If you wouldn’t open your storefront before everything was in place, don't throw together your website. If you maintain cleanliness and order at your place of business with the hope of appearing “put together” for customers or clients, you should pay similar attention to your website.

The internet doesn’t have to be a place for the same old thing. Too often I see clients requesting a website-build with 0 originality. “Just a simple landing page” they say or “I want every page my competition has”.

If you are trying to build a website that ranks on Google for the long haul you need to build your website with as much pride as you built your business with. This means monthly, if not weekly improvements. Simply copying the pages from a competitor's site and putting up content one time will only get you so far. Even simply posting a weekly blog can only get you so far in the SEO world.

Small to medium sized business owners are often too busy to realize the proprietary real estate they could be building online in tandem with growing their business the way they know how.

Brainstorm what your customer base could make use of online. You can use a website to do just about anything. You can create a resource center, you can create a platform for others to come together, you can make something video based, you can add content to 1 page or create 50 pages about each of your service providers... anything in between.

If your business is fighting for SEO visibility you need to be building useful pages for every topic concerning your business. This is much more beneficial to your rankings than focusing on any page speed metric or backlink count.

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Examples of Spectacular Sites

Some of the most important metrics Google wants to see in order to rank your page are organic visits/shares, time spent on page, pages per session, and bounce rate. If you have an SEO agency like ours clean up your website’s backend (which we offer!), you should really only need to spend time worrying about these metrics. The backlinks will come naturally to your content.

Here are some amazing sites that do an exemplary job of keeping you on the page and encouraging shares.

https://mycreativetype.com/

MyCreativeType.com is a product built by the team at Adobe Create. If you give the site a click you can see it checks off almost every metric I mentioned.

• It encourages shares because you want to know how others compare to you
• It keeps you on the page for a considerable period of time with videos playing after you have made your selection
• Every time you answer a question you go to a unique page Adobe can track
• It is beautiful from the start and quick to load reducing bouncing users

https://super-nintendo-world.usj.co.jp/en/us/home

The official website for Super Nintendo World in Japan is one of my favorite examples of what a website could be. This website checks off all the boxes above as well. It is also a link generating machine with thousands of free links from bloggers and other websites showing their readers the masterpiece built.

• The website encourages sharing because of how unique it is
  
• Takes you through every part of the park, keeping you on the page
  
• It does not appear Nintendo is sending you to a unique URL with each scroll
  
• The colors and loading screen are fun and keep you from bouncing
  

https://www.acclaimcontractors.com.au/

I found ACCLAIM after a quick Google search for outstanding contractor sites to make this blog more applicable to those who don’t own a theme park or photo editing software company. Instead of sticking to stereotypical site structure for a contractor, ACCLAIM went above and beyond creating an interactive website that takes the user through the 2 main services they offer. As you can see, once you start scrolling down the site, the website takes over and takes you through the content the way the business wants you to.

They also present their other 9 services lower on the page giving Google a very clear link structure to learn.

• Not much share-worthy here but the incredible build has gotten this business many links from powerful sites that use their site as an example for others.
  
• The website takes over the scrolling, keeping you on the page longer.
  
• The featured projects are very enticing to click on
  
• Quick load time ​
  

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Where do you start if you want to build a beautiful web property?

Well, you start by calling Mad Mango Marketing. But for those who are looking to try it themselves or are looking for some more information we will bring up a few points worth mentioning.

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Budget

This depends on your developing capabilities as far as time. If you want to build a website that is over the top in design and engaging like the examples above you can expect to spend anywhere from 8-20k+ in most markets. Hosting can also be a little bit more than average if you are getting a lot of traffic or running a lot of video content.

Unfortunately, the build is just part of the equation you will need to consider as a business owner. One thing all great websites have in common are incredible imagery. The Nintendo site referenced must have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in artist hours! The difference between popping off the screen and grabbing attention relies much more on your graphics and art than backend development. Depending on your business you should plan on budgeting anywhere from 1-5k for art.

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Platform

WordPress, Shopify, and Webflow are the three platforms we would suggest you consider to build an incredible website on. We mentioned pricing first because although these platforms are cheap to build any old site on you will still need to spend either a lot of time or spend a fair amount to have a website built that isn’t just another site. Webflow and Shopify both have a significant advantage in the fact that you won’t need to update plugins or worry about security nearly as much as a WordPress site. It is very important that your web designer builds your site with an easy to use CMS in between you and the backend so that you or your team can easily add additional pages or content without paying your developer more $$$.

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Content

You should really have at least the first year of content planned. Whether it is daily, weekly, or monthly posting for the first couple months should be fairly straightforward when starting out. Find a soft spot for information in your industry and cover it completely. If you install microwaves you should be reviewing every model, if you have an at-home care business you should be covering every reason someone may end up in your care.

Start with the main tenets of your business and get deeper and deeper into detail with dedicated content. You can also use an agency like Mad Mango to write professional content for your industry alongside your efforts to expedite the process.

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Conclusion

Even being 30 years separated from the first commercial website, few small business owners who conduct business offline think like this. They see their website as a billboard instead of a warehouse with unlimited land to scale.

When you create content that users need (even if it's 1 or 2 people a month), structure it so that Google can understand the importance of this content within the context of your business, and work at building more on a regular schedule... it's only a matter of time until the free organic traffic lands on a site with your name and number.

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