Few nowadays dig out the yellow pages when looking for services or products. Almost everyone turns to Google. If at this point your company is not found on the first page of the search engine or if you do not have a homepage, you are out of the competition.
If you want to stay competitive and grow your business in the long run, your company must have efficient and professional homepages.
Since you are considering making a home page, you probably already know all this.
At this point, you may be wondering whether to make the homepage yourself or leave the matter to a professional. Another question is, how much will all this cost.
In summary, you can do a cheap home page yourself. However, professional home pages don't need to cost tens of thousands of euros, as there are affordable solutions on the market. Our principle at Growly is that everyone, including small businesses, should have the opportunity to acquire homepages that help increase sales and business quickly and in the long run.
Should the company's homepages be outsourced or made in-house?
Ultimately, the choice between DIY homepages and outsourcing is a question of results. The question is, how well does a self-made homepage produce results?
Often, a painstakingly self-assembled homepage does not achieve the desired results when published. The entrepreneur has to have the homepage redone by a professional, which takes unnecessary time and costs money due to the sales lost because of the poor homepage.
In addition, the entrepreneur building the homepage himself may run into problems that stall the whole project and may eventually require expert help to resolve.
In addition to time and money, the entrepreneur saves nerves when leaving the work to professionals.
Of course, there are exceptions to the rule: if the purpose of the homepage is merely to serve as a digital business card, and for example, the entrepreneur does not care whether it brings more sales and contacts to the company, the page can be made by oneself without worry.
The construction of a business-oriented homepage, however, involves much more knowledge and work than appears on the surface. Success requires both in-depth technical expertise as well as an understanding of marketing and the customer.
If an entrepreneur intends to advertise a self-made and poorly converting homepage in search engines or on social media, the project becomes even more expensive. When the homepage initially does not persuade visitors of the company's offerings and convert visitors into customers, even a large amount of traffic does not bring change.
There is a financial benefit to professional homepage creation
Ineffective homepages waste time and money when a potential customer who has already visited them ends up abandoning the site and purchasing from a competitor.
The company's homepage must explain why the customer should buy exactly from you. Well-executed homepages convert efficiently because they are designed with customer experience in mind and serve business goals.
A conversion optimization specialist has the expertise to build homepages that distinguish the company from its competitors and present the product or service in a light that engages the visitor and converts potential into sales.
In practice, conversion means that a visitor performs the action desired by the entrepreneur on the homepage, such as a purchase or form submission.
If one hundred visitors come to the homepage per day, and no one buys, the sales and conversion rate is zero percent. If one out of a hundred becomes a customer, the conversion rate is 1%.
The goal of the homepage is to produce maximum conversion, to generate as much sales as possible, and this is something that a professional can do.
If two out of every one hundred visitors make a purchase thanks to the new homepage instead of one, the conversion rate is 2%. In this case, the turnover coming through the homepage has doubled.
A good website conversion rate is at least 2-5 percent, but often the percentage for self-made sites is even lower because all the factors affecting conversion and sales have not been taken into account. In general, achieving a higher conversion percentage faster and more likely with the help of an experienced professional.
If you still decide to make the company's homepage yourself, consider at least this:
Creating a homepage always begins with the goal you want the customer to achieve. This goal will dictate the entire project. Everything coming to the pages should be considered through whether doing the thing serves the goal and the customer.
Your goal may be, for example, the customer calling, submitting a quote request, booking an appointment, subscribing to a newsletter, downloading an e-book, familiarizing themselves with a product and later making a purchase in a store.
Once you know exactly what you want to achieve, you can ask and encourage the customer to act in the way you want, and then it is more likely that they will act accordingly. When you have also built the homepage according to the target, everything on the homepage directs to this, and the customer is even more likely to seize the opportunity to act.
Of course, other things also need to be in order, such as the site's speed and user experience. It has to be easy to navigate, and the pages need to contain content that is relevant and beneficial to the customer.
When the basics are in order and you have first done the necessary work for the company's homepage, the homepage will start working for your company. If, on the other hand, you skip steps or build your website entirely based on gut feeling or your own interests instead of around your customer, the implementation cannot sell effectively.
You can thus build an effective homepage yourself inexpensively, if you have the time and interest in the topic, and you can follow the best practices in the field.
