What your New Business Website Needs to be Successful
Are you starting a new business or division and need a website? Is your current website dated? Or does it need a facelift with new tools? There are some important factors to take into consideration as you look ahead to a new site. These factors will help distinguish you from your competition, make your site easy to find, convert visitors into leads, bring current customers back, and add credibility to your business.
12 Things Your New Business Website Needs
1. Simple Domain
The Domain is your web address. It should be short, easy to spell and remember, and contain your business name. Before buying a domain or even before naming your business, make sure it’s available and also available on social media platforms as well.
2. What You Do
Your home page should clearly show what you do and what differentiates you from your competition. The average web visitor takes 5-8 seconds to decide if they’re in the right place. Be clear, concise, honest, and keep it simple. You can’t say everything! Visuals communicate better and faster than large blobs of text.
3. Contact Information
Have your phone number in the top right-hand corner of every page along with a ‘Contact Us’ link. Throughout the site offer different ways people can contact you: buttons, linked text or forms. You want to make it simple and easy. Always have convenient ways for your customers to reach you.
4. Clear Navigation
Make it easy for visitors to find their way around your site with a simple to use and easy to find navigation which directs visitors to the keys areas of the site. Include a site map page as well, both for the user and also because it’s used by search bots and helps with SEO. The navigation should make it easy to find and get to the core areas of importance in your site in just a few clicks. The fewer the clicks the better!
5. Call-to-Action
Tell your visitor what to do next. Once someone has found your website make sure they don’t leave without connecting further with you. Well placed, meaningful calls-to-action will help. It could be a way for them to contact you, ask a question, place an order, download your brochure or ebook, or sign-up for your blog posts via email. The key is moving them from visitor to lead you can nurture.
6. Well-Written Content
Easy to understand, well-written content will explain what you do and how you can help; it also helps your site get found by search engines. Keyword density is identifying the important word or phrase per page and ensuring the content the density of that word/phrase is around 3-5%.
7. SEO
SEO can feel overwhelming but it can’t be overlooked. Your website must have everything in place for it to work perfectly. Basic SEO consists of keywords, title tags, meta descriptions, alt tags on images, the correct use of headings, internal links, and external links.
8. FAQ Page
Having a Frequently Asked Questions page is a great way to include lots of keyword phrases that potential customers search for. As well, it gives users a “one stop” place to get a lot of answers to those common questions you hear all the time.
9. Blog
A blog adds content to your site. It also shows that you’re an expert in your field and a trusted source for help, advice, and information. Use the blog to provide value and resource-rich posts. Aim for 600-800 words per post, focused on a topic and using a clear title and sub-titles throughout the post. It’s important to make our content “scannable” for viewers with ordered lists and headings for each key area of the post.
10. Social Media Integration
Have prominent links to all your social media pages and include social share options throughout your site, especially on blog pages. If your content is good, then people will want to share. Make it easy for them! It’s a simple help to them and therefore can only benefit you.
11. Mobile Friendly
With more and more people using smartphones to search the web it is vital that your website is responsive and mobile-friendly. This means your site will look good to viewers no matter what size screen they are using…mobile, tablet, or computer. This is key today with more web pages being consumed on mobile devices than desktop devices!
12. Stable Web Hosting
To avoid having your online identity hijacked it’s crucial to use a secure web hosting company. Keep your content management system up-to-date and change your passwords regularly. Just because a big online company offers $5.99/month hosting doesn’t mean that’s a good idea!
Those web hosts tend to have massive amounts of sites on one server and thus are more susceptible to being blacklisted for spamming. It only takes one bad site on a server to get all the sites blocked.
3 Things Your Website Should Not Have
1. Flash Media
Search engines cannot read flash and it distracts your visitor. It’s old technology that does not work on many browsers and mobile devices. Therefore do not have flash animation on your site. Alternatively, make sure your developer uses HTML5 for animation as it is the latest leading technology.
2. Moving Text
This is nothing more than a gimmick and adds no value to your site. The days of scrolling text are gone. Instead, think of vivid, attention-capturing images. Images communicate better, faster, and capture the user attention the best.
3. Music
Never have automatic music on your site. If you blast them unexpectedly they’re more likely to leave your site immediately.
Have questions about how to get more website traffic. Contact us or give us a call.