A corporate website is a full-fledged online resource, without which it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the work of a powerful business that operates in one city, works throughout the country, or is released, and even more so is already represented in the international arena. If there is no such resource yet, it is high time to take a closer look at its advantages and order the development and creation from professionals. Of course, you can do this on your own, but the question is acute – a loan if there are reliable specialists?
There are no trifles in the development of a corporate website – each aspect is important and requires a well-thought-out approach and implementation. The success of the future resource depends on how well these aspects are taken into account.
Break development into stages
First of all, it is worth looking at examples of pages of corporate websites of competitors and other companies, the so-called “references”, to understand what exactly attracts people to them and what they would like to get on their resource.
When creating a corporate website, it is important to follow the stages and sequence. When making requests for studios and agencies, identify important, primary things, as well as those that can be done later, improved over time. It is desirable that a structure be created, or at least graphically drawn on a sheet, which in your opinion is suitable and ideal for the portal. There are certain online services that help in programs to develop a structure with your own efforts and then show it to developers to optimize the costs of time and resources.
Based on the set priorities, stages of task execution are formed in the development of a corporate website, which will work, attracting an audience and selling goods or services.
Stage 1. Main page
An important point in implementing the plan is creating a website for the company, starting with the main page. This is what the user sees when they first click on a link via a mailing list or in a messenger, or find the site in a search for key queries. In fact, the main page takes on the role of a landing page, but further transitions are not to other resources, but within the same site.
Let’s name the basic elements of the main page:
- Contacts, where phone numbers, email addresses, offline office or representative office address are collected.
- Information about the company’s activities, indicating the direction of work, partnership cooperation, information about the founders, top management, what exactly it can offer to the client.
- A conversion form that allows you to directly connect to the communication channel – order a free call back, subscribe to a newsletter or immediately write an email.
It’s good when there is a specific list of services or goods that can be purchased. Plus, published advantages work well – what benefits customers will receive by placing an order or buying a product. All unnecessary elements are traditionally hidden so as not to clutter the page too much and not to distract the attention of a potential client.
Stage 2. Landing pages (contacts, products and/or services)
To perform the function of a corporate website, it is imperative to create clear, accessible, interesting and attention-grabbing landing pages. These include the following:
- Thematic headings.
- Products/services.
- Payment methods.
- Delivery options within and outside the country
The rule of clear and collected subcategories with internal pages should be followed constantly. When they are designed, links to them are added to the menu to simplify the transition and quickly find the desired offers.
Stage 3. Blog, cases, reviews, clients
When creating a corporate website, these elements play an extremely important role, as they can solve the following problems:
- Allows the client to understand what your company is like on the market and what people know/say about it.
- Show that you are not only performing a commercial function: having an informational blog with useful information allows you to form the opinion that you are providing free informational and expert value – you give advice, recommendations, help solve a number of issues, for example, in choosing household appliances or caring for upholstered furniture.
Here are some recommendations for blogging on a corporate website. Among them, pay attention to the following tips:
- Copying of materials, either partially or in whole, is prohibited, in particular from competitors’ websites, as this will bring more negativity than benefit.
- If you do not plan to update your blog regularly, then you should not introduce such a section at all. Materials dated last year will cause more questions than answers from clients, and, especially, a desire to place an order.
- The materials published here must be informational – the user will have enough commercial content in other sections.
Plus, a list of clients who already cooperate with your company works well. If these are big names, it is a special advantage, but even if they are not very big, a potential client who is still torn between ordering a photo shoot or a new bathhouse project from you will choose you due to the published list of people who have contacted you.
Let’s dwell on cases separately. In fact, these are projects that were successfully implemented, and they directly affect the retention of user attention on the site, as well as its promotion.
If at the time of creating the site there is no component, it is better to create the page, but open it to the user when there is content to fill. You should not leave the page with just a logo if there is no content in it.
Stage 4. Information pages
On a corporate website, information pages show your expertise – in what you are strongest at. Plus, such pages allow you to get to know your partners and clients more closely and show your business in the most favorable light. Correct, understandable, honest content significantly increases the level of trust and increases the likelihood of ordering a product or service from you.
