Create a Corporate Website: In 5 Steps to a Digital Showcase

1. Why is a good corporate website needed?
2. What constitutes a corporate website?
3. 5 examples of good corporate websites
4. In 5 steps to a corporate website
5. What tools can assist you in the various areas of your corporate website?
6. Conclusion

A corporate website functions as a company's central online portal. It's comparable to a digital billboard or a business card, that allows the target audience to comprehensively inform themselves about the company.

On the website, you can find important information about:

• Products or services
• The company's history, values, and vision
• Contact options
• Blogs, podcasts or links to social media
• Further information that is important for understanding the company

The main goal of the corporate website is to inform the target audience and, depending on the business model, to encourage purchases or establish contact.

In addition, the corporate website plays a decisive role in the application process. It serves as a platform for job postings and allows applicants to get a comprehensive picture of the company. 

Why is a good corporate website needed?

Two people discussing corporate websites

A top-notch corporate website is essential for any company that values credibility, trust, and visibility. Without it, you risk not only loss of revenue but also your market position. And no one can afford to compromise in this regard.

Because nowadays, potential customers initially inform themselves online about companies, products, and services. They do this both for informative reasons and with the intention to buy. A convincing corporate website is therefore not a luxury, but a necessity for every reputable company.

At the same time, many marketing strategies, such as content marketing or performance ads, aim to drive traffic to the corporate website.

Considering search engines like Google: There's a whole discipline, SEO, that focuses exclusively on making your website visible on Google. Without such a presence you will be overlooked by many potential customers – as if you didn't exist.

Potential customers and applicants often first visit a company's website, before establishing contact. If the website does not convince, contact will not be established. The corporate website is thus a decisive factor for the external perception and perceived competence of your company. This naturally also influences your prices.

Therefore, it is essential to invest in a high-quality corporate website – be it in its architecture, its design or its content. Don't skimp here, because your website is the showpiece of your company and a key element for your success.

What constitutes a corporate website?

An excellent corporate website presents the company as both the ideal service provider for the target group and as an attractive employer. It provides a comprehensive overview over the services, the company history and the application process.

It is crucial that visitors can navigate quickly and get a positive impression of the company. This means that the company website must be tailored to the needs of the users and the company must be digitally experienced.

In addition to an appealing design, it is primarily about the content. Since a corporate website is mainly composed of text, it's important to find the right balance to strike: As little text as possible, but as much as necessary. Clear and concise messages are essential, as users often have little time and lose interest with too much text.

A good website answers questions such as:

• What exactly does your company do?
• What concrete added value does your service offer?
• What results can be expected?
• What is the mission of your company?
• What makes your company special?
• Who runs the company?

To verify the effectiveness of your content, you should collect feedback from customers and employees. Even if you come up with excellent texts – without validation, their effectiveness remains unclear. The Enterprise Design Thinking method by IBM can serve as an approach for this.

We also recommend consulting external service providers, such as copywriters and designers. Why? Because you're operationally blind and an external perspective is always helpful. Even if you're developing your website in-house, you should seek external advice.

Taking cultural differences into account

For international companies, it's important to make the necessary localizations and adapt the corporate design depending on the country. A website that is successful in the DACH region does not necessarily work in Japan and vice versa.

Due to cultural differences, colors, shapes, and designs are perceived differently. Websites in languages ​​that are read from right to left require special adjustments, including navigation.

Internal perspective

Internally, a good corporate website is characterized by its ability to be easily and quickly adapted and developed. Ideally, every team should take care of their own localization to ensure maximum independence.

5 examples of good corporate websites

A MacBook next to a plant symbolizes minimalism

Excellent corporate websites are an excellent source of inspiration and a good starting point for gaining orientation. Leading brands place a high value on their outward appearance, which is why their websites serve as perfect examples.

Pay particular attention to structure, design, and layout. When choosing colors, fonts, and texts, you should follow the standards of your industry because these can vary from industry to industry. Looking at premium and luxury brands is usually a safe way.