There are many guides and instructions online for this. However, it is much easier to outsource the work and immediately get a selling homepage for your business.
WordPress: The right platform for the company's homepage
By far the best platform for the company's homepage is WordPress. It is a cost-effective, flexible, and reliable content publishing platform.
Over 60 percent of all the world's websites are built precisely on the WordPress publishing system.
If or when your company's goals or operations change, WordPress homepages scale along with you. Other platforms are not as agile, and the wrong choice might require you to build an entirely new homepage in the face of change.
At this point, it is worth noting the two different WordPresses.
WordPress.com is very limited and therefore cannot be recommended for business homepages. When talking about WordPress, we mean the self-hosted WordPress.org, which offers considerably more freedom and flexibility for business needs. Additionally, you will need a web hosting service for your homepage, such as Zoner, and possibly a maintenance service if you do not plan to update the pages yourself in the future.
WordPress also has many other advantages that go beyond scalability. The platform is SEO friendly, and there is a wide selection of add-ons that allow you to create a custom homepage entirely without coding. If necessary, an online store can be easily added to the homepage.
In other words, you have full control over its appearance and functions, unlike many other platforms, such as Weebly, Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, and so on.
The homepage should provide enough accurate information
To generate sales through the homepage, the potential customer needs to understand your offerings as well as the benefits and value associated with them.
If the message is unclear, the customer feels the same about your company. And if the same things are better presented on a competitor's site, the customer goes there.
Therefore, provide enough relevant information on the company's homepage to make and support a purchase decision, and make it as easy as possible to obtain the information. If the information is not readily and quickly available, but for example, hidden several clicks away, the customer will not find it.
Almost everyone wants fast and easy, so most visitors won't even try to search for information on the homepage but simply leave there.
When creating a homepage, remember that a customer can arrive from a search engine to any page, so important information should not be left to the homepage only. Information that the customer seeks about the company, product and operations should be found throughout the site, and possibly on a separate FAQ page.
The homepage should also have a red thread that ties the separate pages into a cohesive whole and leads the visitor to continue onward on the site.
If customers do not seem to understand the value of your product or service from the current homepages, the first step is to look at the page structure and content.
If these seem to be in order, one can consider whether the brand is in good shape. A carefully and properly planned brand stands out from competitors, inspires trust, and creates the images the company wants to convey to its target groups. In brand development, it is often advantageous to work with marketing professionals.
We are also ready to help your company with brand design.
The homepage must be optimized for people and search engines
A beautiful and professional homepage is important. It is also possible to achieve it easily with ready-made themes from WordPress or, for example, Elementor.
However, creating a goal-serving homepage involves more than just a pretty exterior.
More important factors include fast loading speed, page structure, compatibility with different browsers, scalability to tablet and mobile, and relevant contents. If your homepage does not meet these basic requirements, it will have trouble appearing in search engine results, getting traffic, and making sales.
Homepage search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial to the homepage's Google visibility and traffic. Conversion optimization (CRO) or lack thereof affects how much of the traffic and potential customers convert into paying customers.
Merely optimizing for keywords is not sufficient to gain visibility in Google's organic search results because the technical side also has to be sound.
An entrepreneur can try to advertise homepages aggressively if visitors do not come from Google. However, this does not work if conversion optimization has not been done.
In such a case, the homepage needs optimization for both people and search engines.
Search engine optimization (improving Google visibility) and conversion optimization (increasing the number of desired actions such as purchases, bookings, calls, etc.) are thus key to the effectiveness of a homepage.
Most self-made homepages fail precisely in these most critical areas, as they involve so much content that often cannot be internalized or learned at once during a single project. Of course, Google still provides information for those who wish to search for it, but it is much easier to leave the matter to an experienced party again – such as us.
If your company's homepage does not appear high in Google's search results or if your business has not gained momentum online, our experts can help.
Security is important
Ready-made business homepages require maintenance and updating.
If you do not keep the site up to date, it quickly becomes susceptible to security threats and attacks. This endangers both your customers and your company.
In WordPress, it is advisable to enable automatic updates of the system and add-ons, so you do not need to be constantly managing this yourself.
Search engines and certainly customers also prefer safe sites. Acquiring an SSL certificate from a web host adds to the security and reliability of the homepage. SSL encryption creates an encrypted connection between the website and its user, protecting both the transfer of information and the user's personal data.
