Introducing how to get a professional website for your business. Image from Forge Sphere website

Getting a professional website: advice on e-commerce, Squarespace & WordPress

Introduction

Getting a professional website can sadly be quite difficult for some people - you often hear about bad website design experiences on social media. We became aware of an example recently on Facebook.

eCommerce versus business website

Firstly, it will be helpful to look at terminology quickly. In the post above, we see a reference to ‘e-commerce’, so what is the difference between a general business website and an e-commerce one?

This is a bit of a grey area, as many sites these days allow you to sell items online, whether digital downloads or physical products which you then package and post or have fulfilled.

The main difference with an e-commerce site is that it is specifically designed and setup to sell products and services, particularly physical ones, and to the general public or other businesses.

As such, when you arrive, you generally get into the shopping side of things straight away.

It is all geared around menus, product categories, filters and generally ensuring that you are able to find the item you want as quickly and easily as possible.

By contrast, a more general business website will tend to lead the customer on a bit more of a journey, taking the time to introduce the business, its aims, values and how it can provide solutions to your problems.

A business website wants to foster a relationship with you that leads to a sale, whereas an e-commerce site wants to serve up the right product as quickly as possible to generate a sale.

For the purposes of this blog, we’re going to focus on a general business website, but remember there can be crossover with an e-commerce website.

A design for a banner on a news page for Forge Sphere website

What is a professional website?

The question at hand, whether you’ve had a bad experience with a website designer or not, is what makes for a professional website?

These are our top factors that go into a good website:

Coherent, attractive branding

A good website needs to start with the business first, which means a deep, informed and coherent understanding of its vision, mission and values
This understanding should be reflected in the overall brand - an overarching strategy and identity that conveys the essence of the business in a compelling way to the key audience
It should also give practical guidance on how to implement the branding, which is where the website comes in
Without a robust brand, the website is unlikely to have a strong visual impact; the content will lack a clear tone of voice; and overall it will convey a sense of confusion or ambiguity
This uncertainty is a major factor in turning off an audience

Information & answers served up

The internet is about questions and answers, which is why search engines are so important in helping to sift, categorise and then serve up relevant information
A good website will be orientated towards those key questions and seek to provide the best answers it can to potential visitors
As such, blogs, articles and FAQs will be readily available and placed strategically to allow visitors to access the information they are looking for
Thought will have been put into key topics or burning questions that can be addressed

Well laid out with good flow

Bearing in mind that visitors want answers to their questions and there is a lot of information on the World Wide Web, the process is important
A good website will lead the visitor on a journey to a topic or service, allowing the visitor a chance to digest what’s on offer and avoiding becoming overloaded
It will recognise that there is not one size fits all and that visitors access a site from many different locations, which cannot be controlled, so allow for navigation backwards and forwards
A good site will also avoid a take it or leave it situation, with everything in an ugly (digital) heap, understanding the principles of the purchasing journey

Explains how to engage with you or take a key action

This builds on the previous points of information and flow above, recognising that if the job is done well, a visitor will get to a point where they are ready or want to do something about it
A good website will anticipate this part of the purchasing journey and provide a key action - often referred to as a call to action - making it easy for the visitor to engage
This requires some thinking and planning, which hopefully will have been addressed in the branding and strategy phases, ensuring that the most appropriate action is offered up
The site will then ensure that these are well positioned and strategic points throughout, such as the top right hand corner or at the bottom of each page, to facilitate decision-making

Minimum friction when interacting with it

First up the site should load relatively quickly when you arrive - more than a couple of seconds and you will definitely notice, plus that delay can send people looking elsewhere
This is best practice for modern websites, and Google essentially makes it a requirement if you want to maximise your appearance in search results
Once it’s loaded it should also look good on a mobile or tablet screen; this is because increasing numbers of people search and use the internet on a mobile phone, so that’s the future
It should also be free from annoying pop-ups or clunky buttons that make it hard to find information and get answers
Well-designed and placed marketing tools are fine, but as soon as they cause irritation for users, it is likely they will detract from the site’s performance and overall impression

Easy to find via search

This is an important and obvious one, but the practical application can elude a lot of people
Given the sheer amount of information on the internet and how crowded marketplaces are, people need to be able to find your site easily through a Google search
This could be by typing your name, if they already know you, or finding you via an organic search, for example, by looking for a service and location that matches closely with you
The principle here is the higher up you are in Google search rankings, the more likely you will get visitors, as you are more visible
That’s the theory, and it sounds simple, but influencing that requires a lot more work and strategy, which is known as Search Engine Optimisation
Ultimately, search engine algorithms are a close-guarded secret, and for good reason, to promote fair competition and encourage creation of helpful content with quality answers
The most straightforward method is to generate content on your site that demonstrates your expertise, authority and trustworthiness (EAT)
There are a number of other technical factors, but in the end, if your site doesn’t contain useful and helpful content that answers your visitors’ questions, it will struggle to get traction

So those are some of the key elements that go into a professional website, and which you would generally notice externally, but how to get them is important, and we will look behind the scenes now.

