Regardless of your industry, there are a few things to keep in mind if you want to run a successful business. One of these items nowadays is a fantastic website.
While web design trends come and go, there are ten aspects that should be present on every business website:
1. A Specific Goal
It’s not enough to understand what your website is for; anyone unfamiliar with your company should as well. When a visitor arrives on your site, two things should be obvious: what you do and what you want them to do.
When you land on this company’s webpage, the first thing you see is their goal (full-service gasoline and propane) and what the visitor should do (make an order). There is no ambiguity. That’s what you’re hoping to achieve with your website.
2. A straightforward web address
When it comes to creating your web address, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You want people to be able to readily find you. Create a basic web address that includes your company’s name so that visitors may find your site without too much effort.
3. Professional, strong branding
The value of branding is often overlooked by small businesses. Everything that identifies your company, from your domain name to the colors you choose, should be consistent. This makes it easier for people to recognize and remember you. If you want to run a successful business, this is what you need.
Your logo should be professional, not something thrown together in Photoshop by your nephew’s best buddy (unless your nephew’s best friend is a skilled graphic designer). Your website’s colors, fonts, and artwork should all reflect your brand.
4. Easy to Use Navigation
When it comes to website menus, there are numerous alternatives. You can have a drop-down menu, a scroll-triggered menu, an image-based menu, and so on. It makes little difference which style you choose; what matters is that it makes it simple for visitors to find what they’re looking for on your site. In terms of both design and page organization, your navigation should be straightforward and intuitive.
5. Contact Information That Is Easy to Find
If people can’t find your contact information, how do you expect them to contact you? You don’t want to miss out on a potential customer because they can’t find a way to contact you. You want to give people multiple options to contact you in addition to making your contact information easily accessible. A phone call, an email, or a web form are all viable possibilities.
6. Urgent Requests for Action
This relates to the first point we made about making your visitor’s next move evident. A call to action should tell your reader what they should do and, if possible, why they should do it.
“Simplify your taxes by booking an appointment with us today,” for example, maybe a call to action for an accountant. People understand what you’re asking them to do and what they’ll gain from it.
7. An Outstanding Mobile Experience
Because mobile traffic accounts for over half of all web traffic, having a decent mobile experience is essential. You’ll lose visitors if your site doesn’t load quickly and provides a pleasant user experience. Those visitors are unlikely to return since they will locate another website that provides a superior experience.
You should make certain that your web design firm generates responsive websites. Your site will look and run well on any device, whether it’s a computer, tablet, or phone, thanks to responsive web design.
8. Interesting Content
If people are going to visit your website, make it worthwhile for them to do so. Nobody wants to waste time skimming over a few pages. They want to see useful information that they can take with them when they leave your site. Whether it’s through search engines or social media platforms, content is how your website will attract visitors.
But you can’t just put anything on the internet and call it a day. It’s critical that your content be relevant to your customers, informative, and search engine optimized. Consider what your ideal customer might want to know about your products or services, then build websites and blog posts around those topics. As you may expect, strong SEO material isn’t easy to come by. It has to be discoverable. That’s why so many individuals hire content creators to help them with this.
The SEO Chick specializes in content creation and even offers freelancing content services to other SEO agencies around the world that are looking to improve their clients’ content without doing the work themselves.
9. Positive feedback
Let’s face it, people read reviews and rely on them for a lot of their judgments. So, if you have a lot of positive feedback, you want people to notice that when they come to your website. This will offer them confidence in your company’s reputation. It might also persuade them to write a similar review after doing business with you and having a positive experience.
10. Google Analytics
While it is technically possible to operate a commercial website without Google Analytics, we do not advise it. Google Analytics provides you with a wealth of data about your website’s traffic and users. You’ll discover a lot about your users, from their traffic source to the OS system they use the most, and you’ll be able to better adapt your marketing efforts to them. You may even establish monthly targets, such as a visitor making a phone call or completing a contact form, and measure if you meet them (or week).
When a business wants to get serious they start looking at ways to improve their marketing. The SEO Chick works with these sorts of businesses to assist with building a mobile-friendly website design to get the proper SEO on point both on and off-page. If you are interested in improving the leads to your business, give us a call today.