Another nuance: if there are no ideas yet or too little information, do not create such a page yet and, therefore, do not go through this stage in the development of a corporate website.
Stage 5. LC (Personal Account)
In a well-thought-out and functioning website for corporate information, the presence of a personal account plays an extremely important role. Look at this situation from the customer’s perspective: it is inconvenient to simply click on the product range, but when there is an account where you can send orders, view the purchase history, find out the exact amount for payment, choose a courier service – this is convenient, practical and says that the business cares about the client, both new and those who make purchases or order services more than once, on a regular basis. It is important for marketers to get involved here.
This is a rather complex and non-standard part of the site, so it is extremely difficult to find typical templates – and there is no need. You need to engage in development when the rest of the pages of the corporate site are already ready and fully filled, and posted.
The advantage of stage-by-stage development is that you can not only get information about the timing of a certain task, but also calculate the budget and when specific financial investments will be required. At the initial stage of the application, you can understand when the site will be completed, and for developers, a clear and transparent structure allows you to receive applications from a larger number of clients.
Choose a convenient CMS
The choice of the management system directly depends on how powerful the site is, and what target tasks and functionality are put forward to it. In the development of a corporate site, the moment of choosing a management system plays an important role, it is discussed at one of the initial stages of cooperation with professionals.
When selecting an engine, which is also a control system, you need to consider the following aspects:
- Further updates and additions of materials will be made independently or with the help of specialists.
- Pricing policy.
Thanks to a correctly selected control system, it is possible to solve a number of problems:
- Edit content.
- Add available products or services, new items included in the active list.
- Update information about promotions, discounts, and business news.
- Manage the work with accounts that are available on the site: delete or add new ones, change access rights, expand capabilities, etc.
- Control navigation and menus on the site.
- Expand the list with new sections and subsections.
Among the most popular platforms – website management systems, it is worth mentioning the following:
- 1C-Bitrix ;
- NetCat ;
- WordPress ;;
- and others.
If there are priorities in the choice, specify in the order. You can also additionally consult with specialists from agencies or companies who understand website design, which engine and how exactly will suit you.
Simplify the structure
The simpler, the better – this principle is relevant and does not lose its popularity in various fields. For further search engine promotion and its successful result, it is worth constantly adding sections and subsections, but at the same time the information on them should be understandable, simple and easy to digest.
Ask your friends to visit the newly created site, objectively evaluate what works well on it, and what, in their independent opinion, should be improved. Ask them to do a very independent and honest monitoring and clearly write what they don’t like, for example, the declared page doesn’t open, or there isn’t enough blog content with useful and practical (without commercial bias) information.
An important aspect is the simplicity of search and usability for each client. That is why it is necessary to follow these rules:
- Ensure that pages are structured.
- Minimize the nesting level of pages for each section; 3-4 positions are enough for the section: household appliances – vacuum cleaners – brand – specific model.
- Display links for quick navigation to the menu.
You should not rely solely on search queries and keywords for them. The niche on the site should be transparent and understandable: the client, visiting the site for the first time, should find what he needs without spending much time. Neither clients nor, especially, managers should get lost in the structure of the site when working with clients.
Beautiful design
Agree, the picture and its beautiful design play an important role. Below we have collected for you the most popular errors that prevent the site from working and attracting users. Among them are:
- Too much animation. If there are too many inserts that are constantly changing, it scares the user.
- Template-like design, if the design is uniform and your direct competitors have something similar, then the site will become unrecognizable and rather faceless.
- Fonts and color shades are in great abundance, which makes the site colorful and not interesting to anyone.
- Different designs of identical elements literally confuse and disorients.
- Blocks that are focused on text-fish, and especially if the content is monotonous and uninteresting.
After looking at and choosing from examples of corporate website pages, identify the nuances that you like and what definitely should not be in your project.
If you have a website that has been launched, then you should not change the fundamental shades and colors in the brand. It is good when there is a brand book, but this is not always the case. If you decide to change the shades or basic colors in the design, do it gradually, and not all at once. The fact is that you risk losing your usual audience due to the unrecognizability of the brand and its products. The user remembers the color palette, fonts, the design of the inscriptions and even their location.
Overly complex elements make a site not so much unattractive as unrecognizable and such that you don’t want to return to it. It is also important to understand that simplicity of presentation speeds up perception on the pages.
