A business website reflects the online presence of a business. Large bucks are spent on garnering strong web presence. Every business wants to bask in the glory of strong online presence. Despite its crucial role, most of the small business owners often fail to develop a website that can show its presence in search results and offer useful and insightful information to the customers that they are looking for. In this post we will discuss 10 key elements of a successful local website. Consider these key elements to make your business website a success story.
Highlight your USP in Main Banner or Slideshow
USP of a business is what that separates one business from other. It is the strength of any business. It is important to highlight your USP in main banner or slide show available on the home page of a website. This step will enable you to let your customers know about your areas of core competency.
Highlight Your Trust Factor: Awards, Certifications Etc.
Gaining customers’ trust is vital for any business. If your business has received any award or certification or any other special recognition, highlight in on your website. It will help your business to gain trust of your potential customers. Trust factor is essential for any business to gain success. Awards, certifications and other industry recognitions help a business to gain edge over its competitors by establishing their niche in that specific area.
Attractive Layout Considering the Targeted Audiences in Mind
A business should be aware of its targeted audiences and their preference. Layout of a website should be designed keeping in mind the niche of targeted audiences. It will enable a business to connect to its targeted audiences in a better and effective way. Use a proper theme that relate with the choice of your targeted audiences. Be specific about color usage and meaning while finalizing a layout for your website.
An Enticing Call to Action throughout the Website
An impressive call to action throughout the website plays a vital role in coercing visitors to take an immediate action to your website. A good call to action can work wonder for a business. Be specific about the use of action words, placement of call to action, font and color of the text and background. Pay attention to the minute details.
User Friendly Navigation
Navigation of a website plays a crucial role in defining the overall user experience of website. Navigation is of great importance as visitors make use of navigation bars or buttons to access the information available on a website. Navigation should be simple, organized and clutter free. Group related pages under the same heading. It will help you to streamline your navigation and make it user-friendly. Important pages of your website should not be more than 1-2 clicks away from the home page of your website.
Informative Website
Content-rich websites gets an upper edge in terms of search engine. The main thing that one must keep in mind is to make sure that content should be unique, informative, useful and in relevance to your product/service. Content should be placed in such a way that users can access their desired information in an easy and convenient manner. It is always advised to target definable and searchable keywords in your content so as to improve search engine visibility of your website. Content should offer a deep insight of your business product/services to the readers.
Social Media Channel Integration
Integrate your business social profiles with your website. Social media channels are a perfect medium to spark social engagement for a business. Social media channels help a business to develop strong brand equity, positive online reputation, trust, and most importantly drive targeted traffic to your website. Through your Google + social channel integration you can also gain the benefit of Google authorship that is widely influencing the search engine results.
Mobile Friendly Web Design
With the increasing use of mobile devices, it has become crucial for website to function well on various platforms besides traditional desktop screen. Either opt for a responsive web design or create a separate mobile site for your business if you don’t wish to lose out on prospective traffic from mobile devices. Responsive web design allows a website to adjust accordingly as per users browsing environment. Your website should be easy to access along with vital information like contact information, store directories etc. Make sure that your site allows not only vertical scrolling of data. Horizontal scrolling will fully hamper the user experience of your website when viewed across a mobile device.
Search Engine Friendly Technology
Websites are made for users not for search engines. Focus on using search engine friendly technology in your web design. It may include using micro-data and micro-formats in your website to make it search engine friendly. Make use of technologies that are search engine friendly.
Scope to Add Regular Content
Users as well as search engines give preference to websites that are updated in terms of content. Make sure that your website contains a blog section. If you don’t have a blog on your website get it integrated with your website. Blog provides your website the required scope to add updated content related with your business domain that is informative as well as insightful for the readers. Update your blog with unique and quality content that can coerce visitors to come back to your website.
Content Rich Website
Your website should feature high quality content that should be unique, informative and offer insight to the readers. Keep your website updated with good quality content. Search engines prefer website that are updated regularly. Your website is online reflection of your business so with changing business environment it needs to be updated on a consistent basis.
You can update your homepage regularly by highlighting your latest products and services to let your visitors gain information about your important business developments.
Highlight Your Social Media Engagement
Make sure that the homepage of your website contains icons/badges of your social media profiles present on various social networking websites. In this changing era social media has become a powerful tool in deriving targeted business. Most of the consumers expect local business to be available on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and other social media platforms. Social profile of your business also needs to be updated frequently so as to create a buzz for your business and create brand awareness.
Responsive web design (Mobile friendly)
With the advancement in technology and rapid use of mobile devices, responsive web design has emerged as the need of hour. Responsive web design makes use of CSS media queries to allow a website to adjust itself accordingly as per the users’ browsing environment. Responsive web design eliminates the need of a separate mobile site for various mobile devices. Moreover it also prevents you from losing the traffic that comes from mobile devices.
Search Engine Friendly Technology
Having an appealing website may not be enough for any business. Use SEO friendly techniques to make your website SEO friendly. An SEO friendly website scores better in term of driving targeted traffic than a non optimized one. To boost your online presence, make use of ethical SEO practices.
Scope to Add Regular Content (blog)
Every website demands regular update in one form or another. When it comes to updating your website in terms of content, launch a blog on your website and update it on a weekly basis with content that provides an insight into your business and industry.
I hope you find this post interesting and informative. Feel free to share your views and suggestions.