Website Design & Development: Critical Factors to Consider

Your website plays a critical role in promoting your business online. This is why it is important to consider these factors when designing an effective website for your business. Web designers and developers work together to ensure your website ranks high on SERP, engaging customers, and boost conversions. You may hire a web development company in Ontario to build websites for your business.

8 Critical Factors to Consider for Website Design and Development

Selecting Website Domain and Hosting

An ideal website domain name should be easy to type, say, and remember. Selecting the right brand name is critical. Combining simple spelling, brand identity, and SEO best practices in domain names can improve your website’s chance of being easily located in SERPs. The easier it is for users to access your website online, the higher the chance of getting more customers.

You should consider the nature of your business and website when comparing hosting packages. For instance, consider whether your website will include plenty of pictures, videos, etc. You should consider if you will have in-house technical support or need responsive support from your hosting provider. As well as considering the backup, security, and other features your hosting company offers. Finally, checking reviews of hosting companies before selecting the right one for your website.

Website Speed

Website speed plays a crucial role in its effectiveness. The loading speed of your website affects user experience and SERP rankings. Ideally, your website should have a loading speed of 2-3 seconds. If it takes more seconds to load, chances are high that your audiences will leave your website before visiting it.

Similarly, search engines prefer ranking websites with a higher loading speed. You can use Google’s Page Speed Insights to check your website’s performance. Google set a new metric – Core Web Vitals to measure page experience. It includes –

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – It measures the time it takes for the largest piece of content to appear on your screen.
• First Input Delay or FID – It measures the time it takes for the site to respond to the first interaction.
• Cumulative Layout Shift or CLS–It helps measure the visual stability of your website.

Compressing file size, optimizing codes, leveraging caching, etc., can help improve website speed.

Responsiveness

Majority of users will be using their mobile and other devices for online searches. Therefore, businesses need to ensure that their websites are accessible from various types of devices. You need to optimize websites for specific breakpoints to ensure that they are programmed to resize based on the devices from which they are being accessed. You should also consider factors such as navigation, image configuration, etc., when making your website Responsive.

Multiple Browser Compatibility

When building a website, ensure users can access it from multiple browsers. Your website must load fast on all browsers, including the older versions. Overlooking this aspect can prevent you from reaching a large section of customers, which can further affect your business.

Security

When designing and developing a website, you need to get an SSL/TSL certification (Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security) to secure your website. This certification is crucial to keep your website safe.

SSL certification helps keep the internet connection secure and protects any sensitive data transferred between two systems, such as when making a payment, filling out forms, etc. It helps earn the trust of your visitors. In addition, an SSL certificate also helps add credibility to a website. Without certification, the browser will signal that the website is ‘not secure,’ causing the website to not appear in some instances.

Sitemap

The sitemap is a hierarchy of the list of all the pages on a website. It helps search engines such as Google to crawl your site more effectively. You should always include a sitemap for better crawling and indexing when building your website.

Call to Action

Adding call-to-actions on your website improves audience engagement. As a result, web designers need to identify areas where adding these CTAs can have optimal effects. You need to select appropriate CTAs based on your visitor’s level of engagement. For instance, if they are new to your website, you may encourage them to subscribe to email newsletters. You must include at least one call-to-action on each page of your website.

Customer Testimonials

Customer Testimonials are another critical aspect that you must include on your website. It highlights how your brand offerings have benefitted your customers. You can reach out to your existing customers and ask for reviews. The more detailed and authentic reviews your brand gets, the better impression you can create in the minds of future customers.

Hireh Consulting is a Web Development Company in Ontario. Regardless of the type of website you want to build for your brand, you can contact our web designers and developers. Based on the nature of your business, we can help build the most effective website for your company.