7 Features of Highly Effective Websites
The first thing that many customers require at the beginning of our collaboration is getting a beautiful website.
We totally understand this requisite, but during consultations our experts always emphasize the following aspect: besides being visually appealing, a website should also be easy to navigate and use and to offer concise and valuable information. Otherwise, there’s no point in building a website – it will do more harm than good to you company’s reputation.
After more than 7 years of web design and online marketing experience, we have managed to identify the most important features you should consider when building or redesigning your company website:
1. Clear company information
Just like including complex and redundant design elements, using fluffy statements to talk about your company puts visitors off.
The homepage is the first place users lay their eyes upon, so make the best out of this important piece of real estate. Anyone accessing your website should immediately find out who you are and what you do, otherwise they won’t spend too much time on your website. Also avoid clichés like “We’re committed to our customers’ satisfaction” – they don’t actually say anything about your business.
2. Calls to action
Effective websites should be lead generation tools that eventually convert prospects into customers. After all, the final goal of having a website is determining someone to take action – contact you, subscribe to your email, sign up for your service, or purchase a product.
This is why it’s important to include calls to action on every page – visitors should be provided with an easy way of taking action right after every piece of persuasive writing.
3. Contact Information & Social Media Links
There’s no point in making your customers look for your phone number or email address; you should ensure that your company’s contact information is posted on every page of your website. You may even want to place the phone number at the bottom of each page, if most of your leads are generated by phone.
Make sure you have links to all your social media profiles (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc…)
4. Fast Website
Have you heard about the 3 seconds rule? If a page doesn’t load in 3 seconds most users hit the “Back” button causing you to lose traffic and consequently profit. Mobile device users can be even more impatient and change their mind faster before that awesome looking but huge website is loaded. Moreover, a low website speed affects your Google ranking as well, because search engines consider less relevant websites providing poor user experience. Simplicity is the best solution for keeping your website effective and fast-loading. Continue reading about website speed and how it impacts conversation.
5. Pleasant appearance
Aesthetics is important as well, and your website should look professional and polished, as it often represents the first contact between you and your potential customers. Some important aspects you must keep in mind are choosing an appropriate color scheme (just 2 or 3 primary colors), featuring appealing graphics, using quality pictures, balancing content with white space, and making text easy to read. Your website’s visual component shouldn’t distract attention from its written contents, but rather be complementary to them.
6. Customer Reviews and Testimonials
Building trust is a prerequisite of successful business, but it’s difficult for customers to trust a company just because its representatives say it’s the best. This is why people love to read customer reviews (Example: Yelp reviews) and to see testimonials on your website; include genuine third-party endorsement with pictures to your website and your company will enjoy more credibility and authority.
7. Strong SEO
If you want to attract traffic to your website, it’s vital that you perform both on-site and off-site optimization. On-site SEO involves taking care of some technical aspects such as URL, title tags, alt image tags, keywords and so on, while off-site optimization is more about building backlinks on other reputable and relevant websites. Unlike other one-time fixes, SEO is a continuous effort – you will have to implement your ongoing SEO tactics on a regular basis.
Your turn now:
Are you satisfied with your website’s performance? You can get expert’s advice now. Call or email us for a free website assessment at (563) 543-6433!
