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Are You Ready to Build a Website?

Dasha from the Web Design Team at Rosewood sits at her desk

Today, every business needs a website. It allows potential customers or clients to learn about your service, contact you, view, and book services, and/or purchase products. When starting a new business, building its website is one of the first things you should do. 

Creating and designing a website, however, takes a lot of skills and knowledge that you probably don’t have time to dedicate yourself to, especially since you’re running your business. Hiring a team to design, build, and maintain your website gives you a professional and effective website without you sacrificing your time where it matters most. Our web design team creates professional, beautiful, functional, and accessible websites that suit your business. Before they can start designing, there will be a few things you will need to do. Here are all the essentials you need before you meet with Rosewoods’ team, and they start designing the website that perfectly represents and serves your business.

Registering a Domain

In order for you to start a website, your business will need a domain name. The domain is the main address that points to your website. google.com, wikipedia.org, and rosewoodmarketing.ca are all examples of domain names. There can be a lot that goes into coming up with a domain, like whether you want a .com, .ca, or another top-level domain. Two quick standards to remember is that shorter and memorable are better, and ensure it aligns with your brand’s name.

However, you can’t just create and have a domain. It needs to be available and registered. To see if a domain is available and how much it will cost, use a registry service, like GoDaddy. A domain will cost you an annual fee to register and retain. If the domain is new, it will be a nominal cost, but already registered domains can cost significantly more. However, if your new domain gains value and you decide you want to sell it, GoDaddy provides this option. 

Content

To build your website, it will need content: pictures, text, graphics, etc. Gather and create/commission all the materials you want for your website. If you’re not sure what to include, look at the websites of similar businesses to get a sense of the kind of content you need. An “about us” write up, contact information, location, availability, information about the services or products you provide, and a gallery of your store or examples of your work are all standards.

Logo and Branding

Often when starting your business, after the countless hours of picking the right, and available, name then comes the struggle of just the right logo. It’s the icon that will represent your business on all its communication channels. It will also be a main image on your website so it’s essential you have it ready beforehand. Along with your logo, you will need your branding. Your branding determines your business’ aesthetic. A marketing team will use these colours, fonts, and voice/tone to design a perfectly representative website.

Pictures Really Are Worth a Thousand Words

A lot of your website’s content will be visual to give a full impression of your business. There are two main options to give your website professional pictures. One more immediate option is to create a collection of stock images. Only pick those that reflect your business’ brand and aesthetic, or else the images will feel disingenuous. Alternatively, book a photoshoot to get professional pictures for your site. These will give your website a more accurate and authentic reflection of your business. Fortunately, Rosewood also provides brand photography. Let us know if this is something you would like to add to build your website.

Get a Google Business Profile

Google Business is one of the essential places you need to be listing your business. By creating a Google Business Profile, your business will populate in Google searches, and you can directly connect your website to the profile. You can also post the same pictures from your photoshoot here. This profile will help optimize your new website for Google searches so that more people discover your business and visit the website.

A Website Hosting Provider

A domain allows users to get to your website by entering the address in their browser, but your actual website and all its content will need to be hosted on a server that people can access. You will need to subscribe your domain to a hosting service that will keep your website up. There are numerous hosting services available, but your marketing and website design team can recommend a hosting provider. We recommend Cloudways or use our affiliate link with Siteground.

Connecting with a Marketing Team

The expertise of a marketing team like Rosewood’s can help you strategize the most effective sections, social media connections, and content plans like blogs and email marketing for your business’ website. They can also help you with content and branding, and help you determine the best combination that will perfectly suit your business and properly contend with any competition. Contact our marketing team for help strategizing your website.

You are ready to build a website!

Once you have these materials prepared, you’re ready to have a website built and designed. Our website design team will take all these and create mockups for your approval. Once approved, you’ll soon see your website starting to come to life. Ready to start the design process? Contact Rosewood’s website design team today!

Papers with drawings and mockups for website design
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Rosewood’s Guide For Website Mobile Optimization

a smart phone and laptop both showing the same website

Phones have changed the way we think about web design overall for mobile optimization. A website must be responsive, meaning it will adapt and resize based on any sized device. Once, long ago in the 90s and early 2000s, websites were primarily designed for the one browsing device: computers with keyboards, mice, and square or horizontal monitors. (Need a blast from the past? Here’s the original 1996 Space Jam website still live.) Websites still need to work on computers, but many now browse the internet with their phones. As a result, websites need to be optimized for mobile devices to look good, load quickly, and be responsive. Smaller, vertical touch screens, specific operating systems, and cellular data bring different design considerations than mouse and keyboard. To provide an ideal experience for your users and potential customers/clients, you need a website optimized for mobile.