In addition to ensuring security, it is advisable to regularly monitor the homepage and test it for potential bugs, as sometimes an update may cause the theme or a single function not to work as intended. This can lead to a deterioration in user experience and sales.
In addition, content such as texts and images should be updated from time to time, as this helps to improve rankings in Google search results. Regularly updated content also appears more reliable in the eyes of search engines and customers than outdated information or completely abandoned homepages.
In practice, a homepage is never completely finished, as it requires constant maintenance, updating, and development. These tasks can also be outsourced to a specialized company.
Create a timeline for the homepage project
It is advisable to set goals for the homepage project and create a realistic timeline.
Without a plan, the completion of the homepage may take longer than expected.
Also consider the time to be spent on the new homepage's search engine optimization and marketing, and of course on conversion optimization if you do not do it while building the homepage. These are also tasks that are carried out continuously even after the page is published.
Be prepared for the fact that setbacks are inevitable during the process, and solving them can sometimes take more time. Sometimes the entrepreneur may need to rely on an expert's help when Google no longer helps.
Homepages for a business – Better to have them made by a professional
Succeeding online requires effective homepages that stand out from the competition.
The company's homepages can definitely be made on your own. Since the process involves really many factors, the entrepreneur must have a great passion to learn about the subject and to do.
When outsourced, the entrepreneur does not need to worry about anything. With the right contractor, you can be sure that you will get a solution that is fully functional in all respects and that produces results for the business from day one on a turnkey basis.
At the same time, you save time and money in sales, which you would lose due to a poorly converting or selling homepage.
With Growly, you get exactly the homepage you want. Aesthetically, functionally, and in terms of content. With us, you can be certain that your company's homepage serves goals from the first day. You can focus on your business instead of wondering why the right things don't happen.
You can outsource only parts of the areas to us, such as technical implementation, and create the content yourself. In addition to an efficient homepage, we help you gain more customers through brand design, search engine optimization, and digital advertising.
Read more about the homepages we've done, the experiences of our customers, or contact us via the form below.
Few nowadays dig out the yellow pages when looking for services or products. Almost everyone turns to Google. If at this point your company is not found on the first page of the search engine or if you do not have a homepage, you are out of the competition.
If you want to stay competitive and grow your business in the long run, your company must have efficient and professional homepages.
Since you are considering making a home page, you probably already know all this.
At this point, you may be wondering whether to make the homepage yourself or leave the matter to a professional. Another question is, how much will all this cost.
In summary, you can do a cheap home page yourself. However, professional home pages don't need to cost tens of thousands of euros, as there are affordable solutions on the market. Our principle at Growly is that everyone, including small businesses, should have the opportunity to acquire homepages that help increase sales and business quickly and in the long run.
Should the company's homepages be outsourced or made in-house?
Ultimately, the choice between DIY homepages and outsourcing is a question of results. The question is, how well does a self-made homepage produce results?
Often, a painstakingly self-assembled homepage does not achieve the desired results when published. The entrepreneur has to have the homepage redone by a professional, which takes unnecessary time and costs money due to the sales lost because of the poor homepage.
In addition, the entrepreneur building the homepage himself may run into problems that stall the whole project and may eventually require expert help to resolve.
In addition to time and money, the entrepreneur saves nerves when leaving the work to professionals.
Of course, there are exceptions to the rule: if the purpose of the homepage is merely to serve as a digital business card, and for example, the entrepreneur does not care whether it brings more sales and contacts to the company, the page can be made by oneself without worry.
The construction of a business-oriented homepage, however, involves much more knowledge and work than appears on the surface. Success requires both in-depth technical expertise as well as an understanding of marketing and the customer.
If an entrepreneur intends to advertise a self-made and poorly converting homepage in search engines or on social media, the project becomes even more expensive. When the homepage initially does not persuade visitors of the company's offerings and convert visitors into customers, even a large amount of traffic does not bring change.
There is a financial benefit to professional homepage creation
Ineffective homepages waste time and money when a potential customer who has already visited them ends up abandoning the site and purchasing from a competitor.
The company's homepage must explain why the customer should buy exactly from you. Well-executed homepages convert efficiently because they are designed with customer experience in mind and serve business goals.
