The Basic Elements of Your First Website
Webmaster Column - Office News - No 6
Hello,
It must be difficult these days to have a company without a website. In addition to presenting our identity, it allows us to offer our products and services and display our contact information, projects, teams, and policies 365 days a year. It is a 24h open business.
Over the last three decades, we quickly understood the benefits a website can generate, and development brings specialized custom tools, adapted with artificial intelligence and personalized promotions to several audiences.
Does every business need a website in 2024? Well, most of them, yes. To help you prepare the general information of your first site, here is this month’s webmaster column about: The required elements of a first website.
The webmaster column on the daily management of websites, Office News, presents: 2024-06, organizing the first company website.
Some webmaster advice: what is a good website?
A website is the business card of the new era. It must be organized, updated and displaying the contact information and legal aspects on all its versions (computer, tablet and mobile) to encourage a sense of well-being, like walking on a great store. That said, security and legal aspects are also part of the good customer experience.
Order First
There are many more things to look at when managing a website than the quality and beauty of images or videos. A site must be in order, with content grouped by subjects, including precise content at the right place and without spelling mistakes, so visitors are aware of the reason for your business after only a few seconds of visiting.
In addition, our brand presentation elements often need to reach multiple facets of the population and sections dedicated to the media, sponsors and suppliers, will eventually need to be on websites in specific places where all readers are accustomed to finding this information.
It is also necessary to consider, for example, the lightness of the layout, the location of information in the purchasing process, or the speed of page downloads, to improve the customer experience, like the security updates and other technical innovations to program and operate, plus the SEO and optimization techniques for search tools to process. It is often said details make the beauty of a piece of art. The same goes for a website.
Well, Starting at Step One
Of course, information pages are prerequisites. Your site must have an About section, a Contact page, and Terms of Use (including your actions on privacy, site user behaviours, and purchase, delivery, and refund guidelines and check outs). The personalization of this mandatory content will lightly be a more in the graphic and layout than the texts. It is possible to focus on the little details after displaying the information in your page but without exaggeration. That’s the ways we can customize, a little, these about pages, with the thing that make the difference with your competitors. What makes you original and unique.
Yes, it’s tempting to go for the complex layout, but remember that you’re not the primary user of your tool. You have to be careful and build your site for customers, so that your products and services are well explained, presented and above all, understood.
Sometimes it’s better to put design aside and go with a presentation and layout geared towards a better understanding of the visitor. Imagine the number of emails you can save just by positioning a few pieces of information more in plain sight. This will reduce your costs, simplify your tasks and save time.
Required pages on a website
Home Page
An inviting page that summarizes your business, the products and services offered, and the important facts of your actuality (sales, machetes and news, upcoming events, blog posts). In addition to satisfying search tools through SEO techniques, a working home page invites the visitor to the desired purchase process or information pages. Hence the importance of paying particular attention to the download times of your page, the functionality of all internal and external links and the recurring update.
On the contrary, a landing page that doesn’t work won’t have accurate content, a crooked sales path, and a high return rate, indicating the visitor isn’t continuing on and leaving the site. Check the spelling, the new vocabulary used in your field, the timeliness of the visuals, especially for images that use evolving technologies, and use expressions people generally use when talking about your product and service. Always introduce your business with a simple opening line and then use a more specific vocabulary in the following phase.
Remember Home page is like the reception desk of a company; you don’t immediately enter in the laboratory, right? Make a path of discovery and sales for your visitor by using several explanatory pages and tabs, diversifying your content with music, clips, galleries of large images that are not on your home page, but that opens to a next page, so to weigh of your home page stay low.
About Page
The page telling who the company is and presenting the team and the technology used, the values and principles of the company and why not the history or biography!
Since the very beginning of my career, About pages have always had a good percentage of visits in the annual statistics of a business website. This is a page where it is good to put SEO techniques and set the parameters of the page. By the way, you will always see the appropriate link in the company pages of the search tools.
The About page is also a good place to put a bit of originality and links to related pages. For example, for a children’s book site, games at the end of the page with the main characters to be found in a background image opening on a new tab would be useful as much for parents and children as for the statistics of the website (number of clicks, visit time per page, sharing of games on the social channels encouraging the visit of the site, etc.).