Here are five outstanding examples of corporate websites:

Apple

Apple stands for a top-class corporate website – clear, simple and informative. The website reflects the premium character of the products. It makes it easy to get information and buy products. It's no coincidence that Apple is often taken as a role model.

Audemars Piquet

The Swiss watch manufacturer presents itself similarly high-quality, but with a more edgy, serious, and calmer note than Apple. The navigation is intuitive, so users can quickly find information about products and the history of the brand.

IBM iX 

Despite the extensive text offer, the IBM iX website appears clean, noble and versatile. The well-thought-out layout allows even longer texts to be presented clearly without appearing cluttered.

Asana

As one of the few SaaS companies, Asana stands out with an extraordinary design that clearly and understandably presents the product. Visitors immediately understand what Asana offers.

McKinsey & Company

Despite a complex portfolio, McKinsey manages to quickly convey what the company does through a clear structure, a clean design, and a well-thought-out layout. Such clarity is rather rare with B2B companies of this size.

These corporate websites have one thing in common: They rely on minimalism, clarity, and concise text, which is meaningful despite its brevity.

In 5 steps to a corporate website

Building a corporate website requires some expertise

Building a corporate website is complex. From the simple landing page to the enterprise website – all of this requires a strategy and a professional approach. The most important steps can be found here:

1. Positioning

Before you start your corporate website, you need a strategic positioning. You need to clearly separate yourself from your competition and develop your USP. Then you bring the expertise of your company to the point and formulate the core message in such a way that it picks up and convinces your target audience.

Roughly speaking, this goes as follows: Analyze your five main competitors (if available) in order to utilize a data-based differentiation potential for the demarcation. In the next step, you work out the main jobs-to-be-done of your target group and customers.

To the jobs-to-be-done you assign the pain points and desires of the target group. Based on this, you answer the following questions of potential customers:

• What makes your company unique and what is your USP?
• Why should your target group work with you?
• What do you do differently and better than everyone else?
• Why should your target group trust you?
• What is the concrete result when your customers work with you?

This first step determines the entire corporate communication and therefore the corporate website. Even if it is “only” a landing page.

Here you need absolute clarity. Validate your own positioning in the market or with real customers. Otherwise, you will burn a lot of money in every next step and achieve no results.

2. Website Architecture/Structure

When your positioning is in place, it's time to work out a structure. For the website as a whole, as well as for each subpage. 

For the start page it could look like this:

• Hero/Header
• Picking up the target group
• Addressing the pain/desire of the target group
• Communicating the solution
• Overview of services
• Testimonials
• About me
• Final CTA (Call to Action)

For this, you need to know the customer journey of your customers. Users who go to your blog want to inform themselves and probably have no interest in buying yet. In that case it makes little sense to pitch a consultation appointment at the very bottom. Instead, offer a newsletter subscription.

Fact is: A good structure makes your work easier, leads to a better UX and in the end to better results. However, a detailed explanation would go beyond the scope here and require individual consultation.

3. Copywriting

The texts on a website are the most important factor in the finished end product. The texts can only be brought to the point if the positioning and structure are in place. Otherwise, your entire corporate communication is not goal-oriented.

It should be noted to find the right language and tonality. You will never pick up medium-sized companies and solo self-employed people with the same tonality. On the C-level, it's a whole different world. Use words your target group uses.

So if your target group are medium-sized companies, then avoid words like dream customers, customer magnet or wow effect. And also avoid phrases like " Plan 5-10 warm appointments per week", "Definitely stand out from the market" or other fancy slogans.

Other psychological parameters are also essential when formulating. And all of this is the result of positioning.

When you write texts for a corporate website or landing page, then this should answer the following questions:

• What makes your company stand out?
• What is the challenge of your target group?
• What is the wish or goal of your target group?
• How do you bring your customers from A to B?
• Do you have social proof? (Testimonials and references)
• Do you have factual proof? (Statistics from studies)
• What sets you apart?