A conversion optimization specialist has the expertise to build homepages that distinguish the company from its competitors and present the product or service in a light that engages the visitor and converts potential into sales.
In practice, conversion means that a visitor performs the action desired by the entrepreneur on the homepage, such as a purchase or form submission.
If one hundred visitors come to the homepage per day, and no one buys, the sales and conversion rate is zero percent. If one out of a hundred becomes a customer, the conversion rate is 1%.
The goal of the homepage is to produce maximum conversion, to generate as much sales as possible, and this is something that a professional can do.
If two out of every one hundred visitors make a purchase thanks to the new homepage instead of one, the conversion rate is 2%. In this case, the turnover coming through the homepage has doubled.
A good website conversion rate is at least 2-5 percent, but often the percentage for self-made sites is even lower because all the factors affecting conversion and sales have not been taken into account. In general, achieving a higher conversion percentage faster and more likely with the help of an experienced professional.
If you still decide to make the company's homepage yourself, consider at least this:
Creating a homepage always begins with the goal you want the customer to achieve. This goal will dictate the entire project. Everything coming to the pages should be considered through whether doing the thing serves the goal and the customer.
Your goal may be, for example, the customer calling, submitting a quote request, booking an appointment, subscribing to a newsletter, downloading an e-book, familiarizing themselves with a product and later making a purchase in a store.
Once you know exactly what you want to achieve, you can ask and encourage the customer to act in the way you want, and then it is more likely that they will act accordingly. When you have also built the homepage according to the target, everything on the homepage directs to this, and the customer is even more likely to seize the opportunity to act.
Of course, other things also need to be in order, such as the site's speed and user experience. It has to be easy to navigate, and the pages need to contain content that is relevant and beneficial to the customer.
When the basics are in order and you have first done the necessary work for the company's homepage, the homepage will start working for your company. If, on the other hand, you skip steps or build your website entirely based on gut feeling or your own interests instead of around your customer, the implementation cannot sell effectively.
You can thus build an effective homepage yourself inexpensively, if you have the time and interest in the topic, and you can follow the best practices in the field.
There are many guides and instructions online for this. However, it is much easier to outsource the work and immediately get a selling homepage for your business.
WordPress: The right platform for the company's homepage
By far the best platform for the company's homepage is WordPress. It is a cost-effective, flexible, and reliable content publishing platform.
Over 60 percent of all the world's websites are built precisely on the WordPress publishing system.
If or when your company's goals or operations change, WordPress homepages scale along with you. Other platforms are not as agile, and the wrong choice might require you to build an entirely new homepage in the face of change.
At this point, it is worth noting the two different WordPresses.
WordPress.com is very limited and therefore cannot be recommended for business homepages. When talking about WordPress, we mean the self-hosted WordPress.org, which offers considerably more freedom and flexibility for business needs. Additionally, you will need a web hosting service for your homepage, such as Zoner, and possibly a maintenance service if you do not plan to update the pages yourself in the future.
WordPress also has many other advantages that go beyond scalability. The platform is SEO friendly, and there is a wide selection of add-ons that allow you to create a custom homepage entirely without coding. If necessary, an online store can be easily added to the homepage.
In other words, you have full control over its appearance and functions, unlike many other platforms, such as Weebly, Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, and so on.
The homepage should provide enough accurate information
To generate sales through the homepage, the potential customer needs to understand your offerings as well as the benefits and value associated with them.
If the message is unclear, the customer feels the same about your company. And if the same things are better presented on a competitor's site, the customer goes there.
Therefore, provide enough relevant information on the company's homepage to make and support a purchase decision, and make it as easy as possible to obtain the information. If the information is not readily and quickly available, but for example, hidden several clicks away, the customer will not find it.
Almost everyone wants fast and easy, so most visitors won't even try to search for information on the homepage but simply leave there.
When creating a homepage, remember that a customer can arrive from a search engine to any page, so important information should not be left to the homepage only. Information that the customer seeks about the company, product and operations should be found throughout the site, and possibly on a separate FAQ page.
The homepage should also have a red thread that ties the separate pages into a cohesive whole and leads the visitor to continue onward on the site.
If customers do not seem to understand the value of your product or service from the current homepages, the first step is to look at the page structure and content.