The Contact Information Page
The company’s administrative and contact information page is also very popular. It should not be underestimated. I invite you to disclose your postal address, an email and a telephone.
Many use forms to avoid entering their business contact information, such as self-employed and travelling workers who do not have a fixed office and work hours; We don’t all want to receive our customers at home or especially to see them arrive in the middle of a family lunch without warning.
I understand very well the reasons for not displaying the address, an email or opening hours on digital tools, but I tend to tell entrepreneurs to register or at least give visitors an idea of the opening hours if not mentioned, such as:
Hours of work as per the contract, contact for more information.
Changing working hours to be determined due to external mandates
Emails are taken once a day with a delay of 48 business hours in order to serve you well, please.
Finally, a Contact page can also be completed, such as the About page, with informative content with internal links, such as blog articles, a display of your sale and promotions, new tour dates, etc.
Why not use an invitation that, at the same time, already involves the visitor, such as: This non-mandatory and confidential form can allow us to identify your request, or question, and forward it to your next contact person! This is what I call high service and I haven’t even opened the form to write to the company yet.
Policies, Purchase and Refund Condition, and Privacy
Yes, in the last paragraph, there was the word confidential. This brings us to the information, concepts and legal policies that every merchant must display on their website, depending on the type of business they are doing.
Policies, cookie warnings, privacy policy disclosure, purchase, refunds, delivery and return instructions are not optional! Let’s be wary, already from the start, of websites that don’t have these, even internationally. It’s 2024 now, all e-commerce is regulated in any way and merchants have to respond to it. Don’t buy from sites without a policy or regulation, don’t put your personal details in their purchase and payment system, and simply don’t subscribe to their 10% off promotion mailing list. You will do so when they have posted their policies, like all merchants, indicating they are responsible and understand that consumers have recourse.
In short, a consumer must have the same protection online as in store when it comes to their purchases. Purchase or contractual instructions therefore serve to protect the consumer and the merchant, who also has recourse in the event of cancellation or otherwise. I invite you to consult the website of the Office de la protection des consommateurs (OPC) about merchants’ obligations, such as contact information, details and descriptions of products and services to be provided at the time of purchase, information on costs and delivery, or the rules and conditions of exchange and refund. In fact, on May 13 of 2024, the OPC launched the prevention campaign on contracts concluded at a distance in order to inform and empower consumers during this type of transaction. Great!
Privacy Act
With respect to accountability for the confidentiality of merchant data, chapter P-39.1 - ACT RESPECTING THE PROTECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR, item 3.1. of section 1 indicates, with some exceptions, (translated from French) Every person who own a business is responsible for the protection of the personal information under his or her control. Within the company, the person with the highest authority ensures compliance with and implementation of this law. She is the person responsible for the protection of personal information; It may delegate this function in writing, in whole or in part, to any person. The title and contact information of the person responsible for the protection of personal information shall be published on the company’s Internet site or, if it does not have a site, made accessible by any other appropriate means. 2021, c. 25, s. 103. It is therefore essential to clearly display the instructions on this subject.
W+M’s web policy reporting will help you understand and enforce your policies, depending on the type of business, website, and data collection you do.
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Conclusion
I hope reading this paper allowed you to take help you in the process of creating your first website.
Take the time to demonstrate the direction of the company, upcoming development projects and other information that we want to know about you to develop long-term business relationships. There is a difference between representing your company in an original and professional way and the excess of momentary enthusiasm.
See you
Jeff
Sources:
OPC: (section in French): Connaissez-vous les règles sur le contrat conclu à distance?https://www.opc.gouv.qc.ca/actualite/conseils/article/connaissez-vous-les-regles-sur-le-contrat-conclu-a-distance
LégisQuébec, the official source of Ministère du Travail, de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale, Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector: https://www.legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/document/cs/P-39.1
Production: W+M Services
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I edit the content of existing sites via CMS in addition to creating sites with WordPress and Squarespace. I have been producing website content as a webmaster since 1998.
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