Team of developers
For the accurate and effective creation of a working corporate website, it is important not only the structure and stages of implementation, but also a correctly selected team of specialists who will implement all wishes and will do it promptly, exactly according to the technical specifications and will suggest what is better to replace or do differently to improve the efficiency of the work.
It’s great when an agency or studio can immediately offer the services of such specialists:
- Designer.
- Layout designer.
- Programmer.
- Tester.
- Copywriter.
- Video and photo maker etc.
It is possible to make a website yourself, but before that, you will spend a lot of time studying the nuances and reworking bugs. It is much more profitable and easier to contact specialists who know the technical subtleties of the process and promptly implement the tasks set within the plan. Plus, it is worth contacting studios or companies that undertake the simultaneous solution of all tasks, make an accurate schedule and understand how the ideal site should look in your opinion. By contacting them, you save time, nerves, and most importantly – money.
Website update
A website is alive when the information presented on it is regularly updated. Their absence is very bad. At the same time, you need to understand that there is no limit to perfection; for example, if you do not have photos posted, then it’s time to add visual content to the description. For regular customers, this is an opportunity to understand and see that the company is growing, getting new customers, developing, introducing new services, and receiving positive feedback from users. Published successful cases are another incentive to order services or buy a product from you.
Update these pages regularly:
- Products and services.
- Delivery and payment methods if you have reached a consensus on this issue with service representatives.
- Add materials to the blog for informational support.
The client is very demanding and does not forgive the lack of new and necessary information.
Access and technical support
It is necessary to constantly update access passwords in order to minimize the risk of their theft. New logins and passwords should be constantly duplicated on separate media. If the site is managed by specialists, delegate them a number of rights and responsibilities in this process with the possibility of access. As an additional protection, special services are installed that protect passwords and block unauthorized entries.
Implementation of CRM systems
Unlike regular e-mail, the management and control system has more advantages and benefits for the site owner. For the administrator or manager, messages that come to the system are processed much faster than by mail. And it is difficult to track e-mail requests received 3-5 days ago without losing sight of them.
Thanks to the CRM system, you can solve the following problems:
- Track the current status of each application.
- Add reminders for completing a specific request.
- Track the application from the initial status to the receipt of goods at the branch or the provision of services, including subsequent reviews.
- Communicate with the client in any convenient form: telephone conversations, correspondence by e-mail, in messengers or social networks.
A correctly selected CRM system allows you to automate such routine processes as much as possible.
Keep backups
In professional slang in corporate website promotion, backup means a backup copy of your resource. You can lose all your data in an instant, for example, due to a software failure or human factor. A page created according to all the rules can be lost in one second, which is why, in order to protect yourself from unpleasant situations, the site administrator’s duties should include data storage, including automatically – directly on a secure hosting.
SDL – make a website for people
For a high-quality corporate website, customer focus is of the utmost importance – you create a resource not for yourself, but for the customer, including all of his requirements and wishes. A mandatory aspect is feedback, which should be available directly from the website.
Monitor reviews, study what is written about you not only on the site, but also on review platforms. The content should be relevant, thematic, meet the requirements – then it will be a full-fledged working resource, and not just another site with more or less normal conveniences. Remember that the client wants to find a product or service quickly and with minimal difficulties.
Conclusion
Having considered what aspects a corporate website must have, having listed them, we would like to remind you that a corporate website needs a structure, a clear development plan and regular updating of content: text, photos, animation and video.
Among the examples you will find something that will please you and you will want to repeat on your resource in the following aspects:
- Design.
- Content.
- Control system.
- Proper planning and internal linking.
- General usability.
- Adaptability.
By ordering a corporate website from top-tier web design agency, you receive favorable advantages, including: price, quality, efficiency, making edits if necessary, and further comprehensive maintenance: filling with content, photos and texts, updates, technical work aimed at improving the work and perception of users.
When creating a corporate platform, you need to consider the target audience, the position of competitors, your place in the market and how exactly you want to attract the audience. It is worth understanding that you cannot stop at what has been achieved and you will need to regularly update and create a better version of the site for the internal or external market. This is an investment in your business!
