In today’s business world, having a website is critical, and that website needs to meet specific standards. Your website must be searchable, easy-to-use, and attractive right from the start. Your website gives potential customers their first view of your company, and it can make either a good or bad impression. A good, mobile-friendly design, easy navigation, and good SEO practices can guarantee your visitors will find you and be impressed.
If your website isn’t giving you the results you would like, then changes may be in order. You should consider the following four areas when improving your existing website or designing a new one.
ONE: Clean, Mobile-Friendly Design
Keep the colors simple, the text easy-to-read, the navigation straightforward, and the design responsive. It also needs to load quickly, so you may need to have fewer images and videos or reduce the pixel size of some pictures.
One error many websites make is tiny text that’s almost the same color as the background. Your visitors should not need to highlight the text to read it. Make the text large and a contrasting color. White background with dark-colored text is clean, classic, and easy to read. Likewise, a black background with white text works well.
While cramming as much information as you can onto one page is tempting, you will get a better response to your site if you keep sentences and paragraphs relatively short. Our modern lifestyle has shortened the attention span and the patience of many when it comes to reading to find the information they need. The information you want visitors to your site to know should jump off the page.
It is essential to design a responsive, mobile-friendly website that looks and works great on a laptop or desktop as well. It would be best to focus on your mobile website first because smart devices have become the primary means of accessing the internet. Fortunately, the highly used WordPress and Magento platforms are perfect for developing sites for both mobile devices and PCs.
Large, contrasting text is especially important on mobile since the screen is small. The same is true for short sentences, paragraphs, and plenty of white space. Even people who love to read could have a problem scanning a poorly designed website from their smartphone.
Your website should look professional and clean, but it must be straightforward to navigate. Your navigation should be clear and intuitive to most people. Navigation bars and buttons need to be noticeable. Back-tracking should also be simple.
Finally, if you’re using your website to sell goods, make sure that the shopping cart is easy-to-use on a mobile device. Magento is a good option, but there are also good WordPress shopping cart plugins.
TWO: Use Call-to-Actions
A call-to-action (CTA) encourages your visitors to take action, such as adding an item to the shopping cart or signing up for email notifications. It could also encourage people to visit your physical location or get in touch. CTAs create a sense of urgency that can increase conversions.
A call-to-action can be as easy as a buy now button. Limited time offers also act as a call-to-action. Likewise, posting the number of items left in stock also creates a sense of urgency since buyers will fear losing the opportunity to purchase if they delay.
Promises can also be a form of CTA; for example, “lose weight in just three weeks” can entice visitors to try what you have to offer. Call-to-actions can also bring visitors to a physical location; “come see our fabulous Christmas display, free candy for the kids” is a call-to-action.
Examples of call-to-action:
- Buy now
- Learn more
- Find your dream car here
- Click here to get 25% off
- Sign up to get your FREE eBook
- Limited time offer, get your free t-shirt now
Be creative, and avoid being too forceful in your language; the best CTAs feel like an invitation.
THREE: Build Your Site for SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) includes more than sprinkling keywords throughout your text; technical SEO consists of the technical backend aspect. If it’s easier for the search engine spiders to index your site, it will rank higher. Your site needs a robot.txt file, an appropriate internal linking structure, and meta robot tags to get these higher rankings.
If all this sounds too technical, you can hire a technical SEO specialist or a website developer to analyze your site and improve. Digital Authority Partners says that a specialist can help you improve your SEO and improve your website.
While technical SEO is something you might want a professional to do, using targeted keywords throughout your text is something you can do on your own. It’s vital to include keywords in your page titles, headlines, and meta descriptions and to put accurate keywords into your photo alt-image tags. Keeping the page URLs short, descriptive, and readable is essential.
Finally, a responsive, mobile-friendly website gets extra points from the search engines. If you’re unsure if your website indeed searches engine-friendly, consult with an SEO expert.
FOUR: Always Keep the User in Mind
It’s natural to create a website that appeals to you, but remember that your business website isn’t for you; it’s for your customers. It’s tempting to show off your artistic sensibilities with a website, but keeping it simple is the smart way to go.
While building for search engines is good for SEO, real people will ultimately use it. The pages need to load quickly, be readable, accessible, and easy to navigate.
The text needs to be informative, straightforward, and quickly convey the message. Call-to-actions are essential to encourage conversions. It all needs to feel and look seamless, attractive, and inviting.
An estimated one billion people globally have a disability, such as blindness or mobility issues. Accessibility is also something to build into your business website. Incorporating text-to-speech and voice commands can assist people with disabilities while they browse your site.
Your website needs to be accessible and easy-to-use for anyone who visits. However, keeping the design simple with easy-to-read text goes a long way to making your website accessible.
Finally, make your contact information available, and if you have a physical location, include your address, hours, and a map. Adding these items helps with conversions and fosters a sense of trust, knowing that a real person is behind a website.
Final Thoughts
Your business website can make a positive first impression with a clean, easy-to-use, simple, mobile-friendly design. Behind the scenes, you’ll also need good technical SEO practices so that your visitors will find your website. Finally, informative, easy-to-read text and call-to-action will increase conversions.
Making these improvements to your website may seem overwhelming at first. Still, soon, it will become easier with experience, and there is always the option to hire a professional. Either way, you’ll be surprised at the positive results.