The Importance of Mobile Optimization

You probably use a smartphone to browse the internet all the time. When you’re working, walking, chatting, or just bored. You and everybody else. Touchscreen smart phones have completely changed internet browsing over the last 15 years by providing constant easy access. Today, over 62% of website traffic comes from mobile devices, and over 92% of users access the internet with a mobile phone. Similarly, 83% of the world’s population has a smartphone, nearly double the number of households with a computer. Many only ever access the internet and your business through a mobile device.

Those numbers alone prove mobile optimization is crucial for your business’ website. Most users are likely visiting with their phone. It only becomes more important when considering that the third most common task on mobile devices, right behind playing games and listening to music, is browsing social media. Since 55% of consumers discover new brands on social media which they primarily browse on their phones, most new potential clients or customers are first visiting your website with a mobile device. Their first experience with your website should be a painless one to give them a proper impression. Mobile optimization is also important for current and returning users. 55% of users also use their phones to make online purchases. An optimized website ensures they have a seamless experience and are more likely to buy from your business and return.

Mobile Optimization Tips for Your Website

There’s a lot that you can do to optimize your site, and you may not be a web design wizard. That’s why Rosewood has some easy tips to help you start thinking about optimizing your website for mobile users. 

  1. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Tool – Google has made a convenient and simple tool that tests how mobile-friendly your website is. It will quickly help you discover any issues in your mobile optimization. Enter your URL or even the website’s code, and the tool will crawl your entire website for several minutes. The tool will then list any issues in your site’s mobile optimization. Google regularly crawls websites for mobile optimization itself, ensuring they should be populated on mobile searches.
  2. Design “Mobile First” – When creating a new site or redesigning your old one, it’s a good practice to design a website that prioritizes mobile use over desktop computers. Many users discover businesses and browse the internet with only a mobile device. Mobile sites can still function on a desktop, but a site designed primarily for computer use can leave mobile users frustrated with a dysfunctional site. When designing, think about small screen sizes and clean aesthetics.
  3. Create a responsive website – A responsive website is one that adjusts to a device’s screen. Smartphones have a variety of screen sizes. To accommodate these different screens, websites scale up or down. A responsive website will keep elements visible and text readable as it scales. Many modern web design platforms include responsive functions or plugins to easily make your site response. They also allow you to view your site as it would appear on mobile devices.
  4. Easy Visibility – Ensure all the essentials to navigate your site, like menus, search bars, buttons, and any text are immediately visible on a small screen. This will also make them easy to interact with on a touchscreen, the primary way users will interact with your site on a mobile device. If users need to zoom in on your site to hunt down information or touch the right element, they are far more likely to become frustrated and leave.
  5. Reduce the File Size of Your Images – Users hate loading times and big images are often the guilty party, especially when users are on slower internet or data connections. Resizing or compressing your photos reduces file size so they load faster on slower connections. 
    1. Resizing means reducing the overall resolution of the image to make it smaller. It only wastes data for an image that never displays large than 400 pixels wide to be loaded at 4000 pixels. Cutting down on that extra resolution, will shorten its load time. Be careful to not reduce the image below its display size, or it will lose quality as it stretches. You can resize multiple photos simultaneously with Bulk Resize.
    1. Compression is an alternative to resizing that keeps photos the same resolution and instead reduces the file size by using math to simplify data. It isn’t magic though, and too much compression can also jeopardize quality. Use Batch Compress to compress photos in batches.
  6. Pop-ups For Mobile – Every website has at least a few pop-ups to get a user’s attentions. However, they can be more obstructive and disruptive on mobile device screens than desktop browsers. You can try removing pop-up elements altogether to create a more seamless browsing experience, placing the elements on the site. If you are using pop-ups, use only a few and ensure they only cover a small portion of the screen and are easy to close. 

Your Digital Space

You know all too well that your website is essential for your business. It’s how people discover, learn about, contact, and purchase from you. It’s your storefront or office on the virtual streetside and just like in a physical location, you want to ensure customers have a painless, seamless, and pleasant experience. Optimizing your website for mobile with these tips is a great start to ensure your potential customers or clients are less likely to leave frustrated. Curious about other ways to update your site’s mobile optimization? Maybe you think it’s time for a redesign? Rosewood’s website design team will be happy to help. 

