Are you looking to design the perfect website for your business to sell products or services? Today, more than ever before, people are turning to the internet to research products, locate local businesses, and discover new services and opportunities.
A successful business website is so important today! No small business is ever truly complete without a professional website. Even if you own a brick-and-mortar store, you need a site to serve as your 24/7 storefront, show off your brand, and create a marketing advantage.
Therefore, it’s essential that you have a professional site that accurately reflects your brand and showcases your products and services. Designing a website by yourself can be difficult, but the tips below make it easy to achieve the website of your dreams!
Table of Contents
Why Build A Website?
The internet has revolutionized the way business works. No longer do you have to be dependent on your local community to promote your products and services. Now, you can reach millions of potential customers worldwide with a website.
And, with the right strategy and the right web development company, you can grow your website into a powerful, profitable, and dynamic business tool. However, do note that the results will not be instant, it takes time!
How to Begin Building the Perfect Website
A website is an excellent opportunity to showcase your brand and introduce your products and services. Your homepage is the first visual impression your visitors will have of your site.
Therefore, it’s an excellent opportunity to set the tone for the rest of your perfect business website by showcasing your brand. With this in mind, before you begin, consider what you want your website to represent and what you want your visitors to remember.
Design of Your Website
Once you know what you want your website to look like and what you want it to accomplish, you can begin to design your website. If you already have experience in coding, then you can begin to code your website.
If you do not, then there are resources on the Internet such as programs and templates that can help make the process easier.
Find a Design Firm
Instead of trying to design your website by yourself, consider finding a web designer. At the onset of your project, you will meet with the development team to discuss your project and get a feel for each other.
During this initial meeting, you will share your business goals and expectations for the site. Your development team will then brainstorm a number of design concepts to bring to the table. From there, you and the team will pick the best options and move forward.
Before you sit down for your first meeting with your design and development firm, you should have a clear idea of what you want from the website. This will help your designers make the best website for your business.
The Perfect and Successful Business Website Elements
That being said, merely having a website, and having a successful website are two very different things. For your site to attract and convert customers, it needs to be much more than a jumbled home page and a few hidden contact details.
The other day we talked about making your website stand out, next we will discuss how to make it a successful website for your business.
With that in mind, here are ten more essential elements you need for a successful business website.
A Simple Domain Name
When it comes to your website URL, you’ll want to keep things as simple as possible. This makes it easy for your customers to remember your domain name and type it into web browsers or tell their friends.
Try to avoid using numbers or lots of dashes, unless your company name has them too, as this can cause confusion, as well as SEO issues. It’s also recommended that businesses stick to the .com domain, as this is the one most users are conditioned to type.
Descriptions Of Your Business
Someone who accidentally stumbles upon your site shouldn’t have to spend ages looking through it to find out who you are and what you do. Instead, this should be clear on the very first page.
To make this so, you must display your name and sum up your products or services.
This can be done in the form of pictures, a sentence, or a short paragraph. By making it obvious who you are right away, it captures attention immediately, encouraging visitors to stay on your site.
Clear Calls-To-Action
To convert visitors into actual leads, you need to tell them exactly what it is that you want them to do. So whether that’s subscribing to an email list or downloading an ebook, be sure that your website makes this desired action perfectly clear.
You can do this by adding a noticeable call-to-action above the fold on your very first page. Some sites also find pop-ups and pop-overs to be beneficial. To see what your visitors prefer, you can test out different placements and text.
Clearly Laid Out Pages Of A Perfect Website
Cramming everything onto the homepage of your website may seem like a good idea, but it very rarely is, especially if you use Google ads to lead visitors to your site.
A cluttered page is hard to view and even harder to understand, negatively impacting the whole Google ads landing page experience. Because of this, you should clear some of the unnecessary information from this page.
Add white space to separate elements and use categories to make navigation simple.
Visible Company Contact Information
Customers visit business websites for a number of reasons. Of course, a lot of the time it is to buy or look into a product, but it may also be to find some way to contact you.
When this is the case, the last thing you want to do is have these web visitors searching through every page to find these details.
This makes you appear untrustworthy and contributes to poor customer service. To avoid this, you should include your contact information on every page of the website.
