What are the essential elements of an effective website?
By Charlie Britten
24 Dec 2019
Whatever your firm, a great website is a vital asset and getting the features right is essential.
In a digital age, almost every trader has a website and there is no doubt that if it is designed well, has a great professional look and will make a positive impression on all who log onto it.
However, such sites do not arise by accident and good web design services are needed to ensure you have a site that offers an impressive design, good navigation, gives a clear message about what your firm is about and can offer and, above all, leaves your visitor with a positive impression about your company that can increase the chances of them becoming your clients.
What elements does a good website need?
Indeed, there are several very specific things your site needs to have in place:
- Navigation - it should be easy for visitors to find the information they are looking for. A simple rule of thumb is that if they need to check your site map to find it, there is something wrong.
- Your site should be mobile friendly, because the majority of web searches are now carried out this way
- Pages need to load up swiftly: slow load-up speeds can lead to people soon navigating away from them and this can lead to your site being penalised in search engine rankings
- Your brand’s identity and promise should be emphasised in the content
- Your unique selling point (USP) and the causes that matter most to you should also be evident
- Your content should also be optimised to help boost your ranking in search engine pages
Why is technical SEO important?
A key element to creating a good user experience is technical SEO. This is the use of coding and other expertise to ensure your search engine ranking is not lowered by problems with the site.
In addition to slow load-up speeds, problems that may need addressing include:
- Broken links
- Bad backlinks to external content
- HTT code rather than HTTPS: The latter is far more secure
By taking steps to ensure these are not a problem, you can give your site’s written content the best possible chance of capitalising on good SEO such as strong keywords, relevance and good images to boost your ranking.
How can you encourage visitors to take further steps?
Marketers apply the rule of seven to their communications: This states that the average person needs to encounter a marketing message seven times before they make a buying decision. For this reason, it is likely that when someone visits your site for the first time, they will have seen your message on fewer than seven occasions.
At this point they will be in the ‘awareness’ stage, where they have an idea what you do and what your firm is about. The key is to move them through the ‘consideration’ stage to the point where they will make a purchasing decision.
As well as good content on your site, a particularly effective device can be a ‘call to action’, such as a clickable link or a button people can click on.
This can lead to a range of lead generation actions:
- They could be signing up for an e-newsletter
- Requesting a call back
- Signing up to receive emails from you
What BeUniqueness can do for you
BeUniqueness can offer a wealth of expertise in designing websites, whether it is from scratch or giving an existing portal a makeover. We can ensure you have a site in place that will help build your brand and give you the best platform for attracting new leads, turning them into customers and giving your existing customers good reasons to keep on coming back to you.