10 Must-have Things in your Business Website
When a customer needs something to be done or hears about your business or requires a specific product or service, the first thing he/ she is likely to do is to search the internet for more information. In such a situation, if your business website pops up in the search results you are definitely going to have an advantage. A website for your business is not just going to give you publicity and help your customers know what you have to offer but will also help you to know what your customer needs. If you haven’t yet thought of developing a website for your small business or if you are delaying because of the cost of developing a business website, you should definitely think about developing a business website now, the more people you reach out to the better it is for your business. Like every other part of your business, your business website will need planning too, in order to draw traffic to your site and retain your customers your website must have the following things:
1. Sitemap, Page Layout and Theme of the Website
Nobody wants to see a messy page with too many links in it or too many pop ups. In order to make it easy to use and attractive for your customer you must make sure your website has simple, well-organized pages. Do not include too many colors or different themes for each page. Follow a uniform approach in each of the pages. Another important aspect is the navigation between pages, it should be easy and smooth and the user should be able to find the required information in no time.
2. Include your Contact Details on your Business website
You must make it clear to the customer that you are available to answer their queries or give them further information or discuss the product or service you offer. Include a page that shows the users, the different ways they can contact you. Include your phone numbers, email addresses, customer care/ helpline numbers and also links to your social media accounts. Also, it will be a good idea to include your office address and a map to the same so that you can be found easily.
3. List out all your Services & Products along with details about your Business
When a customer visits your business website it is essential that they see what your business has to offer to them. List out your services and products category wise with short descriptions so that the users can see all relevant details. This will help them choose easily and gives them a good insight. You should also include details about your business in the About Us section. You can include details about why you are into the business since when and a short vision or mission statement.
4. Customer Testimonials
It is a good idea to show the feedbacks and testimonials you’ve received. Any service that has a good review or recommendation from another customer is sure to attract many more customers. It also helps you to showcase that your business is trustworthy and genuine. When people see reviews and feedback from other customers they know that your business is reliable and worthy of their investment. But make sure you don’t overdo it such that it looks like it’s all made up.
5. Feedback/Enquiry Forms and Filters
This is a brilliant idea if you want more interaction with the client, a client will be active on your website only if it’s easy to use. You can include forms with a lot of checkboxes and buttons so that your customer has very little to type. If it is a shopping website or one that has too many products being listed it would be good to include proper filters based on price, type and other categories.
6. Ensure Security and proper Web hosting of your Business Website
You need to ensure that your site is well secured and that there is no threat to online transactions and payments. This is very important if you want to maintain the trust of your clients. Though you would want to reduce the cost of developing a business website you need to take all measures to protect your business website from hackers. For online payments and transactions, you should make sure your site has an SSL certificate. There are a lot of companies which provide services of website development for small business at lower rates.
7. A Blog
Including a blog along with your website is a way to keep your customers updated. You can also find multiple contributors to your blog who can post interesting content relevant to your business. Also, updating the blog will be much easier than updating the content of your website, so you can host a lot of discussions and promotions on a regular basis.
8. Search Engine Optimization
Your website content must follow SEO techniques because it plays a very important role in getting your website discovered. If you can include the correct keywords, appropriate and interesting page titles, links, URL’s, videos and images, it will be great to attract traffic to your website, which means more people get to see your website. You should provide relevant Metadata with your website with each page so that the search engines can show your page in the results for relevant searches.
9. Appropriate Domain Name for your Business website
Your web address should be simple and easy to remember. Since you are most likely to have a business email account linked with the site, make sure you don’t have special characters or numbers in your URL so that the users don’t get confused. If the domain you are using is not .com then it is better you create a version of the .com page and then redirect to your home page. This will help you to avoid losing out on your valuable customers.
10. Responsive Website or Mobile ve
rsion and Browser compatible Business website
You need to make sure your website loads properly in all popular web browsers. Also, check for different resolutions and proper functioning in each of them. You also need to make sure you have a mobile version of your website so that it can be easily accessed from smartphones as most of the people find it convenient to browse the internet on their mobile.
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