by Ben Francia |Last Updated: April 27, 2020 Share this! 
Most business owners have embraced the idea of digital transformation and are adamant about establishing their organization’s online presence. Besides the usual Facebook and Instagram, they’ve also opted to get their own websites. More often than not however, some business owners tend to focus on the look and feel of their websites rather than overall experience.
While it’s an important factor for the website to be attractive in order to catch people’s attention (and keep it), its functionality tends to be compromised. Low page speeds because of heavy graphics, strange placements of menus and the like tend to sour user experience. It’s as if the website doesn’t fulfill any other purpose than to just look pretty at the cost of substance and utility.
That said, a purpose-driven website is one that doesn’t only manage to fulfill the look pretty part, it also manages to be thoughtful of its visitors and establishes good user experience. Good user experience tends to make users stay and visit more often, which in turn increases the possibility of turning them into a customer.
It’s not all about experience, however. At the end of the day, a website is built to reach more leads and create a relationship with its customers. Below are 10 tips that you need to have for your website.
- Register a Sensible Web Address
By default, you’d probably like to get the name of your company, your brand or your services as a web address. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s strongly recommended to keep it simple. A website with a long domain name is prone to typos and might potentially be harder to remember.
In contrast, a relatively shorter web address is easier to recall and has fewer chances of being misspelled. You can definitely be creative in thinking up your domain name. You can brainstorm at least 3 examples that do not stray away from your brand and have your peers select which one has a better ring to it. - Clearly Communicate Your Online Value Proposition
Your Online Value Proposition is essentially the solution you provide to your customers. It solves your target audience’s problems, makes them have better experiences, answer their questions and/ or improves their quality of life.
It goes without saying that having this visible at the moment they land on your page can spell the difference between having a customer or another bounce rate statistic. It often comes in the form of a short tagline – an elevator pitch – that should ideally appear in the upper fold of your website. - Your Story In Your About Us Page
Your About Us page is your prime location to talk about your company. As far as best practices go in this page, you must have the following sections:- Your Company History – talk about how your company started and what prompted its creation.
- The People Behind Your Company – talk about your company’s leaders, its people, major holders and a little bit about your customers who keep you going.
- Your Mission-Vision – this is how you communicate your company’s character and values in public.
- Your Purpose Statement – your purpose statement is important because it tells your audience that you have a goal besides just acquiring leads and customers
You can also talk about your future plans, goals, aspirations, affiliations and anything that can help your target audience resonate with your organization. This is your opportunity to tell your story that your leads can potentially relate to.
- Make Intuitive Navigation Menus
It’s important for each label on your navigation tab to accurately describe the page it points to. If, for example, you want a menu label to point the user to your About Us page, name the page “About Us”. If you want a menu to point to your products and services, name them in such a way that your target audience can understand them.
You might also want to consider having your navigation menu placed near the top of your page or at the left side. Having a navigation bar on top of the page gives you more room and menus to work with. This is so you can avoid confusion and give your visitors a good user experience. - Make It Easy For People to Contact You
It’s important to have your Contact Us button or link prominently displayed. Statistically speaking, on average the most trafficked pages for a website are its home and contact us page. Once you’ve proven that you have what your visitor is looking for through your home page and other related pages, they’ll most likely go to your contact page to reach you.
Having it relatively hard to find or inaccessible can compromise your chances of getting more leads for your business. That said, label the menu that points to your contact us page “Contact Us” and highlight it with a different color for it to stand out. - Establish Legitimacy
There are many ways to approach establishing your legitimacy and credibility. Firstly, publish the credentials, certifications and awards that your company has acquired. Second, put up a list of all the clients that have worked with you or your affiliated organizations. Third, publish case studies, portfolios and success stories that you have. Lastly, if possible, you can also ask your clients for testimonials as social proof.
Keep in mind that these elements are best accompanied by graphics and even videos. This is not only content for your website after all, but a vote of confidence by your customers and the organizations you work with.
For social proof from clients, having a written testimonial with their pictures in a slider should do well enough. If you have been to industry-related events or training, it’s strongly recommended to include pictures or videos of those in this section as well. Remember that while establishing legitimacy can be just about having a list of who you’ve worked with or served, going the extra mile can bring you more opportunities. - Get Good SEO
Having an elegant and well-thought-out website is for naught if it doesn’t even show up in the first few pages of the search engines. This is why it is important to keep Search Engine Optimization in mind when making your website.
For starters, do your keyword research and determine which keywords you’d like for your website to appear whenever someone does a search for them. Google’s keyword planner should be able to help you come up with a list. Once you’re done finding your keywords, place them across relevant pages on your website and have content created that revolve around these.
It can also help if you can work with a web developer with a basic SEO background. This is so whenever they build your website, it’s done with SEO best practices in mind. - Create High Value Content
Not everyone who lands on your page will work with you nor buy your products. Most of them are either searching for information on what you offer or just looking at their options. Whatever the case may be, it’s important to give them a reason to come back.
Creating content that provides value like blogs and freemiums gives your visitors an incentive to keep your website in mind, whenever they’re searching for what you provide. This allows you to create and nourish a relationship with them until such time that you convert them into customers. Other than establishing rapport, you can also establish authority and credibility by publishing content about industry news and trends.
Besides being a way for you to engage with your customers, consistently making high value content is good search engine optimization practice. It allows you to get more links and more pages for Google spiders to crawl on, making it potentially more prominent in the search engines. - Create Clear Call to Actions
Most websites don’t have clear calls to action in spite of getting tons of traffic from multiple sources. This is mostly due to the fact that their calls to action aren’t near specific nor prominent enough to inspire action. Worse, they don’t have calls to action on their website at all.
Besides highlighting your call to action buttons in a different color and giving them a different font to catch and keep their attention, it’s important for it to be glaringly obvious and simple. Words like “BUY NOW”, “SIGN UP”, or “CALL US” are simple enough to warrant a click. - Have User-Friendly Web Design
Establishing user-friendly web design doesn’t have to be rocket science. Sometimes all it takes is to come from the point of view of your target audience. Making the website easier to understand and work with is key to excellent web design.
Large walls of text, width to width sentences, dark backgrounds, brightly colored fonts and unoptimized media are examples of things you should avoid when it comes to web design. Work with an experienced web designer in order to build your website for better user experience. If you don’t have the budget for one, you can use premium WordPress themes that are already custom built with the user in mind.
That about wraps it up for the things your website needs in order for it to become a channel to get leads and customers from. Remember, having a successful website doesn’t need to be too expensive, it just needs to have a clearly-laid out purpose for your business AND it needs to fulfill said purpose.
If you don’t have a website, these are great considerations to keep in mind. If you already have one, do a quick website audit and find out if you’ve missed some items. Share what you think in the comment section below.
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