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Your website is the shop front of your services in a world where there is so much noise. It’s where your potential clients form their initial opinions of your business and decide whether to connect with you or go to your competitor instead.
A strong online presence is more than just your social media accounts and your website can either attract visitors, strengthen credibility and increase sales or it can damage your brand image and result in lost sales.
So whether you’re building a new website for your business or updating an established one, here are nine essentials that can make all the difference in having an outstanding web presence to just average.
1. Clear Purpose and Goals
Do you want your website to generate leads, sell products or just provide information?
When you have a clear goal it is easier for you to tailor your content and design.
If your website is showcasing the services you are offering, you may focus on detailed service pages and displaying client testimonials, as well as making it simple to book a call with you.
By establishing a clear purpose from the outset, you can create a roadmap that helps you achieve that goal.
2. Domain Name
Choosing the domain for your business website can be difficult when lots of options are taken. Your domain name should be memorable, easy to spell, and reflective of your brand.
When selecting a domain extension always consider purchasing the .com as it’s universally recognised and trusted by users all over the world.
I recommend not adding a hyphen between words to make it more memorable as it’s easy to mistype.
3. Secure and Reliable Hosting
Choosing a secure hosting provider with an excellent uptime is crucial for your business website. If your website randomly goes down, it will result in lost sales, reputation and user frustration.
I run all my websites through Siteground. They are the most reliable choice because they have great security, 99.9% uptime, and amazing customer support. Cheap web hosts might save you money upfront but could cost you more in downtime issues, security breaches, or sluggish performance.
With Siteground you can install a free SSL certificate which some cheaper hosting companies will charge you extra for. An SSL certificate encrypts the data transferred between your site and its visitors, providing a secure environment for transactions and personal information gathering.
Sites without SSL show up as “Not Secure,” which will stop potential clients from accessing your site and you’ll take an SEO hit as search engines prioritise secure sites over unsecure ones.
A quality web hosting provider will also offer regular backups to stop data loss. This is useful if your site experiences a cyberattack or you accidentally deleted important files. Having automated backups ensures that you can quickly restore everything without spending huge amounts of time.
4. User-Friendly Design
When visitors land on your site make sure they can easily find what they’re looking for without any hassle.
Simple navigation and intuitive layouts play a huge role in achieving this.
If potential clients can’t quickly find what they are looking for, they’ll leave and never return.
Use clear menus and straightforward calls to action to guide your visitors through your site.
It’s equally important that your website is inclusive and accessible for all users, including those with disabilities.
Ensuring accessibility compliance means considering elements like alt text for images, keyboard navigation capabilities, and colour contrast between text and backgrounds.
It’s easy to overlook this aspect, but failing to make your site accessible can alienate a significant portion of potential customers. Plus, it’s something Google checks!
5. High-Quality Content
Creating good quality content can be overwhelming. It needs to be engaging, informative, and relevant to your target audience. But take a step back and think about the questions or problems potential clients may have and write blog posts or create videos that provide answers or solutions.
Keeping your content fresh and updated is equally important. Stale or outdated information can turn off visitors and negatively impact your search engine rankings. Still have that workshop from 2 years ago front and centre on your homepage? Get rid of it.
Regular updates indicate to users and Google that your site remains active and current.
Investing time and effort in creating good content pays off in multiple ways: it improves user experience, boosts SEO, and ultimately drives higher conversion rates by turning casual visitors into loyal clients.
High-quality content serves as the cornerstone upon which the success of any business website is built; make sure yours stands out!
6. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is great for getting your website noticed by potential clients.
Implementing keyword strategies is the first step, you need to research and identify keywords that your target audience is likely to be searching when looking for services similar to yours.
You can use free tools like Google Keyword Planner or Keywords Everywhere to find high-traffic, low-competition keywords.
Meta tags, including title tags and meta descriptions, play a vital role in how search engines understand and rank your content. Ensure your meta titles are descriptive and include primary keywords where possible. Similarly, headers (H1s, H2s, etc.) should be used to structure your content logically while incorporating relevant keywords. This makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your page’s hierarchy.
Linking relevant pages within your site helps search engines index them more effectively while also keeping visitors engaged for longer periods.
Investing time in perfecting these SEO tactics can result in higher search engine rankings, leading to increased organic traffic and better visibility for your business website.
SEO is an ongoing process. You can’t just set it up once and be done. Analysing performance data through tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console and frequently update your strategies.
7. Mobile Responsiveness
Most people browse the internet on their phone, so you can no longer ignore not having a mobile friendly website. If your website doesn’t load properly on a mobile, your potential clients will go somewhere that does.
Test your website’s responsiveness on a couple of different size phones or browser developer tools.
Regularly check how your site performs on various devices because an excellent user experience across all platforms contributes hugely to retaining visitors and attracting new ones.
8. Fast Loading Speed
When it comes to websites, speed is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.
Optimising images and files is one of the first steps you should take to reduce load time. Large image files can significantly slow down your site, which can be annoying and lead to higher bounce rates.
Optimising them with WordPress plugins shortpixel or ewww or online tools like TinyPNG can help compress your images without sacrificing quality.
As well as optimising your site, choose a reliable hosting service to avoid downtime and ensure fast load times. While cheap web hosts might seem appealing initially, they often come with poor performance and unreliable uptime. Investing in a reputable hosting provider like Siteground can make a world of difference.
Plugins like Seraphinite Solutions and WP Rocket for WordPress sites offer simple and efficient caching systems without needing to know the ins and outs, just set it and forget it.
Before you start, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to see how your page performs and see actionable insights into how you can further optimise your website’s speed. I go over this in more detail in this post.
Fast loading speed isn’t just about meeting user expectations, it’s also a measure for search rankings, search engines favour sites with quicker load times.
9. Test Before Launch
Before you hit that publish button, make sure you have thoroughly tested.
Imagine pouring all that time and energy into building an amazing website, talking about it everywhere and then it doesn’t work!
To avoid this embarrassing scenario, test across various devices and browsers.
Check everything from page loading speeds to forms and buttons.
Test your contact forms work correctly and that links go to the right pages.
To test page loading times use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to find how quickly your pages load under different conditions.
Slow loading websites will see potential clients click that back button quicker than anything else!
If you kitted out a beautiful shop, you wouldn’t leave boxes cluttering the aisles and expect visitors to not be irritated. The same logic applies online – eliminate unnecessary obstacles that could turn away users.
And finally, don’t overlook security tests. Cyber threats are always evolving and are usually extremely sophisticated, so make sure your SSL certificate is properly implemented, regularly update software and plugins, and consider installing software like SolidWP.
So, to wrap up, creating an amazing website comes down to a few essentials:
- defining clear goals
- secure and reliable hosting
- focusing on user-friendly design
- producing great content
- Search Engine Optimisation
- mobile responsiveness
- optimising for fast loading speeds.
Don’t try to cheap out, this leads to downtime and data loss – which costs you money and damages your reputation. Investing in quality services is crucial.
Regularly updating and evaluating your site will keep it performing at its best.
And you want to have an amazing website, but you don’t want to build it yourself, I can take care of all this for you!
If you are ready for a stress free, website, I would love to help.
Whether you need a New Website or guidance on making the most of your site, let’s chat and get you set up with a website that feels right for your business.
