Tag: Website Planning

Beyond Design: 11 Overlooked Essentials When Building Your Company WebsiteNovember 17th, 2025

Building a new website is an exciting step for any business. It is your digital storefront, your marketing hub, and often the first impression customers get of your brand. While most companies think about design, features, and content, there are several important factors that can be overlooked. Here are key things to consider when planning your new website, including a few you may not have thought of.

1. Scalability for Growth

Your company will evolve over time, and your website should be able to grow with you. Choose a platform and hosting solution that can easily accommodate new content, features, pages, and increased traffic without slowing down or becoming unstable. Think about where your business will be in two to five years, not just today.

2. User Experience Across All Devices

Responsive design is essential. A mobile-friendly website ensures a seamless experience whether users visit on a smartphone, tablet, or desktop. Do not just test layouts. Actually try filling out forms, clicking links, and navigating menus on different devices and browsers to make sure everything works smoothly.

3. Fast Load Times

A slow website costs you visitors and potential customers. Optimizing images, choosing quality hosting, minimizing unnecessary scripts, and leveraging caching can dramatically improve your site’s speed. Faster load times not only create a better user experience but also support your search engine rankings.

4. Accessibility Compliance

Making your website accessible is both the right thing to do and, in many places, a legal requirement. Use proper alt text on images, readable fonts, clear headings, sufficient color contrast, and keyboard navigation support to align with accessibility guidelines such as WCAG. This helps all users, not just those with disabilities.

5. Content Management Ease

Will you or your team need to update content regularly? Make sure your content management system (CMS) is user-friendly. If the backend is confusing or clunky, updates may get delayed, and your website can quickly become outdated. Request a brief training session or documentation from your developer.

6. Security First Mindset

Security should never be an afterthought. Ensure SSL is installed, set up firewalls, and keep all software and plugins updated. Use strong passwords and consider two-factor authentication where possible. Even small, low-traffic sites can be targets for automated attacks, so proactive protection is essential.

7. Search Engine Optimization from Day One

SEO is more than just keywords. It includes site structure, clean code, metadata, headings, internal links, and logical URLs. Work with a developer who understands SEO best practices or bring in a specialist early in the project. Fixing SEO issues after the site is built is usually more difficult and more expensive.

8. Legal Pages and Policies

Privacy policies, terms of service, and cookie notices are often treated as an afterthought, but they may be legally required depending on your audience, location, and the tools you use. If you run ads, collect leads, or track analytics, make sure your policies are clear, accurate, and easy to find.

9. Integrated Analytics and Tracking

Install analytics tools as part of your initial launch plan. Tracking user behavior from day one helps you understand what is working and where people drop off. Over time, this data allows you to refine pages, improve conversion rates, and make smarter marketing decisions.

10. Backup and Recovery Plans

Things go wrong: updates break layouts, plugins conflict, or a mistake deletes important content. Make sure your hosting or website platform automatically backs up your site and that you know how to restore it if needed. A solid backup and recovery plan can turn a potential disaster into a minor inconvenience.

11. Ownership and Access

Confirm that your business owns the domain name, hosting accounts, and website content. Ensure you have administrative access to your CMS, hosting panel, domain registrar, and analytics tools. You never want to be in a position where a former developer or agency holds the keys to your online presence.

Final Thoughts

Building a website is more than just uploading a few pages and hitting publish. It is a strategic effort tied to user experience, branding, marketing, and long-term growth. By considering scalability, security, accessibility, analytics, and ownership from the start, you can launch a website that works harder for your business and avoids costly surprises down the road. And if you need help designing, developing, and managing that website, RooSites is here for you, Contact Us Today!

Planning a website? Think AristotleMarch 18th, 2013

Strange title eh? I agree. Typically we don’t look to philosophers who died in 322 BC for advice. But I happened upon an article in the Harvard Business Review talking about the 3 elements of great communication. The elements Aristotle identified are ethos, pathos, and logos.

We will examine all 3 elements and how they relate to website development.

1. Ethos :: Ethos is your credibility.  Why should anyone believe what you are saying on your website?  One of the most important things you can get across on your website is to show you are a subject matter expert in your field. So if someone wants to hire you, (or buy from you) they need to feel confident that you are a proven leader in your field with the skills & technical expertise they are looking for. If your credibility is in question, it is pretty clear a visitor to your website will not end up a customer/client. This is also why the “do it yourself websites” don’t work.  Can anyone take you seriously when you have an amateurish website?
2. Pathos :: Pathos is the emotional connection.  This is very important in a website. People that have an emotional bond with your company, typically will be repeat customers.  Now for e-commerce, this may be a love for your brand.  People who like a specific clothing brand typically will buy that brand year after year. But this also goes for service providers. Say you are a plumber who saved a homeowner from a leak on a Sunday night.  That consumer won’t forget that plumber. This is where things like testimonials come in handy. When visitors to your website see the love your customers/clients have, they too are likely to hire you.
3. Logos :: Logos is your way of appealing to people’s sense of reason. They mention in the blog I referenced that this is where the term logic comes from. True, this sounds a bit Vulcan, but things needs to make sense to us for us to wrap our mind around something.  This is why websites, or commercials fail when they make crazy claims. Even though we may want to believe a pill will grow our hair back and clear our face of wrinkles, we know in our mind that this can’t be true. We all know if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So keep that in mind developing your website. A little bragging is fine, as long as you don’t promise what can’t possibly be delivered.

Planning your website can be a difficult process with a lot of variables. But when you consider Aristotle’s 3 elements of communication, you are off to a good start. Feel free to contact us with any questions.