A business website should accurately represent the business that owns it – a site can say more about a brand than you realise. There are many different elements it needs to be effective, like a great design and unique, quality content to name just a few. But what are the most important elements that you simply shouldn’t launch a site without? This post will tell you!

1. User Friendly, Logical Navigation

The amount of sites that miss out this element and then miss out on traffic and conversions is truly saddening. If your navigation isn’t user friendly/logical, you can’t expect a visitor to stay on your site for too long. Chances are they’re going to get annoyed when they can’t find their way around, and go straight over to one of your competitor’s sites! You don’t want that, do you?

2. A Compelling “About us” Page

The ‘about us’ page needs to be compelling for the reader, so make sure you know your target audience. You need to show who you really are rather than just spout off facts; share your company values, include pictures, tell people how you can help them, give examples of how you’ve helped others, and lastly, inject some personality into it!

3. Easy to Access Contact Information

If your contact information is hidden deep within the content of your site, you can’t expect many enquiries, or any feedback. Somebody may even have the intention of contacting you with a fantastic business opportunity, and you could miss out all because you haven’t made your contact information easy to find.

4. A Mobile Friendly Design

Mobile internet is getting more popular by the day, and many users are even shunning the use of internet on a laptop or computer to browse on their mobiles. You really don’t want to miss out on all of this traffic, which you will if a user tries to find you, only to land on a jumbled up, nonsensical homepage. With a mobile site, you need to strip your original site down to the most important information, and make it easy to scroll through/look at.

5. Well Chosen Images

Images always draw a person into reading something more, no matter what it is. Your images need to be vibrant and clear, preferably taken with a high quality camera to get the best effect.

6. Clear ‘Calls to Action’

Your calls to action are the part of your site that encourage visitors to become a conversion, whether you’re looking for more email addresses, newsletter sign ups, sales, or completed surveys. Many businesses find that their calls to action do much better when placed ‘above the fold’ – the first part of the website you see when you click on to it, without scrolling down. Your calls to action should be large and attractive enough to warrant a click, placed strategically throughout your website.

7. A Blog

Blogs have become a huge part of any great marketing campaign, so it’s essential that you have one on your business website. If you share helpful information, useful knowledge, and unique, high quality content, you could develop a loyal readership and suddenly find yourself as an authority in your industry. People will come back to your site when they want to learn more about a relevant subject, and may even share your blog posts with friends/family, increasing your brand awareness.

8. Social Media Integrations

There are 1.3 billion people using the biggest social media sites, Twitter and Facebook, alone. Then you’ve got popular sites like the photo sharing platforms Instagram/Pinterest, the professional LinkedIn, and plenty more to choose from. To decide what social media platforms are best for your business if you haven’t already, work out where your target audience are most likely to be spending their time and focus on perhaps 2 platforms (more if you have the time/staff). You can then make sure you have social media integrations on your business website, making it very simple for visitors to check out your social media platforms, follow you/like you, and share any content that they deem amazing! Again, this increases your brand awareness and will more than likely result in more traffic and conversions. Many campaigns go viral with social media, but you must be consistent in your efforts! It’s no good posting sporadically – you need to work out the times your target audience will be most active (Breakfast? On their lunch break? Before bed?) and post strategically at those times to get maximum exposure.

Include the above elements in your business site if you want to guarantee the best results!