Behind the Scenes of a Clever4 website
If you’d like to design a website similar to the high quality sites built by Clever4, here’s what you’d need to do, in five simple steps:
Step 1 - Website objectives and goals
Set some objectives
for your site and know how you’re going to measure its success after it goes live. After all, you need to be sure that your
investment will generate a return and add value to your business. You do this by asking yourself a series of insightful and thought provoking questions
about why you need a website, what you want it to do for you and how you’ll know if it is working. Once you know what you’re going to build, you
can get designing.
Step 2 - Website design
To design your site,
you need to spend time mastering graphic design, the nuances of visual communication and user interface design, and
create a website that’s not only visually stunning, but also conveys your brand and values whilst being easy for your customers to use and understand.
Once you have a design everyone is happy with, you can get building.
Step 3 - Website development
Building your website requires expert knowledge of the most up-to-date
techniques and technologies, such as CSS and XHTML. You’ll need to spend
years at university learning the art of professional programming and the intricacies of database engineering.
You’ll also need to read the hundreds of books and websites dedicated to the craft of building the perfect website. To keep your knowledge up to date in a fast-moving industry, you’ll need to continually invest in your skills.
Now you are ready to create a hand-coded, beautifully structured website that includes seamless functionality and features to turn your design into a website that both looks the part and is an absolute joy for visitors to use.
Remember that people need to be able to use your website regardless of ability or disability. Learn from the experts on how to make your website accessible - and test it. Test it with the very same technology that blind or mobility impaired people use. Only then can you truly say that your website is accessible to everyone and compliant with the law!
Content is king! You must have something to say on your website or you are simply wasting your time and your money. Learn to write content specially for the web. Make it short and concise. Do not fill your pages with marketing jargon that will bore or confuse people and make sure you give your users information they want in a manner they understand.
Step 4 - Search engine optimisation
Of course there is no point building a perfect,
accessible website if nobody can find it. You need to keep up to date with daily changes in the search engine industry to keep your site visible.
Your site has already been finely tuned and optimised to give it every chance of performing well, but you can’t stop there. You must monitor it every
single day and tweak it constantly to keep ahead of your competition.
Step 5 - Website hosting
Your website also needs to be safe and free from
attack by hackers and viruses, so it’s vital that you’re aware of, and apply the latest security procedures and anti-virus software. This includes ensuring
the server hosting your website is regularly backed up - and the back-ups tested to make sure they actually work.
Just as important is having the peace of mind that your website is live and working as it should be, 24 hours a day and that if disaster strikes, you know about it straight away and can fix the problem immediately, within minutes, regardless of where you are or what you’re doing.
The servers hosting your website need to be robust and supported by generators in case of power failure. You can probably pick up a generator for as little as a few thousand pounds.
But if you don’t want to invest thousands of pounds in training and technology or forming your own team of leading website designers and developers - yet still enjoy all the features of a Clever4 website – there is another way. And it’s so easy to do. Just contact us.
