Whether you’re a new business entering the digital world, or an established business looking to grow your brand online, you might not be sure how to get started with designing a new website for your brand.
In this guide, we will help you get started with a professional business website.
What is a brochure website?
Generally, websites serve as a 24-hour helpdesk that provides general information about your company and your services. So Essentially, a brochure site acts as an online version of a business card. Providing an online presence for your brand, a brochure website is great for customers to:
- Find your contact information
- Find your location and opening hours
- Find out more about your company and team
- Find out more about the services you provide
If a brochure website sounds like the right solution for your business, you can begin to think about the next steps.
What content will I need?
Content is there to guide users through your products and services. Web content typically includes text, images and video. Depending on the services you offer, product pages, blogs and information pages about your business work to promote your services and why your business is different.
You can source free, high quality stock photos on Pexels or Pixabay if you don’t currently have any high-quality images of that reflect your business or projects. If you do not have the resources or the time to provide written content about your business or services, most agencies have a copywriting team who can help you with quality content.
What is the best CMS platform for a brochure site?
A CMS (Content Management System) enables you to make changes to your website content such as adding blog posts, changing location or phone numbers and editing text or images. There are lots of different CMS platforms available, but depending on the type of website you require (e.g. Ecommerce, blogging or community space) you may require a specific one.
Many Content Management Systems do allow plugins or integrations with other software, so if you do have something specific in mind for your business, you can always double check this with your web developer for their recommendations. For brochure sites built by Ascensor, we recommend WordPress.
Choosing your website design
Depending on your agency or web developer, the CMS platform and the type of business you have, the design process may vary. If you have a specific design in mind based on your competitors or a website you quite like the look of, talk to your agency or developer. Alternatively, see if there’s a theme available for your CMS that would work for your sector and business requirements.
Marketing for a new website
Unfortunately, new website can sometimes take a while to gain momentum when it comes to sales and enquiries. If it’s a brand-new business, it may take a while to catch up to competitors who have had their site for a while. However, there are marketing techniques that can speed up this process when you can’t afford to sit and wait for your business to come to you.
Paid search such as Google AdWords, or social media advertising on platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram can help you drive relevant traffic to your site which will help conversions. With Facebook and LinkedIn, you can specifically choose who you market to based on demographics, age range, occupation and even interests. Ads can also be set to run at specific times when your users are more likely to buy.
Basic SEO Optimisation
You can implement some basic SEO optimisation on your website to help catch up to your competitors and gain more visibility. Search Engine Optimisation is the process of increasing your website’s visibility in the search engine’s organic results through optimising your web pages and content.
Onsite SEO is easy to change through your CMS, a few things you could focus on for onsite SEO are your title and heading tags (H1, H2, H3’s…), your meta descriptions and title tags, and think about extending your content and making it more relevant and readable with links to other areas of your website. You should also keep your blog up to date with fresh content and news.
Air Websites
Here at Ascensor, a Leeds based digital agency, we have been working with businesses of all sizes for 12 years. Our Air Website concept was born in 2013 once we realised there was a gap in the market for small businesses that didn’t have a big budget for bespoke website design.
Built on WordPress, Ascensor’s Air Website solutions are a selection of individual front-end designs that are professionally branded to your business. You simply choose your design and we populate the wireframe with your content. You get a unique website that works for your business at a fraction of the price of a bespoke website.
Air Websites are all built mobile first, so the initial build focuses on mobile and then adds additional elements as the screen size increases, ensuring our website designs are responsive across all devices. They are also built SEO friendly, with designated account managers who can help you grow your brand online.
To find out more about Air Websites, get in touch today.