A successful website today needs to be a league ahead of the others. There are so many websites created every day that just don’t make the cut.

Designers come up with some creative ideas but still they fall short. Here’s taking a look at how to create websites that stand apart and drive more revenue for the webmasters.

Work on the aesthetics

The visual appeal is important for a successful website. Besides having a clean and attractive layout, the website should also be in tune with the brand persona. One way to do that is to use colors and fonts that match the brand colors.

From paying attention to login pages, which by the way are often ignored to the other important ones like the Home and the product page, your aim should be to make the customer go wow.

One web page that is often ignored but are so frequently visited by your readers is the 404 page. A 404 page is the first thing your visitor sees when the website is down or the page isn’t available. Not only can you make the error page so much better and creative, which will keep the readers on it for longer but you can also optimize this.

There are so many ways to make a successful website stand out in terms of the visuals. You can work on the pages, play with the colors, use different fonts, add images, even work on the Call to Action buttons. The CTA buttons are such a standard feat on most websites, you almost always have a boring one up. But there are tons of ways you can edit these to make them look better and be more clickable.

Even a blank under-construction website can be made to look good. Use themes like a Coming Soon’ template and a countdown timer in different skin colors to make it look different from the boring error pages.

Themes are again a quick way to revamp any website without putting in a lot of effort and time. These can also add on to bring out the objective of the website and help with the branding if you choose the correct one. Say for instance, if your website is a food blog or a travel blog, choosing similar themes can instantly change the look and feel of your site and make it completely aligned with the overall objective.

A food-based theme will have images and layout in tune with requirement of a food blog while a travel-based theme will probably give more limelight to your images and other content pieces that are common for travel blogs.

A slideshow again works the dual purpose of beautifying the website by displaying images and these images can be of your products or your portfolio pictures putting your work in the limelight. This increases visibility and can lead to higher conversions.

Increasing the visual appeal of a website need not take a lot of time anyway. Use UI designs to get a feel of the final website  plus cut your work time in half.

Pay attention to social media

Websites today cannot exist in isolation. With so many social media platforms springing up and so many of your prospects flocking on these regularly, you have to have a good social media presence too to give a boost to your successful website.

While maintaining each social media page in accordance with the type of audience that thrive on it is important, you should also be able to connect the site and social media via sharing regular content. One easy way to do that is via social share plugins that make the task so much easier for you and automates the process to a great extent while giving the controls in your hands.

Another important thing to keep in mind is the type of audience you cater to and which social media platform do they frequent the most. Customizing content for your audience is important to in order to target your prospects better and serve them what they want. A generic approach wouldn’t work anymore because audiences mainly skim through generic pieces as they are looking for something that will catch their attention and appeal to them; content that is specifically for them.

SEO is important

SEO is the backbone of your website. Unless your website is in front of your prospective audience, it will not serve the purpose. Whether it is a blog or an e-commerce website, it’s as good as not existing if it is not put in front of your readers.
And how do you do that?

SEO is an integral part of any successful website. From using the right tags to keyword optimizing, your SEO strategy can take you to the first page of Google if you work diligently at it. Some people engage in unethical SEO practices, which besides being wrong, can also get their websites penalized by Google. So it’s best to go slow and work your up.
For webmasters who are just starting off, SEO could be complicated but understand that there are two integral parts to it. One is keyword research and integration and the other is link building.

Keyword research is easy and fun and it can help a lot if you know how to integrate it right. Use tools like Google’s AdWord and other free tools that are freely available on the internet. These words should then be used on your web content and also blogs to make you rank higher for those keywords. But make sure to put in quality content because Google value quality content with smart keyword integration more than mindless keyword stuffing.

A slow but sure-shot way to link building is by guest posting on authority blogs. If yours is a photography-based website, do a research and look for influencers and post quality blogs on their website. This will put your content and subsequently your website in front of their audience and direct some of their traffic to your website.

A successful website needs some working upon and it takes time and effort but once you get the basics right, it will be easier to build upon it and make it rank higher.