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6 Essentials for a High Performing Business Website
Are you a small business or start up? Are you happy with your website's performance? If not, then following these 6 essentials can help in changing your performance. If you want to see more return from your website, then this article is perfect for you.
Consistent and professional branding
Ensure that all your branding is consistent across all media platform. Does your website branding match your social media? If not, then aligning these, can develop trust in your professional business.
Many articles will state that the main point to understand is consistency is key. However we believe in a revised version - Consistency is key but only if it’s professional. Do not keep repeating bad practices, find something which works and be consistent on making it successful.
Every heard the age old phrase - First impressions are everything. It’s the exact same principle in websites - first impressions are everything. Make sure your website is user-centred and tailored to them so they want to engage with you.
White hat SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
SEO is a complex section of web design, you’ll constantly be hearing suggestions. You'll also never know whether they are black (against the rules), grey (unsure middle ground) or white (within the rules) tactics to make your website rank number one for a specific keyword. In essence, SEO is the manipulation of a search engines index and ranking of your website. The better the ranking, the higher expected exposure of your site. We suggest staying extremely within the rules and ensure the basics are covered. Focus on choosing relative keywords for your title tags, meta tags, URLs, alt tags and anything you can add description to support the indexing of your website. However be careful not to produce white noise of the repeated keywords, only natural, contextual text will be supported.
Make a responsive website
How a website is displayed on multiple devices can affect SEO and website traffic. Ensure that your website is displayed well on all devices from desktops and phones to all smaller screens. Previously this relied on web designers producing two copies of a website whereby dependent on the type of device. The most compatible version, would be provided. Unfortunately, this meant managing and updating two websites. Now you can have one responsive website which changes its template to suit the device. Still thinking being responsive is not an essential? Over 50% of people are on smart phones when they’re searching online. Can you afford to not be reachable by these searches?
List building
The chances are you’ll have traffic to your website, unfortunately for most of us, there’s a small chance of first time conversion. Therefore you’ve got to be smart and offer a solution to develop a method to re-engage with these interested users. Most commonly businesses offer emailing lists to re-engage with their target audience. Be creative in your method to gain their information such as a free download of exclusive content which requires an email address. Once you’ve developed your contact list, then stay in touch, cultivate and develop trust to provide a good reason for returning.
Solid Marketing Message
When producing content for your website - think about the reader and not from your business. Lots of businesses make their website all about them, highlighting what they can do, where they started and constantly use ‘I’ or ‘We’. Instead utilise terms like ‘you’ or ‘your’ to highlight what you can do for the users, developing a personal touch and making the users want to contact you for your service/product.
Make it easy to reach you
Simplify the process to contact you. Complex methods will lose potential clients for multiple reasons including inability to wait. Utilise key call to actions (CTA’s) such as Buy Now buttons or a contact form.
The key behind them wanting to reach out is through establishing trust. Not only will your reputation, service and content develop trust, but so will small details included on your website. For instance, visitors are more likely to trust a website if it shows the businesses location and clearly states a telephone number. Once this trust is built, you will get more site visitors to commit.
There is many more inclusions to cover but these 6 are the essentials for success. See what you could achieve with a website redesign.
Want to speak to an expert?
Utilise any handy call-to-action (conveniently, we have included location, phone and a contact form for you) to speak to our expert web designers to see what you can achieve through your website.