Mockups showing the Forge Sphere website branding in mobile view

Hidden elements of good web design

Unless you have the expertise or a lot of time on your hands, you are likely to need help designing and implementing a website.

This is where a website designer comes in, and here are the key ways a web designer can influence the process:

Trusted, reliable designer

A website can be one of the big investment points in your business, so you want to be able to entrust that process to someone reliable
You can always find someone cheaper kicking around on the internet, and there are plenty that will do a website for peanuts, or potentially next to nothing
It’s your choice ultimately, but you will get what you pay for
For example, if someone offers to design your website for a knock down price, they will have to make that up elsewhere
If they are having to take on other commitments then will they be able to give your project their full attention? If they can do something for £x, then what are they not doing for that price?
They might have a slick, highly automated process, which sounds great, but what if you want to talk through options and get tailored input? Will their sausage factory allow for that?

Someone who understands your business & wants to see you succeed

A website project covers a lot of ground from design to sales, so it touches on the fundamentals of your business
What you don’t want, therefore, is someone who just flies in and then out again, as the website will grow with you, so needs future attention
A good designer will not only walk with you during the project, but also track with you afterwards, being on hand to offer further assistance should you need it
There’s nothing worse than standing there at the end of a project with a website wondering, ‘what do I do now?’ or ‘I have no clue how this works’ and no one to rely on
The value of a web designer who is invested in you is that he or she knows that you are in their niche, so want to work with other people like you; by doing a good job, they are attracting future clients, so it’s of mutual benefit

Problem solving

A good web designer will also listen to your needs and seek to find helpful and innovative ways to achieve them
Rather than imposing a pre-conceived idea or solution, they will take the time to explore what you want to do and consider the best way to achieve that
Sometimes it may not be possible in the way that you imagined or might need tweaking, but the designer will be open about that, drawing you into a discussion
You want to have ownership of the project and result, so a good web designer will always seek to empower you and ensure you have ownership within the process
More often than not, there is more than one option, so a designer will take the time to talk through benefits and drawbacks of choices you could make

Ongoing support and encouragement

Hopefully your website designer is in the business for more than the money, although obviously everyone needs to pay their bills
Finding a values-based designer has lots of benefits beyond just the web design, as they will be more inclined to build a relationship with you
This could provide lots of other related benefits, such as introductions to other suppliers that could elevate your business, such as a professional photographer or signwriter for your shop
Most business owners realise the advantages of building a professional network and a web design is often well networked because of the different disciplines a project touches on
If you want to build strong, authentic relationships that have the potential to benefit your business in the long-run, collaborating with a like-minded web designer can be a portal to that end

So that’s a rundown on what makes for a good website and some of the things that aren’t obvious to the eye. Now we’re going to move on to some recommended steps for getting a professional website.

A location design for the Forge Sphere website

How best to get a professional website

As we’ve said, there’s quite a few moving parts with a website and it relates to the core of your brand or business, so you need to approach a design or redesign in the right way.

Here are some things to bear in mind when it comes to making a decision.

Recognise what you don’t know

Your biggest enemy when it comes to investing in a website is what you don’t know
Whether that’s branding, marketing, SEO or otherwise, you need to have some awareness of the key areas
A good web designer will not expect you to be an expert or have everything pre-prepared, but carefully work through your needs and specifications right at the beginning
A sign of a good designer is that they ask lots of questions when you get in touch and take a good amount of time to explore and get to the bottom of what you are after
Be prepared to think more deeply about what you are after, and a designer will help you with that process
Be honest about areas that are alien to you and you should expect the designer to take some time to go over them with you

Be purposeful and have objectives

An easy way to set yourself up for success is to have your core objectives worked out before you approach a web designer
Take some time to reflect on your current weaknesses or pain points and then how you want to see those resolved in future
You don’t need to have this worked out in detail and for the next ten years; it should reflect your current situation and what has led you recently to this decision-making point
By having no more than three or so objectives, it gives you direction and will help shape your conversation with a web designer
Give some time too to thinking about whether there is anything specific that you want from the site like newsletter sign-up; Instagram feed; galleries etc.
A website designer will help you achieve what you want, but you need to have a degree of certainty about where you want to get to
Lack of vision will make it harder for the project to gain momentum and reach a timely and satisfactory conclusion

