Addressing Challenges in Creating a Professional Website

Creating a professional website is a pivotal step for businesses in today’s digital age. You need to have an effective online presence that not only establishes credibility but also serves as a powerful tool for attracting and engaging customers. 

According to research published by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 93% of small business owners use online platforms to conduct their businesses. However, building a successful website is not as easy as it sounds. From technical hurdles to content planning, SEO strategies, and ensuring security and compliance, business owners need to work through these challenges strategically to create the online presence they need to survive.

1. Technical Challenges

Developing a website poses many technical challenges for businesses. It is essentially building your brand from scratch, as websites need to reflect the company’s branding effectively from the very beginning. 

Unfortunately, no matter how much business owners want to realize their vision to the letter, they will likely have to compromise to get what they want for several reasons.

Expertise in Web Development

Building your own website usually requires programming skills, which could be a big challenge for someone. Basically, you have two ways to resolve this.

First, hire a web developer. Make sure they have the right credentials, such as a top rated accelerated computer science degree, or an extensive portfolio to back up their work. 

Alternatively, you can opt for remote developers for hire who bring a range of expertise from different environments and may offer more flexible engagement models. Here are the key skills that an experienced web developer should know:

• Coding: A web developer needs to be familiar with HTML, CSS and JavaScript programming languages, especially in the front-end, as each of these languages plays a vital role in web development. Full-stack web developers should also know a few backend languages such as Python or Java, with expertise in custom java development for Java-based web applications.
• Version Control: Knowledge of version control systems is important for managing code changes, collaborating with other developers, and tracking project history. Also, it’s important to consider getting started with Kubernetes for efficient container orchestration and scaling in modern software development environments.
• Backend Technologies: Understanding backend technologies is crucial for handling data processing, integrating APIs, and building the server-side components of a website
• UI/UX design principles: Familiarity with UI and UX is important for creating intuitive interfaces and navigation.

Second, use a no-code website builder. No-code website builder is designed specifically for beginners with no technical background. You can create a website without having to write a single line of code thanks to drag-and-drop functionality.

No-code development is continuously breaking technical barriers and democratizing the software development field. It opens up numerous possibilities for non-technical people to create a website from scratch.

On the other hand, even no code platforms have their disadvantages, mainly limitations: limited customization options, limited integration options or lack of control over the code.

Limited Customization Options on Some Platforms

Many website builders offer generic-looking, pre-built templates for clients who want to save time and money. Although this is a quick fix to setting up an online presence, it often fails to meet specific design and functionality needs like discount codes or implementing your brand’s color scheme accurately.

Tip: With Webnode website templates, you have the freedom to change anything you want.

So, to stay in control of your virtual shopfront, keep these workarounds in mind:

• Customize themes on platforms to align with brand aesthetics without extensive coding.
• Develop personalized landing pages for different customer segments based on their browsing history, preferences, and behaviors to improve user engagement and conversions.
• Integrate a personalized recommendation engine plugin that suggests relevant products or content based on user behavior and preferences. This will encourage repeat visits and enhance user satisfaction.

Ensuring Optimal Display Across Devices

It’s one thing to create a website for your customer to look at through a computer screen, and it’s another to design an interface for those who prefer to browse on their phones and tablets.

Your headers might start to look a different size from what you had planned on the phone, or the image size doesn’t look quite right on the tablet. Since nearly three out of every four customers shop through their phones, you cannot compromise on your website’s mobile display.

Tip: All Webnode website templates are fully responsive and sorted by themes.

When setting up a professional website for businesses, web developers know how important user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design is. To ensure that your website has optimal display across different devices, do the following:

• Utilize responsive frameworks like Bootstrap to guarantee compatibility with various devices, maintaining a consistent and visually appealing interface. This involves not only leveraging pre-built responsive components but also customizing and extending them as needed to ensure smooth adaptation to different screen sizes and resolutions.
• Conduct rigorous testing using tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to identify and resolve display issues, optimizing the website for mobile responsiveness. In addition to automated testing tools, manual testing by human testers is crucial for uncovering nuanced display discrepancies and usability challenges that may impact user satisfaction. 
• Implement touch-friendly elements, viewport meta tags, and mobile navigation for improved UX, enhancing usability and interaction on mobile devices. This entails conducting user research to understand the unique needs and behaviors of mobile users, iteratively prototyping and refining UI/UX designs based on feedback, and continuously monitoring user engagement metrics to identify areas for improvement. 
• Integrate deep links strategically within your website’s content to provide users with direct access to specific sections or features of your mobile application. Deep links serve as a bridge between your website and mobile app, offering a smoother transition for users and further optimizing the overall cross-device experience.
• Optimize font sizes, image sizes, and touch responsiveness to enhance the mobile experience, ensuring fast loading times and readability. Prioritize performance optimization techniques such as lazy loading images, minifying CSS and JavaScript files, and leveraging browser caching to reduce loading times and improve page responsiveness.