Testimonials From Past Customers
These days, consumers know the risks of buying goods online. Their card could be charged twice, the quality may not be as promised, or they could receive the wrong product entirely.
This means that you need to give potential customers a reason to trust you before they choose to shop with you. For this reason, you should post testimonials of past happy customers.
If you’re struggling to get reviews, then consider offering some sort of reward as an incentive.
Regularly Updated Blog Page
A website with static content is not enough to keep visitors coming back on a regular basis. Unless you already send out new deals every week or two, you need to find some other reason for customers to return. For most small business websites, a blog is the answer.
This provides something to inform and entertain site visitors, while also improving your SEO, keeping you fresh in search results. The content you post can also establish you as an expert, which gains
SEO-Optimized Web Pages
Your website will never be successful if no one can actually find it. With that in mind, you must optimize every page of your website for search engines, like Google. This ensures that your site ranks higher on results when users are searching for terms related to your business or products.
Optimizing your site involves many different techniques, including adding keywords and images. However, you should avoid stuffing content and only add these things when it’s appropriate.
Links To Social Media for a Successful Business Website
If you have active accounts on social media, as every small business should, then remember to include a page or section on your contact page that lists and links to all of these accounts.
This helps site visitors to find these platforms easily so that they can keep up to date on any important business news that you may post.
You should also include buttons allowing visitors to share your content on their own social media accounts. (You may be surprised how many still don’t do this today!) This will help to increase your website exposure.
Secure Web Hosting Platform
Having your online information stolen or hijacked is a nightmare for any company, especially small businesses. Not only can it cost you time and money that you can’t afford to lose, but it can also damage your reputation, costing you customers.
To avoid this significant issue, you should pick a hosting company that is secure and trustworthy. Make sure you spend some time researching several different companies and reading reviews before you pick one.
Launching Your Business Website
Once your website is complete and live, you’re well on your way to success. The launch stage involves ongoing management of your website to keep it fresh, relevant, and engaging. Your launch involves scheduling posts on your site and monitoring their performance.
You will also want to regularly review your analytics to determine what content is performing best, and what you can remove or shorten to make room for new content.
Designing a website can be a difficult process, but with a great design team or determination, you will soon have a website that will meet all of your company’s needs!
Is Your Business Website Perfect?
Every business in the world needs a website these days, but that doesn’t mean that all sites are created equal. If you want a platform that performs well, looks professional, attracts customers, and generates sales, then make sure that you remember to include all ten of the essential elements listed above.
Remember, your website is your HOME online. Social networks and communities are just rented spaces that can disappear at any time. Click here for 5 more tips on running a successful online business.
I’d to know if your website follows these 10 elements today. Let’s discuss this in the comments below.
She has 30+ years of experience in marketing/advertising with 11 years of experience in content marketing, social media, blogging, and SEO.
You can purchase her eBook about Twitter on Amazon.
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Hello Lisa,
I agree with your points. All of them are equally important that add more value to your online platform.
Impress the visitors from the very first sight and provide all the required information including product features, testimonials, contact details, social media profiles, etc without making them ask.
Your post is very helpful for the businesses and I share it on my social media pages.
Best wishes,
Hi Manoj, thank you. I like how you phrase that – “without making them ask”. Great point. Thanks for sharing on the social networks as well. I hope you have a great day and new week ahead Manoj.
Testimonials are important but what most of the companies miss is that they should look authentic. Mostly, almost all company websites download image of few good looking models, write some good thing about the company and post it.
This is a a big minus… Get authentic review from real customers, post it along with their linkedin or twitter link. So when someone visits the website, they know that the reviews mentioned on the website are authentic and trustworthy.
Hi Jignesh, I agree! There is nothing worse than fake reviews on the web. They do not help anyone. I wonder if Google will start to crack down on them in the near future. Thanks for coming by and welcome to Inspire to Thrive. Have a great day!
Hi Lisa,
You reminded me of one thing I didn’t do and that is testimonials. I put them on my sales pages, but didn’t put them up on my blog. Well, a gal can’t think of everything, unless she has a friend like you.
I love white space because it makes it so easy to read the content. Less is more…as “they” say. When I visit a blog and its too busy with too many pop ups and things unrelated on the sidebar, I get turned off so quickly.
You have given us an excellent guideline to follow to create a successful website. Love your call to action!!!
