7 Essentials for Business Website

So you’re starting a business, huh? You’ve created a name, product, and you’re ready to share it with the world! But do you have your online presence taken care of? In this modern technology age, putting your best foot forward means having a good website. Many companies have poorly created websites when they first open a business, but that doesn’t mean yours has to be poorly made as well (or that it has to stay poorly made should it already be created). In order to get things right the first time, these are the primary things that your new website should have:

 

1. User Friendliness

It's important that people visiting your site can navigate it with ease. First make sure it’s usable by any visitors you might have. It will need easy navigation, and each page should be clearly labeled with no internal 404 errors popping up. Everything that needs to be visible should be totally visible and unhindered by any other thing on your website. Once your website is designed, make sure to test it yourself and ensure that it’s easy to use.

2. Graphic Design

Your website should be pleasing to the eye. Using a color wheel to choose a proper color scheme is a good shortcut if you aren’t particularly color savvy. Try to be intentional about the visual side to this. Do your homework on text and image placement, and how the two work together (this looks like a good place to start). Also, company logos are important - your site’s color scheme should be related.

3. Technical SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization and is incredibly important if you want people to find your website around the world. There’s a lot of different aspects to the vast industry of SEO, but it’s important to start with optimizing your website’s code to be traceable by Google and other search engines. Understand H tags and meta descriptions, what a good amount of external links is, and read about good keyword practices so you know how to incorporate them into your page without getting penalized. The better your SEO, hypothetically the more brand awareness you will create! Also, if you’re wondering how well optimized your site is right now, there are online tools that will analyze your site’s SEO free of charge.

4. Effective Back Up

All of your data should be backed up and your servers should be secure. There would be  nothing worse than your site being hacked, online sales records being stolen, or your content being lost. So look at the different ways that can be carried out. Manual backups and cloud backups are the two most common ways of doing this, but it’s becoming increasingly popular to go with third party data management, which has its perks as well. However, keep in mind that third party systems that advertise themselves as free are often too good to be true.

5. Some kind of Help System

A FAQ page is always good asset to add to your website, and I’ve personally fixed a lot of problems using one. However, you want it to be both personable and inviting. Help lines or chat windows are extremely successful in my experience as a consumer. There’s something comforting about being helped one on one by a professional who can assist you right then and there. Keep in mind that this is a big step for any website, so it might not be feasible for you to include right off the bet.So I’d recommend setting up an e-mail address specifically for help inquiries, and try to respond to every request! Part of a business is good customer service, and offering help online is just as important as it is in store.

6. High Speed! High Speed!

Part of having a problem free website is making sure it runs at a proper pace. Often times, when a website takes a long time to load, it’s on the site owner’s end rather than the user’s end, even if the user has relatively slow internet. Little changes such as caching your pages and changing your image settings or formats are usually easier to fix than you might assume they are, as well, and will speed things up accordingly. Just think: the slower a site, the less time you will want to spend on it waiting for things to load. So extend that courtesy to your site visitors as well.

7. Ability to Buy ONLINE

Last but not least, you need a webstore. It is absolutely essential in this day and age that customers are able to buy directly from your website. It’s the easiest way you can move products around the world. See, brand awareness is spread more through the internet and word of mouth than anything else nowadays. Whether or not it is a good thing, it means that people do most of their shopping for new things from home. So give them the option to order how they want. Your sales will thank you!

 

If you have any more advice, let me know over Twitter @Robolitious.