Top 9 Essential Things Your Website Should Have

Top 9 things your website should definitely have

Before I answer your question about Top 9 things your website should have, let’s discuss If you really need a website. I won’t bother you with the statistics now but I assume you know that almost all small business need online presence these days. If your business or just you want to be found online, you need to consider having a website. If you want to generate leads for business or simply to reach a larger audience, you should have a website.

So why shouldn’t I focus on social media only?

Yes, you need social media presence also to be found by your audiences. In a website you have more freedom to showcase your brand for a larger audience.

Don’t get me wrong. Social medias are much important for a brand. But in a website so many additional options could be offered, I believe you have better idea. Combination of a great social activity and website will help you to achieve your goals.

Criteria for a unique website that makes difference are,

  1. It gets visitors
  2. It gets visitors to browse the website
  3. It gets visitors to perform an action.

Here is my compilation of the most important 9 things your website should definitely have,

1. User Friendly Navigation

Navigation menu is the most important thing for a structured website. Users interact better with simplest form of navigation. “Yes I know that I need a menu in website”, you may say that. But what I’m asking is that, is the menu user friendly? Can everybody easily understand where to click to go to a specific page?

What I mean by simplest form of navigation menu is, your website might have a very complex network of pages. But in menu, you have to make it as simple as possible for easy navigational purpose.

You may consider to create a mega menu if necessary. Mega menus are expandable multi-layer menu which is visible on mouse hover. Display the simplest menu in header and show the complex site architecture under the mega menu.

2. Responsive

What is responsiveness? The appearance of your website in different devices (mobile, tablet, laptop) of different sizes and orientations, should be dynamic. Considering this while website design is called responsive web design.

Today almost all famous frameworks or themes for website are naturally responsive. The reason is simple. Majority of people browse internet in mobile these days. And the number is increasing. Unless you’re interested to lose lots of visitors, your website should definitely be responsive.

SEO also requires responsiveness. As users are benefited from responsive website more, search engines identify the website to rank higher.

3. Search Engine Friendly

Your initial target might not be to rank #1 on google search result page. It must be ensured that the website is indexed by google and other search engines.

What does indexing mean?

It is possible that you have a beautiful website answering everything your audiences are looking for. But search engines aren’t seeing the website to show in result pages. All the pages of your website need to be indexed by search engines for this reason.

Don’t worry much about it. It’s easy to check if your website is indexed in google or not. And also it’s possible to submit the website to google for indexing, in case it’s a new website or it’s not displayed in search engines result.

4. Eye-catching Layout

Attracting users to stick to your website while providing their needs is key to engagement. The basic requirement for this is, giving an eye-catching look in your website.

Text alignments, fonts, colors, images and graphics should be in a way to catch people’s attention. At least it shouldn’t repulse, you need to make sure that. It’s best if colors, type fonts etc. represent your brand in an attractive way.

5. Blog

Whatever your business is, you must consider a blog in your website. You need to post articles or create contents related to your business in the website.

You need to do small research about the topics and ideas related to your business. Then create contents around those topics. You can write the blog yourself or outsource from professional content-writers, if necessary.

Contents are key to viewers. Research market and find words that will impact your visitors. Easily understandable content ensures great quality.

6. Security

Buying domain hosting from prominent companies would mostly tackle this. But you need to be aware of the fact that your website needs to be secured not only for your safety but also for visitors’ sake.

When a random visitor lands at your website and notice that it’s not secured, they tend to leave immediately. You need SSL certificate to ensure that site is safe for browsing. Customers would feel secured to purchase from safe websites.

You need to check website security issues frequently at least once in a month. Or let your tech guy or someone to always monitor this.

7. Clear Message

While writing copies for your website, it’s better to use simple wordings so that everyone can understand. Blog posts and product descriptions should contain clear messages about your contents.

If you’re a start-up company, you need to focus on creating a brand. Displaying brand message is important for expecting trust from visitors i.e. customers. About page is a must for this.

In about page, you can write about yourself as well as promote yourself. Clear and strong messages about you create an impression on visitors that last longer.

8. Contact Information

If you’re familiar only a little about local SEO, you must’ve heard about NAP. NAP stands for Name Address Phone number. Local SEO requires this 3 information to rank your website locally.

You can look from rather simple perspective other than local SEO. It’s obvious that if a visitor or customer is benefitted from your website, he/she might want to reach you by email or other social media. If you don’t have that email or social link of yours in website, you’re losing a potential lead.

A contact page is as important as about page. Also you need to engage your visitors with social contacts. Detailed contact information shows credibility of your company. Visitors can reach when necessary.

9. Little Animation

Nowadays we see websites too fancy, doing lots of animations. If you’re doing this right, animations can really enhance beauty of your website. Without any animation, web pages look dull. Though excessive use of animations might repulse.

2D and 3D animations are new trends of 2020. People are creating beautiful websites using animations. You can explore those for getting inspiration.

Conclusion

Your website is nothing but a very essential tool for your success. Things like your personal goal, company/business goals would have a profound effect on your website. That’s why you need to think and consider lots of things about your website’s needs.

 

I’d like to know about your interest and would love to help you out with your website. Contact me to get free advice.