Have a budget

A big question you will probably have is, ‘how much will it cost?’
This is a legitimate one, but it is also very open-ended, particularly if you haven’t decided what you want to achieve
A website can be tailored to you, whether big or small; do different things; and have different emphases
Overall, the bigger your budget, the more time a website designer can put into it; and the more time, the more features can be developed or design crafted
A small budget doesn’t necessarily limit you; it just means a web designer can say more clearly and quickly what they can do for you; plus will be able to give advice on how you can develop it further in the future
Although it is tempting to ask around and get a ‘best price’, this is not always advantageous
A designer might promise to do the same or more work for a lower price, but realistically, they will have to do it all in less time and with less reward, increasing the pressure to find and deliver other projects
Work out and have a budget in mind and then approach a designer to talk about what you can get, factoring in the most important things now and what gives the. most value

Get or plan for photography

Good copy and photography are the lynchpins of a great website; they are also the area where businesses struggle the most
This can be for a few reasons: the value or impact is not recognised; they can be a luxury item; businesses don’t know where to start
Photography is extremely powerful on a website, as it conveys the feeling of what it is like to work with you and the sense of what you can achieve
It allows your audience to aspire to the future reality of your product or service, so helps to build an compelling case of engaging with you
It also makes you much more approachable and human, which increases the engagement rate with your services and on your site
A bank of high-quality, contextual and personal photographs will immediately make you and your business stand-out
A good web designer will be able to recommend a trustworthy photographer who can capture you in an attractive and sympathetic light
Without photography, you will most likely have to use stock (free or premium) photos from the internet, which can be made to work, but will never achieve the same level or detail

Those are some of the core building blocks to getting a professional website, and ultimately revolve around a good conversation with a trusted website designer, and we will go into a few more specifics now.

Even more mobile mockup designs for Forge Sphere website!

Main differences between Squarespace & Wordpress

Once you’ve got the more high-level aspects clear, it’s worth spending a bit of time understanding more about the strengths and drawbacks of popular website platforms.

Unless you have a very big budget, hard-coding or building a website from scratch, is less common these days; most web designers or developers will use a platform (Content Management System), which they then customise to your requirements.

This makes updates, edits and maintenance much easier on an ongoing basis, especially if a non-technical person or marketing team is managing the website.

N.B. this is not an exhaustive list or necessarily comparing Squarespace and Wordpress, but meant to give you a flavour. Watch out for future content exploring this area more.

Main characteristics and features of Squarespace

Squarespace is what’s known as a website builder, so allows you to put together a website without technical knowledge using a simple, uncluttered, user-friendly experience
It has a closed system, so while you get a drag and drop interface, you don’t have full access to the source code behind it
Squarespace makes it easy to do all the core things you’d want to do on a website to create an online presence and then market yourself
Blogging, podcasting, galleries, events, calendars, online scheduling, digital shop are all included and straightforward to run with
It’s suitable for those who value an intuitive, user-friendly management system, which allows you to focus on marketing and your core business
It also emphasises visuals and aesthetics, so popular with photographers, jewellers, makers and similar sorts of creative businesses
Because of it’s straight-forward, non-technical nature, it’s good for small businesses or start-ups who want to get up and running with an ease-to-use platform
Hosting is via Squarespace, which gives you all updates, back-end maintenance, security under one roof, so it’s a fully-managed package

Drawbacks of Squarespace

Squarespace is designed for simplicity and the end-user in mind, which means there’s a limit to how you can customise it (although it takes a far bit to get to that point!)
If you want fine, granular control and the ability to tweak or highly-customise it, this is not its forte
Squarespace doesn’t include a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, so you would need to have that separate and at the current time there is no easy way to integrate one with it
The visual appeal of Squarespace can mean that people neglect their written content or bloat the site with large images, which can slow it down (although businesses make that mistake on all platforms)
While Squarespace can perform perfectly well in search engine results, its closed system means that if you want to do specialist SEO functions, it is not so well suited
Lack of access to and control of the source code, means Squarespace carries extra code to facilitate the drag and drop user interface, so it is not the fastest platform on the market
You don’t get the ability to roll back revisions or revert to a previous backup with Squarespace, so it’s better suited to small businesses with small teams

