You think the website is in shape now. It has been designed nicely, loading page is pretty fast, there are some blog posts relevant to your business, a few quality links are there, people can access your contact details easily, etc. etc. So, you think your job is done. You consider your website to have all the elements to deliver you prospects and businesses month after month. You think, once the website is designed and content is in place, you do not need to do anything except routine checks? Well, just shrug off all these misconceptions and notions that you have harbored for so long.
Let me tell you, a website is a moving digital entity that requires continuous development to stay relevant to its audience. Just getting a decent website in hands is not enough. Any website that is not updated often and gets stagnated over time is actually avoided by search engines. Similarly, our customers and investors do not prefer a web presence that just does not look fresh. The absence of fresh contents often makes a website look abandoned. So to ensure your website having a lively presence with regularly updated and fresh content and optimized performance, you to take care of a few things.
Here we are providing 7 invincible elements every business website should have.
- Contact Details Prominently Displayed
As soon as visitors or customers come to your site and feel interested, they should be given a way to contact your business. You might have only an online presence or can just work as a local business, but the contact details should always be mentioned clearly in a prominent area of your website. In many ways, you can do that. You can add a specific contact page with your business phone number, address, email address, a contact form, Google map. Local businesses can also provide a number of email addresses for people handling different departments.
Another popular option is adding the important contact information to the sidebar, footer or right corner of the header. There are websites that show contact details by using both ways. You can show contact details on the home page and the contact form in the specific Contact Us page.
- Clutter free Pages
Do you know too many visual elements on the home page make it look like trash? If you put together everything in a home page it would unnecessarily shabby and cluttered and your visitor would lose the focus in directing to the content they need. With too much clutter of visual elements it is often hard to see content, get to the navigation and ultimately get to the content and information visitors are looking for. But how can you make your web page free of clutter?
Well, there are quite a few effective ways to create a less cluttered clean layout of web page. But in most cases it begins with more white or negative space around a page. When it comes to designing a visually optimized website, less is always more. Using white space will help you separating the contents and on-page elements. Always make your navigation structure clear, prominent and grabbing. A clean page layout helps visitors stay on the page longer and they find the website useful or suited to their purpose.
- Responsive and Mobile Ready
Responsive design has become the biggest determinant design element of a modern website. With web accessibility now encompassing a whole array of devices with different screen sizes and capabilities, Responsive Design has become a bare minimum standard of web design. A responsively designed site can address the device-specific differences and maintain the website look and feel across various device screens and browsers. You have to give your users the absolute freedom to use any browser or device to access your website.
You can address the mobile users more specifically with a mobile ready website. You can create a mobile website version or build a mobile app to address the mobile users. As the dominance of mobile devices in the accessing web has already been clear and is still increasing, a separate mobile-ready version of your website can really be effective to optimize your web presence for users of mobile devices. You can also design a mobile app to give your users a native feel apart from the usability through web browsing.
- Optimized Content
Content is still the king that draws your users and let them stay with you. Quality, search engine optimized and readability optimized content is often the key element in creating your brand identity. You can optimize contents in several different ways.
There are few ground rules that you should remember. First of all, to ensure optimum readability avoid using too long sentences and paragraphs. Remember, these days we mostly scan than read the whole contents. You can optimize readability by using bullet points, subheads, etc. For SEO, you need to target long tail keywords but do not stuff contents with them. Keyword repetition should be restricted to 2 or 3 times, not more than that.
Using relevant images to contents is a nice way to add relevance and hit search engines. But do not forget giving image credits to outside sources and for SEO reasons, give each image alternate attribute before uploading the contents. In an informative content using infographics can be a great way to make users informed quickly and intuitively.
- Quality Links
It is the links on your website that would add credibility to your website, both for the search engine and audience. External links should always be relevant, contextual and helpful for the users. More authoritative links you can use and get backlinks from authoritative sites, better an SEO standing you have in terms of links. For internal links, you should always link pages that are relevant to the context.
- Social Media Action
These days social reviews and opinions make or break a web identity or business. So, your web presence needs to have a robust social presence. Make social pages of your website and provide those links with respective icons just below the contact details. Let these icons open in different tabs upon clicking so that your visitors do not go away and get distracted. Link each blog post update or any new event, product campaign with your social page. Lastly, include floating social share buttons in every blog post page and provide a Pinterest button with every image. Engage with your social audience, comment, participate in groups and promote your website among your social friends.
- Clear Calls-To-Action
Finally, clear prominent CTA is key to deliver business conversion for your website. What you want from your visitors? Do you want them to subscribe to an email newsletter or want them to download the e-guidebook you have just launched? If you want them to perform an action and guide them towards it, provide them clear CTA button in the home page. A pop-over age with a call to action button can also be a great idea.
Author Bio
I’m Darshan Patel, a lead Search Engine Analyst at Nimblechapps – Coolest Mobile App Development Company. I believe in using a variety of strategy to create business’s online presence that delight and deliver.