What You Need to Build a Marijuana Dispensary Website

A Good Domain Name

Before getting down to the technical stuff, it’s important to spend some time at the drawing board in order to figure out just what your dispensary website is going to be all about.

The first thing you’ll need for your dispensary website is a good name. Don’t pull your hair out if you can’t come up with the perfect domain name or if it’s already taken. While your site’s name is important, it’s the content on it that will ultimately make it sink or swim.

Your domain name should probably feature your dispensary name in some way. If your domain name is completely unrelated to your dispensary, it can make it harder for people to find you.

How can you come up with a good name for your dispensary website?

The best way is through a little creative brainstorming. Take some time to come up with a list of ideas off the top of your head and write them down. Head on over to a domain registrar (where you can register domains) and use their search function to see which of the domains from your idea list are available. If something catches your eye, go ahead and register it, or shop around at other domain registrars to see if you can get a better deal.

If brainstorming isn’t working, you can try out any number of free online domain name generators for some extra inspiration. Tools like NameMesh and PanaBee can come up with unique names that you might never have thought of without them. Once you’ve found your domain name, register it with your registrar of choice, and make sure that it points to your web hosting account.

An Appealing Website Design

People don’t like to waste their time on poorly built websites. Whether it's a bad design or just bad functionality, a bad website can make it hard to capture leads, drive conversions, and make SEO gains.

That’s why it's important to have a site design that flows well and is pleasurable to navigate. Your website should load quickly and be easy to use. Additionally, it should work to achieve your marketing goals, whatever they may be (leads, conversions, awareness, etc.). For example, if online orders are important to you, make sure that visitors can quickly and conveniently access your online menu and ordering process.

Nowadays, most websites are designed and built using a mobile-first approach, and your dispensary website should be no exception. According to recent research, more people are using mobile devices to shop online than ever before. A mobile-first design can ensure that your website appeals to both desktop visitors and mobile visitors.

MediaJel offers specialized dispensary website themes that are pre-optimized and which look great on mobile. We can help you get set up quickly and start making sales.

A Brand Identity

Building a website that is consistent with your dispensary’s brand is much better than just building one that looks good. Failing to apply your brand identity to your website is not just a missed opportunity to advance your brand, but it can actually weaken your brand through inconsistency. How exactly can you apply your brand to your website?

The layout and design of your marijuana dispensary website should mesh with your brand identity by featuring a combination of colors, visuals, and well-written copy that come together to create a cohesive picture of your brand’s personality.

Apart from branded visuals, prominent logos, and a complementary color scheme, your site’s content should also work to develop, position, and promote your brand.

A Content Strategy

Your marijuana dispensary website will also require a content strategy that can be relied upon to capture organic traffic, position and develop your brand, and generate online conversions and in-store traffic.

Capturing organic traffic is all about understanding your audience and creating the kind of content that they want to see. Building a content plan and an SEO keyword strategy that appeals to your target customer is key to connecting with them over the web. Valuable and engaging content doesn’t just capture organic traffic from search engines, it also gets shared over social media, capturing traffic from social platforms in the process.

Your content plan can work as a springboard for your brand development and positioning strategies. The words and messages included in your content can set the brand’s tone, demonstrate the brand’s value, and establish more personal connections with readers. Every new piece of content will give you a chance to further grow your brand and make a positive impression.

And last, well-structured content can help you to promote and sell specific products or brands. Featuring certain products in your content or creating pieces of content just for them, can be a great way to draw more attention to those products and even generate more sales.

A Reliable Web Host

What is web hosting? Just think of your site as a collection of files and your web browser as a tool that allows you to view those files. But in order for anyone to be able to access them, they have to be hosted on a server that is always live and connected to the internet.

That means that you’ll need to find a web host. And since uptime and site speed are crucial to providing a good user experience, you’ll want to find a good one.

Good hosting providers will have no problem offering you an uptime guarantee. It’s important to find a reliable web host with consistent uptime so that your site is always accessible. Customers that show up to an inactive domain may just decide to browse the competition instead.

Additionally, site speed is not just important to the user experience, but also to SEO. A page’s site speed is a search engine ranking factor, with Google saying time and time again that a faster site will help you rank better. Moreover, a fast site will keep visitors from getting frustrated and clicking away from your site, lowering your bounce rate and increasing the likelihood of visitors turning into buyers.

You should also try to find a web host with excellent customer service. If a technical issue arises, you don’t want to get stuck having to fix it yourself with the help of vague instructions. Browse the host’s website for details about their support team and about their response time before committing to a long-term hosting package.

An SEO-Optimized Website

Last but not least, you will need a content management system in order to make managing your website much easier. A content management system (CMS) is a tool that helps webmasters to create, modify, and manage the content on their website without the need for specialized web development skills.

Creating and updating sites using a CMS will save you a lot of time and frustration. But first, you will need to find a CMS that suits your needs. There are plenty of CMS options to choose from, and there really is no perfect CMS, but certain tools are worth mentioning.

By far the most popular CMS tool is WordPress. Thanks to its ease of use, many features and plugins, and affordable pricing, WordPress is now estimated to power over a third of all sites on the web. But it’s far from the only CMS tool you should consider. Other popular options include Joomla, which is not as intuitive as WordPress but is still easy to use, and Drupal, which has more customizability, but is also more difficult to learn and use.

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