If these seem to be in order, one can consider whether the brand is in good shape. A carefully and properly planned brand stands out from competitors, inspires trust, and creates the images the company wants to convey to its target groups. In brand development, it is often advantageous to work with marketing professionals.
We are also ready to help your company with brand design.
The homepage must be optimized for people and search engines
A beautiful and professional homepage is important. It is also possible to achieve it easily with ready-made themes from WordPress or, for example, Elementor.
However, creating a goal-serving homepage involves more than just a pretty exterior.
More important factors include fast loading speed, page structure, compatibility with different browsers, scalability to tablet and mobile, and relevant contents. If your homepage does not meet these basic requirements, it will have trouble appearing in search engine results, getting traffic, and making sales.
Homepage search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial to the homepage's Google visibility and traffic. Conversion optimization (CRO) or lack thereof affects how much of the traffic and potential customers convert into paying customers.
Merely optimizing for keywords is not sufficient to gain visibility in Google's organic search results because the technical side also has to be sound.
An entrepreneur can try to advertise homepages aggressively if visitors do not come from Google. However, this does not work if conversion optimization has not been done.
In such a case, the homepage needs optimization for both people and search engines.
Search engine optimization (improving Google visibility) and conversion optimization (increasing the number of desired actions such as purchases, bookings, calls, etc.) are thus key to the effectiveness of a homepage.
Most self-made homepages fail precisely in these most critical areas, as they involve so much content that often cannot be internalized or learned at once during a single project. Of course, Google still provides information for those who wish to search for it, but it is much easier to leave the matter to an experienced party again – such as us.
If your company's homepage does not appear high in Google's search results or if your business has not gained momentum online, our experts can help.
Security is important
Ready-made business homepages require maintenance and updating.
If you do not keep the site up to date, it quickly becomes susceptible to security threats and attacks. This endangers both your customers and your company.
In WordPress, it is advisable to enable automatic updates of the system and add-ons, so you do not need to be constantly managing this yourself.
Search engines and certainly customers also prefer safe sites. Acquiring an SSL certificate from a web host adds to the security and reliability of the homepage. SSL encryption creates an encrypted connection between the website and its user, protecting both the transfer of information and the user's personal data.
In addition to ensuring security, it is advisable to regularly monitor the homepage and test it for potential bugs, as sometimes an update may cause the theme or a single function not to work as intended. This can lead to a deterioration in user experience and sales.
In addition, content such as texts and images should be updated from time to time, as this helps to improve rankings in Google search results. Regularly updated content also appears more reliable in the eyes of search engines and customers than outdated information or completely abandoned homepages.
In practice, a homepage is never completely finished, as it requires constant maintenance, updating, and development. These tasks can also be outsourced to a specialized company.
Create a timeline for the homepage project
It is advisable to set goals for the homepage project and create a realistic timeline.
Without a plan, the completion of the homepage may take longer than expected.
Also consider the time to be spent on the new homepage's search engine optimization and marketing, and of course on conversion optimization if you do not do it while building the homepage. These are also tasks that are carried out continuously even after the page is published.
Be prepared for the fact that setbacks are inevitable during the process, and solving them can sometimes take more time. Sometimes the entrepreneur may need to rely on an expert's help when Google no longer helps.
Homepages for a business – Better to have them made by a professional
Succeeding online requires effective homepages that stand out from the competition.
The company's homepages can definitely be made on your own. Since the process involves really many factors, the entrepreneur must have a great passion to learn about the subject and to do.
When outsourced, the entrepreneur does not need to worry about anything. With the right contractor, you can be sure that you will get a solution that is fully functional in all respects and that produces results for the business from day one on a turnkey basis.
At the same time, you save time and money in sales, which you would lose due to a poorly converting or selling homepage.
With Growly, you get exactly the homepage you want. Aesthetically, functionally, and in terms of content. With us, you can be certain that your company's homepage serves goals from the first day. You can focus on your business instead of wondering why the right things don't happen.
You can outsource only parts of the areas to us, such as technical implementation, and create the content yourself. In addition to an efficient homepage, we help you gain more customers through brand design, search engine optimization, and digital advertising.
Read more about the homepages we've done, the experiences of our customers, or contact us via the form below.