5 Best Practices for Building a Website in 2022

Every business needs a website that will drive revenue. But not every company knows where to start, especially when things in the web design and development industry are continually changing. Building a website is a complicated feat, so we want to give you a high-level view of how you should approach building yours. 

Here are the top 5 best practices for building a website in 2022.

1) Start with Your Messaging

You’ve heard it before: content is king. It’s true. But to create your website content and offers, you have to:

1. Know your brand’s message 
2. Know exactly how you want to express it
3. Clean it up and build upon it 

Many companies feel they have a solid grasp of their brand message, when in reality, it’s cluttered up with too many details, confusing phrasing, and a buried purpose. The goal of your brand message is to show your ideal customers exactly how you help them while using the same language of your customers.

At Mojo, we use the proven StoryBrand 7-part story framework for creating a clear, concise message that speaks directly to a company’s ideal customer profile. And it works because it relies on the philosophy of storytelling.

There are two reasons why your company should use story to connect with customers: 

1. Human brains prefer stories, and a good story tends to follow a familiar, comfortable formula. Our brains look for these kinds of mental shortcuts to save calories and cut out extra thinking work. Story helps a company accomplish that ease and reduce custom effort. 
2. Stories are interesting and memorable, and good stories touch you emotionally and intellectually, making you pay attention.  

Your message sets the tone for everything else on the website, which is why this should be your #1 priority. 

2) Organize Your Content

Next, it’s time to organize your content. The task can feel overwhelming, which is why you take it step by step. 

Start a Google or Word doc for an outline of your home page, and take a deep breath. If you have a clear brand message, incorporate it into your home page content. Again, your brand message keeps your language clear, concise, and simple. With a clarified brand message, you should have home page copy that starts to write itself.

With a great sense of accomplishment with the home page written, it’s time to tackle the rest of the content. Think ahead about these questions:

• What web pages need to be on the website?
• Who’s going to write the content?
• What will the sitemap be?
• What are your priority web pages for launch?
• What will the approval process be like?

For the additional landing pages you’ll need, you should think about the pillars of your business. If you have one product or service that serves numerous industries, you may want dedicated landing pages that speak to the needs of each industry. If you have numerous products, you’ll likely want a page for each product. Use your brand message as the foundation to these pages, and nuance the content for the specific industries of products.

For the rest of the website content and blog posts, we’ve given a full step-by-step breakdown of how to organize your website content, so you can dive in a little deeper before you start your project.

3) Keep it Simple

This relates to the website as a whole–content, functionality, and design. The rule here is to avoid overcomplicating your website. 

Your buyers are already bombarded with enough complex ideas all day. When they’re landing on your site, they’re looking for a solution to a problem that’s probably stressing them out in some way. Make sure your website is not adding another barrier of confusion or stress, but instead provides an easy, joyful experience for customers. 

What does an overly complicated website look like? 

• A site full of strange design elements
• Distractingly flashy features
• Unusual layouts that can deter website visitors from becoming customers
• Not mobile-friendly
• Odd color schemes
• No white space
• Overall poor user experience

At the end of the day, too much going on will hinder the purpose of the site and your business. People want all the info they need–and fast. That requires a strong element of familiarity, clean lines, an intuitive flow, and usability that can easily translate from desktop to mobile.

4) Button Up the Backend

Pay attention to the backend pieces of the puzzle, and focus on:

• Setting up analytics tracking early so you get the data you need from the start
• Testing your page load time and optimize where possible 
• Making sure you’re compliant with any applicable regulations 
• Assessing and tightening up your security
• Testing your site’s accessibility to any and all users
• Run a technical SEO audit (use a tool like Moz or SEMRush to find broken links, duplicate page titles, missing meta descriptions, etc) Search engine optimization 
• Ensuring responsive design for mobile devices

If you’re a non-technical marketer, much of what is addressed above should be built into a website platform you use, like the HubSpot CMS. With the platform you build your website on, run through the list above a few times to ensure everything you need to launch successfully is already in place.

5) Launch Sooner Rather than Later

All companies should take a sigh of relief. Gone are the days when a long, drawn-out web project is the only way to go. Thankfully, the world of web design and development has changed a lot over the years, and it continues to evolve–for the better. In many ways, designers and developers are working smarter (not harder) to achieve the websites clients are looking for–in the timeframe of their dreams. 

Businesses who stick to fleshing out the entire website inside and out for perfection will not see a complete product for another 8 months to a year. 

At Mojo, we’ve found the perfect balance of early launching a high-quality product with the ability to develop and grow over the year. To help more organizations build beautiful and highly functional websites, we have built a website theme available on the HubSpot CMS called MojoFlex. With a theme like MojoFlex, you can easily build the website you need with the technical foundation you need to scale with ease.

Businesses get the customizations they crave, but it’s built on a strong, high-functioning foundation. You still have what you need in a fraction of the time, for a more reasonable price, which means:

• You don’t miss out on crucial time and data
• You can start testing right away and make smart decisions as you go
• You’ll want to make changes a year from now anyway 
• Customers can start working with you right now

Get Started Today

If you’re reading this blog, you likely have a website that’s less than ideal. Start today by assessing your current website platform. If you’re like many marketers, your website is completely custom developed and makes it difficult for you to make any changes. Build your website on a platform you can control. 

Needing that level of platform flexibility? We built MojoFlex to empower marketers to create a website that works for their business, timeline, and evolving needs. To dive deeper into what MojoFlex can do, check out this demo video.

Already have a website platform you like? Start refreshing it with your brand messaging and build the foundation of the message you want your target audience to hear. And if you’re still feeling the friction of the complicated web development process, reach out. We want to help you focus on your core business.