Essential features that every small business website must have This is the age of the internet. So, owning the small business in your locality is not enough. You can reach the global customer through online. Well, I guess you got my viewpoint, don’t you? Yeah, alright. It’s about the website of your business. Crafting a website is not a tedious task. You can create your website/blog without hiring the professional if you give some meaningful time. Along with your website, it is better to design a logo that represents your brand. You can find some free online tools to create a logo for your small business. Now, let’s come to the point. Having an aesthetic website means to add an online value of your business. But, what are the essential components that make your website effective? Well, you are here to get its answer. So, without any delay, here we go. Driving a lot of customers is the main goal of any small business. And holding these essential features in your website will cater you to achieve your goal.
Catchy domain name & reliable hosting
You must choose a domain name such that your domain name correlates to your business brand. And it should be catchy that the visitors could remember it after a few visits. If you feel difficulty in picking a unique domain name, you can try some online tools like Panabee, Name Mesh, Domainr, Domiansbot. And depending upon the nature of your business, you must pick the appropriate domain name extension like .com, .net, .org, .biz. Choosing a reliable hosting is important because it may impact on the performance of your site. Good and secure hosting provider will definitely provide high-security to your data, 24/7 technical supports, quick page load and regular backups. The performance of your host provider will also affect the ranking of your site in the search engine. So, you should analyse carefully before choosing a hosting provider.
Simple and easy navigation
It is your duty to navigate every new visitor to your site with clear direction. Firstly, make your design simple to understand. You can also use the drop down menu to make navigation easy that guides your visitor to the information that they want. Then, check every link on your site and remove the broken link if there is any. Next, you have to choose the logical name that matches the nature of your page like About us, Blog, Services.
Clear-cut description
Your website is the place where you define yourself to your potential customers through virtual face-off. It means without direct contact, you can clarify your customer about who you are and what do you do. Mentioning your business objectives and your products in your homepage will help your customer to determine whether you are the right one for their need or not. Your clearcut description may engage the interested visitor on your site. Furthermore, to make your visitor familiar with your business achievements, you can add About us page. Here, you can also add the information about your employee, a brief history of your company and the benefits you offer. It would be more attractive if you can add photos of your team and brands you have worked with.
Easy way to contact
You never know, when will be your website visitors turn into your honest client and try to contact you. So, it is better to include your contact info in the top left/right corner on every page of your website. You can also use footer or sidebar to include your contact info. You can include your contact number and address in your contact info. It is also highly recommended to include a Contact us page in your site. And, it will be more favoured to add different ways to contact like address, phone number, email address, a special contact form. Modern trends on the website add a link to your location using Google Map, which will definitely help your clients make a direct visit without complications.
Featured customer testimonials
Most of the people believe in the other’s words. And testimonial is the statement of your clients regarding your service. It is important to build the trust of your clients, and it is most effective for the new business owner. Testimonial also helps in marketing and promotion of your product or services.
Fresh and updated content
Pushing a blog or content on the website will boost your SEO rank in the search engines. Thus, a successful website contains regularly updated and fresh contents to preserve its rank on the search engines. The fresh and unique content will certainly make customers land on your site to search something interesting and useful answer to their query.
Social Media Integration
Your web presence may not be visible to every customer. That’s why social media is here to rescue all small business owners. Perhaps, we can say the social media is a good approach to online marketing. Today, every person engages themselves in more than one social media. So, you should maintain your business account in different social media and engage your customers. Integration of social media on your website will also boost your SEO position, raise your revenue with a low investment, and broaden your targeted customer reach.
Coherent Call to Actions
Call to Actions is the method to convert your visitor into a lead. So, the use of clean and coherent Call to Actions button will increase conversion rates on the website. For this, first, you have to make your vision clear about your customer on what you want them to do and tell them. For example, if you want them to sign up for your site, you can put the Signup button. Or, if you want the free availability of an e-book to the subscribers, you can add Subscribe to Download my e-book button on your site.
Basics of SEO
Having a sound knowledge of SEO is good to all. SEO support your website to rank on the search engines. Some basic topics on SEO cover unique URLs of each page, quality content with the use of the keywords, integration of internal links, and alt tag in the image.
Mobile-friendly design
A few years ago, designing a website focused only on the desktop users. But, now the technology has evolved so fast that you have to verify responsive of your website which means your website must have a consistent look on all devices like mobile, tablets, and laptop. The mobile-friendly feature has a direct impact on driving traffic to your site. And lately, Google has also considered as an important ranking factor. So, I’d say that you shouldn’t ignore this feature in your business website. All of these features will surely change the face of your website and allure high traffic to your site. Furthermore, you have to keep your design simple and have a sense of eye-catching colour to make your website more attractive. What other features can you add to your business website? Suggest your thoughts in the comment section.