Streamline this complex process by integrating Asana to efficiently assign and track tasks, ensuring flawless execution of your mobile optimization strategy.

2. Content Planning and SEO

Search engine optimization and content planning go hand-in-hand. If you want to keep your professional business website in the purview of potential customers, you need to create landing pages like product detail pages that can convert.

But staying ahead of algorithm updates while staying true to your brand’s voice can be a challenging balance because of these factors:

Effective Keyword Research and Optimization

What people search for on the internet dictates the results you get whenever you conduct keyword research. It can be worked into your content planning and maybe even affect your overall marketing and branding campaign.

This doesn’t always have to be the case, though. Follow these simple steps for effective keyword research and content optimization:

1. Brainstorm Seed Keywords: Begin by brainstorming seed keywords that align with the content you want to produce. These seed keywords should be simple and relevant to your target audience. For example, if you’re selling fitness equipment, seed keywords like “home gym equipment” or “exercise gear” can be a good starting point.
2. Utilize SEO Tools: Then you can take advantage of SEO tools to conduct in-depth keyword research. Use these tools to identify high-volume keywords, analyze competitor keywords, and discover long-tail keyword opportunities related to your niche.
3. Structure Content with Keyword Insights: Once you have gathered keyword insights, incorporate them into your content strategy. Structure your content with optimized headings, meta tags, and internal links using relevant keywords. This approach helps improve search engine rankings and attracts organic traffic by aligning your content with user search queries.

Incorporating Multimedia While Maintaining Accessibility

Striking a balance between aesthetics and accessibility is difficult. Some users may not have access to text for screen readers, no captions for videos, and experience problems with pages taking a long time to load because of big files. 

We need to solve these issues to make websites easy to use and improve session times for website visitors. After all, you want everyone —including people with disabilities—to be able to grasp the message you are trying to communicate through the media incorporated into your site. 

To stay a champion of accessibility and improve user experience on your website, you should:

• Include descriptive text for screen readers by adding alt text to images and transcripts for videos.
• Add captions or subtitles to videos to make them accessible for users with hearing impairments.
• Optimize multimedia files to reduce their size and improve page loading speed, ensuring a smoother experience for all users.
• Conduct accessibility testing and audits regularly to identify and address any remaining barriers to accessibility on the website.

3. Security and Compliance

Businesses should always be wary about potential cybersecurity threats on their business website. Any attack can potentially damage their reputation and destroy the trust they’ve built with their customers over the years. What to focus on?

Ensuring Website Security Against Cyber Threats

Implementing SSL certificates for data encryption is crucial in safeguarding sensitive information transmitted through the website. This encryption technology protects data during transmission, making it unreadable to unauthorized users. 

Tip: All websites created with Webnode have SSL enabled and are using HTTPS for safe browsing.

Moreover, make sure that your software and plugins are regularly updated through patch management. This is essential to patching known vulnerabilities and reducing the risk of exploitation by cyber threats. Comprehensive security audits will strengthen your website’s defense by identifying potential weaknesses and implementing measures to mitigate risks effectively.

Ensure your website development and hosting software uses Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) for enhanced security. CWPP provides advanced threat detection, automated threat responses, and consistent security policy enforcement.

Adhering to GDPR and Data Privacy Regulations

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a legal framework that requires businesses to obtain explicit user consent for data collection and processing activities. Compliance with GDPR and other data privacy regulations involves implementing mechanisms such as cookie consent banners that inform users about data collection practices and provide options to accept or decline cookies. 

Transparency is key in building trust with users, and clear privacy policy disclosures are necessary to outline how personal data is handled, stored, and protected. Moreover, all businesses must ensure compliance with legal requirements for data storage, processing, and user rights protection, including the right to access, rectify, or delete personal data upon request.

If you truly want to maintain your customer’s trust, you need to take robust data protection measures to uphold regulatory compliance and safeguard user privacy.

Adopt The Right Solutions to Create a Professional Website

Creating a professional website comes with its share of challenges, from technical complexities to content planning and ensuring security. Solutions like customizing themes, utilizing SEO tools for keyword research, optimizing multimedia accessibility, and implementing SSL certificates and GDPR compliance measures are crucial steps.

By addressing website challenges strategically, businesses can build a business website that attracts customers, improves user experience and drives growth.