratio on each page for SEO to be effective. A template site doesn’t provide this information for you. A professional advertising agency specializing in website design is your best bet.

A good advertising and digital marketing agency will research your business and the market that you are in to put together the right branding message directed at your target audience. Knowledge about branding and digital marketing to your target takes years of experience and learning.

Do you have this much time to run your business and spend years trying to learn marketing and advertising as well? Better leave it to the professionals.

Myth 3: Building a website will immediately bring in new business.

• Choose a strong domain name that isn’t too long
• Select a hosting company that is reliable
• Build page with content that includes keywords and keyword phrases
• Create, maintain and link social media pages to your website
• Build a digital marketing campaign to help drive traffic to the website

Website design success depends on what happens after it is launched. Maintaining SEO and SEM through keyword usage in the website content is vital to keeping your website in the top search engine results. A monthly maintenance plan of checking website visibility in search results listings then tweaking site content is the key to creating a successful website that is visible to prospective clients.

Myth 4: All websites can be viewed on mobile devices.

A website today has to be responsive to be ranked on Google and other search engines. The website needs to adjust to different screen sizes for a wide variety of mobile devices while displaying website content in an easily-read manner.

Over 50% of website viewers are visiting websites from mobile devices. Designing a website that isn’t responsive will prevent your site from being effective and will miss out on the growing percentage of viewers on mobile devices. RLS Group designs all of our websites to be responsive websites.

Myth 5: I’ve built my website, now I’m done

Planning, completing and launching a website is a lot of work. But just because you’ve launched your site, you’re far from being done. If your site is built with a content management system such as WordPress, plugins and the CMS itself have to be updated to stay current.

Onboard plugins need to be update to provide the best user experience for your website. As new malware and virus threats are identified, protection for your website needs to be updated as well. Malware and virus definitions and protection methods have to be updated.

As previously mentioned, to rank high in search engine results, a constant and monthly program of updating keywords, keyword phrases, long tail keywords and page content needs to be adhered to.

Social media updates also have to be made with updates and posts shared to your website. Digital marketing campaigns need to be developed to help drive traffic and new customers back to your website.

RLS Group is a full-service advertising agency that will help with your website design project and digital marketing campaigns.