The difference between a website and an effective website lies in the website itself. A website is not just a fancy domain name or a lucrative design. It can be used as a powerful lead magnet for your B2B company, or as an online store to sell your merchandise, or as a blog to show your expertise. No matter the goals, in order to achieve them, there are 6 must have features on a website.
Clear Navigation
A visitor must be able to navigate and access information with ease. A visitor should not need to learn about the website’s page structure to access information. Easy navigation should be given the top priority in designing a website. Use the menu to provide important page links (About Us, Services, Products, Blog etc).
Put yourselves in customers’ shoes and analyze how easy it is to access information on your website. Make information as easy to access as possible.
Social Media Links
Social media has changed the landscape of business in many ways. It has become one of the biggest mediums through which businesses engage with their customers. Companies have found ways to generate leads, increase their outreach, improve customer engagement and much more.
Designers can use websites to show the latest tweets or the most recent Facebook update etc. Integrating the social media platforms into your website will help boost your SEO, improve your business’ footprint on the internet and build your following across several social platforms. Websites that have a blog can also use social media links to encourage content sharing on social media platforms.
Contact Information
The Contact Us page plays an very important role for your website visitors to become customers. Having a website improves your chances of converting your visitor into a customer or client. A website is not just about the domain name or the trendy design. A website can be used in several ways. It can be used a lead magnet for your business.
The Contact Us page is one of the most essential page on your website. Never forget to add your contact details and Social media links. Allow the visitor to contact you via an email, a phone number or via social media.
Call to Actions
Whenever someone lands at your homepage, or any other page, what type of action of the visitor would take must be clear. The website must have a method of converting visitors to leads. Call to action is one of the methods.
A call to action (CTA) is an image or text or a button that prompts the visitors, leads, or customers to take a specific action. It can be used, to schedule a consultation, or download a free report. Make sure it’s relevant and useful – sit down with your team and figure out what type of action you want a visitor to take.
Responsiveness
Responsiveness design is the mobile-first approach that suggests that the layout of the website should adapt to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. It’s evident that nearly 60% of searches happen on a mobile screen. There are higher chances of people visiting your website from a mobile or tablet device, than on a personal computer. And, the chances are only going to get higher.
How your website looks on a desktop computer and how it looks on a mobile device is not the same. No body would want to look at a website in which the images and text overlap each other. Responsiveness is not only useful for mobile usage, it’s also helpful in ranking the website higher.
Less loading time
An optimized and efficient website must load three or less seconds. Loading time is one of the contributing factor to ranking higher on search results. People really like websites that provide great user experience. Less loading time is certainly a helping factor.
Reducing load time is not rocket science. Analyse the amount of data webpage requires to load. Use GTmetrix to run a performance test on your website. Most of the times, uncompressed files such as GIFs, unprocessed images etc. To optimize your website, compress unprocessed files and reduce the amount of data, enable caching and minify resources.