Whether you’re beginning a new business venture, rebranding, or want to update your company’s online presence, creating a great website should be at the top of your to-do list. A website is the hub of your company, and it can easily make or break the streamline of revenue. In order for your website to be a success, it needs to be well-designed, meaning it should look clean, professional, and visually appealing, be fully functioning, and easily understood. Below we break down 7 essential features all business websites must have.
Concise & updated content
From the moment visitors land on your site, they should know exactly who you are, what you do, and what you can offer them. This should be executed through both textual and visual content. The text on each page should include key words and direct descriptions that are short, concise, and easily understood. All imagery used needs to be visually appealing, but in a clean and clear manner. With this, it’s important to use only high-resolutions photos.
Call-to-action
Every company should offer a goal for its visitors. A call-to-action will allow both parties to achieve an end-result; the visitor might receive a discount code in exchange for giving a name, email, and zip code, which in turn, is valuable data to the company. Here are a few ways to create effective call-to-actions.
Social media access
It should go without saying that your website should have linked icons to all of your company’s social media platforms. With that said, most websites tend to post these on the bottom of the webpage, almost as an additional feature. This shouldn’t be the case. Moving your social icons above the fold (top half) of your homepage will give them more of a prominent standing and create a higher traffic flow throughout each of your platforms.
Reviews/testimonials
If it looks good and smells good, it probably is good. Featuring reviews or testimonials is an absolute necessity. Visitors will want to know who else has used your product and what kinds of experiences others have had with it. We recommend showcasing between 4-8 reviews or testimonials, depending on the length of each.
Intuitive navigation
All well-designed websites have an intuitive navigation capability. This means that it’s designed to offer visitors a seamless navigation experience as they go from one web page to another on your site. This type of traffic flow allows visitors to easily find the exact information they’re looking for, without any obstacles or intrusions of clutter.
Optimized imagery
Optimizing imagery allows photos to download faster, which gives visitors an overall better experience with your website.Think about it: if it takes a second too long for a website to download, chances are the visitor will get frustrated and eventually click out of your site (wouldn’t you do the same?). Here’s a step-by-step process of how to optimize web images for the best user experience possible.
Mobile-responsive
Today, websites are accessed on all different kinds of digital devices— tablets, smartphones, desktops, etc. Therefore, it’s absolutely impossible to have a successful website if it isn’t fully responsive. This means that its format is easily transferrable to the different kinds of digital devices people access websites on. Regardless of the platform, it should look, feel, and function exactly the same across the board.