One of the greatest marketing challenges for any business can be what does your website really need? What should be included and what should be left off? What’s important and what isn’t?
No matter what your business or industry, here are the 10 things that your website needs to include.
A clean and uncluttered design
Looks may not be everything but they do count!
When it comes to your website design move away from the cluttered look. It’s not about how much information you can get on your website, it’s about the right information. Too many people tend to clutter their website with everything and everything. Stop! Stop now!
Sit down and decide on your key information, services and what you need your visitors to know when they visit your website and stop right there. Websites needs to be crisp, clean and professional not full of content that simply overwhelms your audience. Get to the point and keep it simple.
A cluttered website truly can be worse than no website at all.
Responsivity
Over 70% of your website visitors are likely to visit your website from their mobile phone or tablet meaning your website must be responsive. In other words, it must work perfectly on mobile phone.
Here’s the truth – if your website is not responsive you will lose potential clients.
People do not have the patience or inclination to be zooming in and out and not being able to easily access what they want because you don’t have a website that works on their mobile phone. Not only that, Google are not a fan of websites that are not responsive, so you are much more likely to struggle to be found on Google if your website is not responsive.
A non-responsive website is a big error if you are serious about marketing your business online.
The proof of the pudding
Your website is the perfect opportunity to showcase that:
Your website needs to contain the proof of the pudding which means you need to include some of, if not all:
People are far more likely to do business with people that can show them the quality of work and service.
Policies
Sorry to bring up GDPR, but the truth is, you can run but you can’t hide.
Most websites need be display 3 policies in particular to ensure that you are fully compliant, and these are:
If you are unsure what policies your website needs, then do contact us for a conversation.
Eye catching imagery or video
Gone are the days where words alone will do your website justice. Big, bright and well created imagery is what you need, along with video if possible.
You need well written wording to communicate to your audience and for SEO purposes, but it must be accompanied by imagery. Words tell your story, but pictures bring your story to life. Ensure that your website design is full of high quality imagery that makes an impact. If possible, also create videos that communicate in a simple and effective way, who you are, what you do and the difference you make to your clients.
Audience relevant
The greatest mistake you can make with your website is to not communicate directly to your potential audience. It’s ok having a nice-looking website with good SEO, but it must impact your target audience. You need to:
Then you build your whole website around those answers. You must scratch where they are itching if you want your website to become a powerful lead generation machine.
SSL Certificate
In October of 2017 Google started to highlight websites that do not have an SSL certificate. Those websites can now be displayed by Google as unsafe and believe us when we say this does not look good for your business. Imagine a potential customer going on your website and a big red warning page coming up saying that your website is unsafe. It’s not ideal!
All websites that are passing data (such as contact forms) now need this certificate in place as it encrypts any data that is being sent to keep it safe.
If you don’t have an SSL certificate on your website, we would advise you to act fast. If you want us to investigate this for you, then drop us a line here.
Live chat
We live in a day and age where people want it and they want it now. One of the hottest leads you can generate is people taking part in live chat on your website. They are keen, they want to know more and they could be ready to buy.
Adding live chat to your website is simple to do and over the course of a year can prove to be one of the best ROI marketing moves that you can make.
Call to actions
A call to action is a marketing term that means to ask people to take the next step. Your website needs to have one on every page
For example, when someone has clicked on a page that explains your services, what do you want them to do next? It’s vital you know what you want them to do and you ask them to do it. On your website home page, what do you want your visitors to do? Then ask them to do it.
Sometimes you don’t get because you don’t ask so make sure your website is asking the right questions and encouraging your visitors to take some action.
A blog
We would go as far as to say that every business website should contain a blog for these 3 reasons:
Adding a blog to your website is normally straight forwards and by simply adding one blog a month (which might take an hour or two) you are improving your website on a regular basis and showcasing the quality of your business.
Your website is the online face of your business and you need to get it right. The above 10 points are questions you need to ask and answer for your business website and if you are falling short, maybe now is the time to act. Once you do, you will start to see your website generate much improved results.
Choose Purple are a team of professional and creative website designers near Doncaster in the UK. We focus on getting results for your business using your website and online presence. For a conversation about your marketing, contact us here.
