A successful business has an effective website. B2B, B2C or P2P platforms cannot be successful without some essential elements. Knowing what those elements are part of the work of your design and development team, however, you should also know what is important for the success of your business, and there are 14 elements that you do need to include.
1. Identify your goals
Knowing your goals allows you to create a strategy. Make a list of everything you want from your website. Create a list of queries such as:
- why you are designing the website
- what kind of website do you want to design
- what outcomes you expect from the site
Identifying your goals and planning a strategy according to those goals is the first step. You then need to apply your business plan to your design by defining your:
- niche
- name
- logo
- title
- tagline
2. Clear site navigation and architecture
Clear site navigation is essential to search engines for indexing your website pages easily. Visitors want an intuitive experience. They want to look at your page and understand how to find what they are looking for, move around your site and make purchases with total confidence.
Every important page of a good business website is directly linked from the home page. Any page of your website should not be two clicks away from your home page.
Consider using a silo architecture for your website. Silo architecture helps organise your pages into various sections.
3. Craft the perfect home page
Your website should have potential to impress a visitor within the first 10 seconds that they visit your website. More than 90{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} of visitors make an immediate decision about your business and your website by viewing your home page. A business website should not be ambiguous. It should communicate your business, product or service upfront.
You should insure the perfectly finished elevator pitch. Remember to recheck that your logo, promo message, tagline and first paragraph of your home page is clear and motivating.
4. Clear and visible call to action
In general, call to actions include a ‘buy now’ button or display of contact numbers or a request quote section. The goal is to engage your site visitor as quickly and easily as possible by ensuring that your business is accessible.
Your website should clearly guide visitors towards what should be their next step, whether that be to buy your product or engage your service. Call to actions are important to turn a website visitor into a business lead or conversion.
Your call to action design should guide visitors through your website so that they can learn more about the product and services you offer simultaneously. Your social media, blogs, vlogs and other content should have CTAs that link the user back to your homepage to help reenforce your brand and business.
Experienced web designers know to include your contacts on the footer with links. Any ‘buy now’ or ‘request a quote’ buttons should stand out and be clearly visible, and generally using a consistent colour for CTA buttons is an effective strategy.
5. Mobile friendly version
More than 60{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} of website visitors prefer to browse on their smartphone or other devices. For this reason it is essential that your website have mobile friendly versions. Every second, 25{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} of people are using smartphones and tablets for browsing.
Having a site that works on multiple devices in its optimised form is no longer a choice. You need to ensure that your site works on Android, iPhone, laptop and PC. People spend time browsing on devices and working on laptops and PCs, and they want a seamless experience as they move through the process.
6. ‘About us’
Your ‘about us’ should be about your customer. Customers do not want to know too much about the founding of your company or how many people you have working globally or that you still live your mother’s basement. Your customers want to know ‘what’s in it for them’?
Create a humble and engaging portrait of your team. Present your information attractively, but keep it simple.
7. Content is king
There is no alternative to high-quality content. From site content to blogs and vlogs, your content needs to be engaging, customer directed and value adding. High quality content is vital. If you have minor errors, typos or make simple mistakes, people will soon move on and find an authority that they trust to deliver the message.
If you can provide answers within your industry by using SEO and promoting your content, you can develop loyalty and a reputation for excellence that can generate leads and place you before the right audience.
8. Excellent visual design
An aesthetic design and interesting visuals grab attention. However, you need to understand the latest in website design research, what is trending, what colours are current, and what typography is most appealing to the majority.
However, there is more to it than just looking great. You also need to understand your industry. If you are B2B retailer selling tools to mining companies, you need to consider who you are speaking to. Would white bunnies and unicorns playing in fields with rainbows be appropriate for communicating with your imagined customer? It might be, and that is something that your marketing team needs to know and share.
9. Robust CMS and back-end infrastructure
The usability of a business website depends a lot upon CMS and structure especially in eCommerce. Your site needs to be secure, scalable and always working.
The platform your website is built upon creates a huge impact on its usability, performance and how easily you can update your content and interact with your visitors. When selecting a content management system for your website, you should check that your site is:
- Simple and can be edited from any device, any time
- Able to be updated without downtime
- SEO friendly
- Secure
- Fast
10. Tracking of conversions
Some web designers do not pay attention to visitor tracking. However, tracking conversions is a good strategy. By doing this you can evaluate the marketing strength of the website and measure the cost which is required to acquire visitors.
11. Smart marketing strategy
You need a marketing strategy to promote your business online. This includes affiliate marketing, social media strategy and SEO.
Pay per click advertising, email marketing and other traditional strategies are also tools at your disposal. The most essential element is a strategy. You need to have a plan so that it can be executed. Advertising does not happen without planning, and audiences can’t find you without you promoting your business.
12. Poised and perfect
You should never ever allow your website to become slow because of broken images and dead links. You need to QA test your site on a regular basis to ensure that you are presenting your business as professional, engaged and professional.
13. Define metrics and use reviews
Monitoring the performance of your website is important. Make a list of your goals and match it with the performance of your website to check whether it is meeting your goals.
Create parameters about what to be tracked and measured to determine the performance of your site. Site reviews are a helpful way for you to analyse your website and deliver the experience that your customers are seeking.
14. Seek support
Knowing what is right for your site means researching your competitors, being creative and listening to your audience. Your site should be an ongoing project that follows organic growth. This growth should be based on your feedback – this feedback can be found in the form of website analytics.
Your audience should inform the direction that you take in marketing, web design and lead generation. If you need to find this information, you only need to pull your data and follow the analytics.
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