6 things every website should be do and have
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Keren runs a digital marketing and design agency called Top Left Design, emphasizing the importance of creating responsive, modern websites built on WordPress. She outlines six essential features for effective websites, including having a blog, embracing content marketing, and representing social media effectively. Keren encourages continuous learning and adapting design trends to enhance online presence and engage audiences.
6 things every website should be do and have
- 2. I’m Keren. I run a digital marketing and design agency called Top Left Design. I love marketing and continuously watching and researching trends and experience first hand what works and doesn’t. Note: Between each of the “6 things each website should be, do and have” are examples of these in action with some of our clients at Top Left Design.
- 4. There is a reason this is the most popular CMS around. We pretty much use it for all the websites we create here at TLD! It’s incredibly flexible and easy to use. This allows you to have a completely bespoke design, or a high quality premium theme. You can easily edit all the different pages in your website. We find our clients can learn to be self sufficient with the majority of their updates with just one short training session. YOUR SITE SHOULD BE BUILT IN WORDPRESS
- 9. This means that instead of just showing up as a mini version of itself on mobile phones and tablets, it looks different. The site would be built to actually reformat to be easily seen and read on those devices. In some cases, this means the navigation “stacks” – so links are on top of each other. We design each of the site pages carefully to work well on each device. Check out these 2 examples: YOUR SITE SHOULD BE “RESPONSIVE”
- 19. Older design trends like drop shadows, bevels and gradients now look extremely dated. Excellent use of typography, flat design, simple use of colour, longer pages with visuals all along the way, more prominent use of video, and better use of white space lift and modernise your website. This does depend on the skills and talent of your designer but stakes are higher and settling for mediocre design isn’t going to do you or your business any favours! YOUR WEBSITE SHOULD LOOK FRESH AND BE IN KEEPING WITH “THE TIMES”
- 26. Having a blog integrated into your site provides you with a way for you to raise awareness of your brand, show your expertise, and educate your audience – as well as attract relevant traffic and (very important) exercise your marketing muscles. Of course this requires you to have develop excellent content planning, headline writing and formatting skills – but these skills will serve you well! YOUR WEBSITE SHOULD HAVE A BLOG
- 30. For some, this means changing your website and your marketing plan so you have the right tools (a blog, social media channels, a content plan). It also means going back to marketing basics – defining your audience and the key messages you want to communicate with them, as well as what you want people to believe about your business and feel about your brand, and then planning a mixture of educational content, stories and sharable content to distribute regularly across the channels your audience is on. YOUR WEBSITE (AND YOU) SHOULD EMBRACE CONTENT MARKETING
- 31. Your content needs to show personality, be consistent and varied at the same time. It’s not a piece of cake, but with a bit of practice and observing how others do it, it can become easier and it’s extremely effective! YOUR WEBSITE (AND YOU) SHOULD EMBRACE CONTENT MARKETING
- 47. I don’t mean just sticking a Twitter icon on your homepage. Any social channel that you link to from your homepage should be making the right first impression. So, check out your own profiles. See your latest updates, and think - what impression does this make? Is the channel designed and setup properly? Are the updates high quality, interesting, and sharable? Are they frequent enough, but not too frequent? YOUR SITE SHOULD REPRESENT SOCIAL MEDIA
- 48. Social media is an extension of your brand and lets you share your content as well as curate content in your field and develop relationships. Embrace the opportunities to be known as a creator, curator, connector and communicator. SOCIAL MEDIA IS AN ART AND A SCIENCE THAT CAN BECOME SECOND NATURE
- 49. If you do have a lot of great stuff going on your social channels, then you can do more than just link to the channels from icons. You can include Twitter and Instagram and Pinterest feeds and Facebook commenting features and “like boxes” as well as social sharing buttons on your blog. AND WHEN YOU ARE SOCIAL MEDIA “DESERVING” YOU GET TO INTEGRATE FULLY WITH YOUR SITE
- 53. Was that useful? Want to talk? My details: Text me: 07788590315 Email me: keren@topleftdesign.com Tweet me: @topleftdesign
Editor's Notes
- #29: Taking a famous brand as a case study helps people understand how you could help in a context they are familiar with. See more examples of Karen’s blogging here: http://karenhaller.co.uk/blog/