There’s a lot to bear in mind when you’re putting together a website for your business; a lot will depend on it. Rather than feeling overwhelmed, why not take it one step at a time? These are the most important components that every successful business website needs.
Strong design
Before your site is published, you need to have a good design in place – one that is responsive so that it can be viewed using any device and one that takes account of the access needs of disabled visitors. Make sure that the style of your page, the colors and the font you use put across the image you want for your business. The more market research data you have on your target customers, the easier this will be. Even if you’re hiring somebody to look after the technical side of the design work, your input will be important to making sure it serves your needs.
A landing page
The most critical page on your website is the first one that visitors see. Most people glance at pages for only a few seconds before deciding whether to stay or go elsewhere, so this page has to grab the attention as soon as possible. It’s easier to achieve by using images or video than text. If you do use the latter, keep sentences and paragraphs short. Let people know, in simple terms, who you are and what you have to offer.
A blog
In order to draw people into your site, you need to provide useful, informative or entertaining content. In order to rank well on search engines, you need to update the site regularly. The obvious solution is to run a blog. If you don’t have the time to keep it regularly updated yourself, consider using a guest blogging service. Well written blog posts provide a natural home for keywords that will attract people to your site and, ideally, they will also feature material that visitors will want to share with their friends – thereby giving you some free promotion. Don’t forget to include social media sharing links to make it easy.
A call to action
To serve a useful purpose, your website needs to inspire or persuade visitors to do something. This might be purchasing a product directly, visiting your physical premises or phoning you to discuss the services you provide. Make sure they have all the information they need to do this. Your site should be designed to funnel them through a series of steps until they reach this point, increasing their feeling of interest and commitment at every stage. If you want to sell directly from the site, there are lots of simple plug-ins you can use to create a shop.
Once you have these components in place, you’ll be able to tinker with other aspects of the site over time in response to customer feedback. A site should always be subject to improvement, but these key elements will provide all that’s needed to get it working for you.
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