In addition, there are your values, vision, mission and your value proposition.

And all of this can't be taken off your hands by ChatGPT. You can use ChatGPT excellently as an assistant and significantly improve the quality of your work. If you want to know what the advantages and disadvantages of ChatGPT in copywriting are, then feel free to read Copywriting with ChatGPT.

From the first word to the last - Users must feel picked up and immediately understand what it's about. Pay attention to this: As little text as possible, as much as necessary.

4. Corporate Website Design

In theory, you could now set up a simple HTML page and the texts would fit. However, that looks unprofessional and boring. That's why you need a design that represents your company.

The corporate website is of course designed in the corporate branding and is integrated there. The corporate branding is a discipline of its own and must be in place before the website is tackled. To learn more about this, here are some helpful corporate branding tips.

In short: The design of your website plays a huge role in your external perception. There's a reason why the websites of premium brands and luxury brands look very nice. Or why expensive restaurants value aesthetics. We humans are visually inclined and therefore judge a lot visually.

Colors and shapes have an influence on our emotions. While black/white with clear edges appears serious and noble, round shapes in yellow and green appear casual and playful. Accordingly, the expectation for the company and the prices is.

Here the same principle applies as to the texts: Know your target group and communicate accordingly.

5. Implementation and Hosting

After the first four steps are completed, the phase of implementation begins. Here, the selection of the appropriate software is crucial. WordPress doesn't always make sense. And it is not always a good decision to assign an external partner, but to develop the website in-house.

It is important that the website can be quickly adapted and meets the technical requirements that users and Google expect. These include fast loading times, a good UX (User Experience) and Mobile First Design – even in B2B.

The choice of the hosting provider also plays an important role. This should have servers near the target group. For international corporate websites it is ideal if the host operates its own servers in each location to ensure fast loading and response times .

The choice of the right domain is also crucial. A .com domain is generally recommended. Companies that are active in the DACH region should additionally secure .de, .at and .ch domains, as well as the domains of the respective locations.

These statements are intentionally kept general, as a blanket statement is difficult. A corporate website is a very specific project, and especially in technical terms it is crucial to consider all relevant parameters. And these are individual.

What tools can assist you in the various areas of your corporate website?

There is a tool for every purpose.

At OMR Reviews we have a large selection of tools that can assist you in your work. The following tools help you to create whole corporate websites as well as landing pages:

OpenAI ChatGPT

Figma

Elementor

Bootstrap

Adobe XD

ChatGPT is a good tool when it comes to structuring your ideas, analyzing your competition and brainstorming. Then for the conception of your corporate website design Figma or Adobe XD are indispensable tools. Elementor and Bootstrap are practical tools for implementation, with Bootstrap requiring in-depth knowledge of HTML, JavaScript and CSS.

If you want to get to know the mentioned tools closer, then check out our best tools ‎for web design.

The market offers a variety of other tools, and their professional evaluation is crucial. If you outsource the creation of your corporate website, it is essential to ask about the technology used and its advantages and disadvantages.

Stay away from all providers, who praise a certain technology as the ultimate solution. The size of your company, the specific requirements for your website and the type of website management are decisive for the choice of the right technology.

Conclusion

A professional corporate website is the most valuable communication tool in the entire spectrum of your corporate communication. Through this article, you gained insight into how complex all of this is and what preparatory work is needed.

Fact is, you can't do this on the side. Your corporate website is the most important showpiece of a company and an investment in the future. Look for professional service providers. And yes, it costs a lot. You won't get far with 1,000 euros.

But the article should give you a framework, so that you can ask the right questions when choosing the right service provider and compare the approach. Or you do it with your team yourself, based on the points discussed here. Both are possible.

In any case, you have work ahead of you. But once invested, your credibility increases, lead generation becomes easier, and so does your application process.

A good corporate website brings you only benefits. A bad one only brings disadvantages. So what do you have to lose? And what do you have to gain?