Finger about to tap on a touchscreen smartphone
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5 Essential Places to List Your Business

Phone screen showing various online directory apps

Today, it’s typical that people find businesses through internet searches. Whether it is through search engines, map apps, or social media, it is crucial to list your business on various services for your business’ discoverability. 

Listing services or online directories populate your business into search results and are the main way users and potential customers will learn about your business. Most of these will allow you to add important information about your business, such as its name, logo, location, hours, contact information, and any other pertinent information, e.g. a restaurant can include its menu. Depending on the service, you can also include photos, make regular posts, announce events, and provide offers.

Listings are a great way to establish a good reputation. On some, like Google and Facebook, users can leave reviews and ratings of your business. On other directories, they can also recommend your businesses in comments. These reviews boost consumer trust, with at least 73% of consumers trusting other customer reviews. By creating a listing, you also take control of this reputation. You can verify and take steps to remove false, negative reviews. You can similarly upload high quality photos and remove users’ poor-quality ones to ensure a good impression.

These listings are also a great way to connect with your customers. You can respond to the reviews, thank those celebrating your services or attempt to address those who may have complaints. Users and customers can also contact you through direct messaging on these services with questions, and you can respond to them directly.

Local Matters

While online directories allow people from a wider geographic range to find your business digitally, they’re extremely important for local business. Research shows that 97% of users search for local business, with 46% of all searches aimed at finding a local answer. Similarly, 76% of customers look at a business’ online presence before they physically visit. So even if your business’ operations are entirely physical and in-person, your discoverability among a local clientele still depends on these listings.

Listing Services/Online Directories

There is a myriad of places where you could list your business on the internet. It would be impossible to put your business everywhere, besides an ineffective use of your time. Let’s be honest, no one’s using the yellow pages anymore. Here are first five services where you should be listing your business.

Google Business Profile

Previously Google My Business, a Google Business Profile is listing for your business that appears in Google Search and Maps. Creating a Google profile for your business should be your first step to listing your business online. Google still holds more than 79% of all desktop searches, and on mobile it accounts for 60% of all searches, making a Google Business Profile is an easy way to immediately improve discoverability. 

Apple Places

While Google Maps is the primary service for desktop and Android searches, many iOS users prefer the default Apple Maps app for searching their area. As a result, it’s a good idea to also register a Business Place on Apple, which will list your business on Apple Maps and populate it in Safari and Siri search recommendations.

Bing Places

Google may be king, but don’t count out Bing. Microsoft’s search engine still has over 1.114 billion users, part of which stems from the fact that it is built into every Windows install. 55% of those users search for products and businesses. For full search coverage, it’s best to add your business as a Bing Place.

Facebook Pages

Facebook Pages for businesses are aimed at increasing their discoverability among an audience. Users can become fans of your business. This means they will see any updates, posts, or new photos you upload in their feed. Any post they like or engage with will also populate into their friends’ feeds, and Facebook can also populate your page into their feed as a recommendation.

LinkedIn Pages

LinkedIn pages, like Facebook pages allow you create posts and have followers. A LinkedIn page also creates and builds a network for your business among your employees and their connections. It also allows you to connect to other business’ pages. While general consumers are less likely to find a business through LinkedIn, it is especially advantageous if your business regularly partners with or provides services for other businesses or professionals. 

Some other recommendations

Tripadvisor

Many users refer to Tripadvisor for customer reviews, especially in the hospitality industry. If your business is in this industry, it’s a good idea to create or take control of your business’ listing. 

Instagram and TikTok

You are probably all too aware that social media is extremely important for your business and customer outreach. However, a business page on Instagram and TikTok is only becoming increasingly important for discoverability. A Google senior vice president recently referenced an internal study that found 40% of young people search for local businesses, especially restaurants, through TikTok and Instagram rather than through Google.

Getting Your Listings Together

Creating these listings can take some work. Reach out to Rosewood Marketing, and we can also help you discover more specialized online directories suitable to list your business. We can also help you develop your brand to create cohesive and consistent listings. Our photography and videography team can help you create striking visual content. Lastly, our Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing teams are masters of creating content and engagement to help you create productive listings. 

Man staring at computer screen
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