-Donna
Hi Donna, really? Yes, you can surely do that and there are even plugins you can use for them 🙂 I don’t have them everywhere yet myself but will be adding more along the way. I’ve been focusing on Google My Business reviews of late. I agree with the nasty pop-ups 🙂 Too many are NO good! Thanks for the feedback and input Donna. Have a great evening!
Hello Lisa,
Excellent Post. To develop a successful business website, we need to take care of certain things and you have mentioned some great points here. Call to action really works well to engage customers with your content and offers. Social Media sites are definitely a game changer and a necessity of today’s competitive world. It helps you to build your brand. Thanks for sharing these great insights.
Have a Great Day 🙂
Vishwajeet
Hi Vishwajeet, thank you. Those CTA’s always got me in the first years, I would always forget to add them in! Now I always include at least one. I don’t like to overdue it but know theey are a necessity for sure! Thanks for coming and sharing this one. Enjoy your day and the rest of the week Vishwajeet!
I know the only thing I don’t have on my site are testimonials. Almost all those I’ve received are on LinkedIn, and I’m hesitant to repost them to my site… but I haven’t ruled it out yet. Who knows, maybe one of these days I’ll even make my background white… nah! lol
Hi Mitch, there is a tool where you can import 2 of those testimonials for free. I have it on my site here. If you are interested let me know. Mine are on the about page here. You can upgrade for a price to have them all show. It’s a nice feature. Your site is looking good Mitch, I think you need share buttons though. I have to struggle to share your posts. A nice click to tweet would be awesome there 🙂 Have a great day and new week. Hope the snow has stopped falling there 🙂
First, thanks for telling me about the missing share buttons on my IJS site; I hadn’t realized they’d disappeared again… sigh… Second, if I decided to use the testimonials, I’d just copy and paste them. BTW, which ones came from LinkedIn?
Hi Mitch, you are most welcome 🙂 I added some from LinkedIn on my about page. (You have to scroll down a ways…) They are there from a plugin- only 2 for FREE, if you want more to show up it does come with a price. I like how the plugin works. Thanks for coming by Mitch and have a great day. I hope you are not getting snow as I hear the rain and freezing rain coming down here now. (And this is April!)
All excellent tips, Lisa. As I say to clients when I design a website or blog for them, always use design elements that are easy for a non-techy people to navigate, enjoy, and interact with.
Have a super weekend. 🙂
Thanks Amanda, yes, user experience should come before design. Too many people get hung up with the design using fancy fonts and images when simple wins with the users. They want information fast, either purchase or read more and go on with their day! Thanks for stopping by Amanda, take care! 🙂
Hi Lisa,
The most important element of a successful website is user experience.
As long as you are able to provide the better user experience you can outrank the competitors.
All these 10 elements are there to improve user experience and everyone should follow them.
Thanks!
Hi Gaurav, thank you, yes, users are the ones that make the difference! You need to focus on the speed and ease of your site over design. Thanks for coming by and have a great weekend. Is there any other UX experience we could add to this?
I love that white space note Lisa. Folks obsess over aspects other than design and wonder why they cannot grow business. I visit many blogs overloaded with ads and links for buys and all that garbage. If you desperately fill your blog with too many income opportunities people tune you out and stop following you. Simple, clear and concise wins.
Hi Ryan, thank you. YES, I can’t stand those overloaded blogs. I’ve written to a few new bloggers how I could not even leave a comment because of their ads and popups everywhere. Drives me nuts! I agree, simple and concise. I may be updating a little here to do more of that myself. Thanks for coming by Ryan and have a wonderful weekend. Looks hot where you are now. We are having more snow here!
Hi Lisa,
This article is an excellent piece, and the one that caught my attention is having your “contact information on every page.” In fact, that is about one thing that is missing on my blog. And truthfully, many times when I browse, I do so to get the contact details, such as email of the web owner. Thank you for waking me up.
Hi Moss, Really? I’m glad this piece was helpful for you 🙂 Sometimes I think I need to make mine bigger – and I may do that soon. I am looking to re-work a few things here to freshen it up a bit. It’s been almost a year since I’ve done that with the “look” of the blog. Thanks for coming by and so glad I could be of help. Enjoy your weekend there!