Main characteristics and features of Wordpress

Wordpress began life as a blogging platform and has since developed into a Content Management System, with a high degree of flexibility for customisation
Wordpress is open source, which has allowed developers to create a huge bank of plugins and templates
The core Wordpress platform makes it relatively easy to manage your site with blogs, general pages and content, and there are various visual builders that can enhance that experience
Depending on the template that you use, which gives you the visual styling publicly, you can include a whole variety of functionality, depending on your business
The list is endless, but includes everything from portfolios to featured pricing blocks, and you can integrate a CRM with it for marketing and sales purposes
Wordpress is suitable for those with a bit more technical experience or confidence to work with it and spend time getting to know its capabilities
Depending on your setup, you will also need to be more involved with the hosting, keeping plugins and the template up to date and regular backups
Alternatively, you can outsource that to a website developer or if you have specific expertise in-house
Because of it’s higher level of customisation, Wordpress is good for businesses that want specific functionality from their website or want to fine-tune SEO campaigns
With Wordpress you have the freedom to choose any hosting package, which allows you to compare the market for the best deal, plus get a fast setup, if that’s a key desire

Drawbacks of Wordpress

Wordpress involves more technical and moving parts, particularly running backups and keeping plugins updated, which means you need expertise or the willingness to get outside help
Third-party plugins can be a source of weakness to hackers, plus if you fail to setup regular backups and store them securely, you could lose all your data
If you want to make routine changes or updates and are not comfortable with its more technical setup, you may not have the confidence to go in and do bread and butter tasks, leaving you reliant on a developer or needing further training
Wordpress does not come with a free, dedicated customer service helpdesk, so if everything goes blank and you are locked out, it can feel very isolating unless you have recourse to help
Once you get used to Wordpress, the temptation can be to add lots of plugins, but this can slow your site down and open you up for attack
You need to ensure that third-party developers are regularly updating plugins as well as processing legitimately any of your data that you share
The enormous availability of plugins and templates makes it easy to entrust your site to an untested template or plugin; underneath the hood/bonnet, it could be like Pandora’s Box in terms of the code and reliability
Overall, Wordpress tends to be suited to larger businesses, or those who have. more specific needs, than smaller businesses with less technical capability

For further reading on this topic of Squarespace and WordPress, we recommend starting with Kerstin Martin’s blog - a further rundown of different aspects with both helpful and insightful recommendations, although aimed at small and owner-led businesses.

Another custom designed location icon for Forge Sphere

Should you pay a web designer?

As with anything, given unlimited time and resources, the average person could probably sort out their own website within limits
Would it be any good? Probably not in the short term, and it would be a very steep learning curve, full of mistakes and very involved on a daily basis
At the end of all of that, frankly you could probably set yourself up as a web designer and developer
However, is that really what you want to be doing or where you want to end up? What about your business venture, family time or personal sanity in the meantime?
As a general principle, the advantage of paying someone else for a service is that they have the necessary skills, experience and knowledge to do it well, quickly and how you want
You increase your capacity by having someone do a core function so you can focus elsewhere, plus you have a trusted advisor on whom you can rely in the future or in an emergency
You are also shortcutting the need to pick up and learn a new skill that is perhaps not your gifting or that frankly you don’t want to bother with given what you are trying to do
The main limiting factor is then budget - the sliding scale for getting a website is huge, ranging from free or upto £500 for a friend doing it as a favour, right up to well over £75,000
If you imagine that sum were the deposit on a house, even when it comes to property, there are compromises; you can always get more if only you have a little extra
The question then comes back around to what you want to achieve and being clear on your aims, objectives, functionality and budget
With that information to hand, you can then at least have the conversation with a web designer about what is achievable in the short term and what can be developed longer term
You can discuss to what extent the website can be run and managed in house, independently, or whether it makes more sense to get expert, technical support
Ultimately, paying for a service is not a cop out, sign of weakness or limitation - that’s just personal insecurity, reflecting a need to control or do something yourself because of self-imposed expectations
Recognising that you don’t have the time, skills and gifting to do something, and entrusting it to someone who will do it well and support you far into the future is a strength and will help your business grow
There’s no right or wrong answer here - make your decision having assessed your aims and needs
Do it in conversation with a trusted web designer or developer who you trust to help you objectively come to that decision

If you’d like a chat about your business and how to navigate the first steps of preparing for a new or refreshed website, do get in touch.

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What’s the best way to get a professional website? (part 1)

Getting a professional website: advice on e-commerce, Squarespace & WordPress

Introduction

Contents

eCommerce versus business website