How To Ensure Your New Business Website Is A Truly Worthy Investment

Are you planning to build a new business website? You are on the right track.

In this day and age, your business has no existence without an online presence.

In fact, if you look at the statistics, businesses without a professional website have a chance of losing about 70-80% of their potential customers.

In fact, if you look at the statistics, businesses without a professional website have a chance of losing about 70-80% of their potential customers. #Website #Business Click To Tweet

Another statistic points out that 70-80% of people conduct research online prior to visiting a company or making a purchase.

But how do you ascertain that your new business website is a truly worthy investment or that it is a success?

There are several factors that impact a business website’s success. But let’s delve into the five main factors in this article.

Obtain a domain name

You can get any domain name you want, considering it’s available and not already taken by someone else online. It can be a vague keyword or something related to your business.

That said, it will be more beneficial if you could get one that is as same as your business name.

For instance, www.nike.com is a good example.

Since your domain name is going to be the first point of contact with your site for a lot of people, keep it relevant to what you do.

Some good tips to follow while creating your domain name include:

Making it easy to spell and pronounce
Keeping it short as possible and memorable
Creating a broad address such as Amazon just in case you want to expand your niche
And creating an SEO-friendly URL when apt

Pick a good website builder

Choosing a good website builder is a better option than doing it yourself or hiring a web designer as it will save both time and expense. Website builders come with all the functionality you need.

However, note that there is no one size fits all solution here as each business has different needs.

Here are two of the most popular business website builders:

Wix: Wix is an award-winning website builder with awards like “The most popular on the Entire Internet in Hosted Solution category.” You will get to pick from more than 500 designer-made templates for every business. You can obtain custom domains, customize your site, build a mobile-friendly site, and more.
Squarespace: Squarespace boasts of award-winning web designs. You can select from the best-in-class website templates, customize the design, create flexible portfolios, use the blogging tools, leverage built-in SEO tools, and more.

Make a smart move by choosing a site builder suited to your business needs.

Design and usability

As per stats, it takes only 50 milliseconds for web visitors to form an opinion about your website. They will either stay or leave after that.

Also, it is said that an enhanced UX design can bring conversion rates of up to 400%.

The UX and UI are going to have a considerable impact on the success of your website. A good website design builds trust and ensures visitors easily find the content or product/service information they’re looking for.

It is crucial to design your site in such a way that it captures vital info from potential clients while streamlining your sales process. As mentioned in the second point, a good website builder will make things easier.

Here are some essential points to keep in mind:

Navigation should be simple and consistently placed.

Make sure to place the menus in approximately the same place on every page. Repeat the items in the same relative order across pages.

If you are using any component like images or buttons repeatedly throughout your site, label them consistently. For instance, if you use “Sign In” on one page, don’t use “Log In” on another page.

Avoid using Flash graphics and animations.

There was a time when many websites started using flashy graphics and animations to capture visitors’ attention. However, most professionals have stopped using them – and you should too.

There was a time when many websites started using flashy graphics and animations to capture visitors’ attention. However, most professionals have stopped using them - and you should too. #Website #Startup #Tips Click To Tweet

They can slow down page load speed significantly and increase page abandonment rate. Besides, you can’t view flash on iPhones and iPads, and search engines don’t recognize them.

Use HTML sitemap to represent your business site’s info architecture.

Why? Because Google says so! Google states that your site can benefit from having a sitemap, and there are no downsides either.

An HTML sitemap will help visitors on your site to find a page they are searching for easily, thus enhancing the user experience. And sites with good user experience are favoured by search engines.

Here’s an example of an HTML sitemap found in the footer of Crazy Egg blog:

Source

Ensure to add an anchor link that points to every page on your site. It will make your entire website search engine crawlable.

The site should be mobile-optimized.

57% of internet users will be unwilling to recommend your business if it is not mobile-optimized.

Source

To make your site mobile-responsive, implement mobile SEO best practices such as using readable text and avoiding uncommon software.

Also, don’t block CSS, image files, and JavaScript. And don’t add unplayable content. If there are irrelevant cross-links, repair them.

In addition, make sure your website is following all the points laid out in Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Optimize your site for SEO

Of course, creating fresh and valuable content and publishing it regularly is essential for search engines. However, to make your website successful, you also need an effective SEO strategy.

To create SEO-optimized content that ranks you on top of searches, you can take the help of an SEO company.

To create SEO-optimized content that ranks you on top of searches, you can take the help of an SEO company. #Website #SEO Click To Tweet

Apart from that, here are the best practices to optimize your business website for SEO:

Conduct keyword research using tools and implement them.
Increase site loading speed.
Implement an SSL certificate.
Optimize your site for mobile.
Look for high-quality backlinks.
Aim to have lots of positive reviews online.
Use internal links all through your site.
Use social channels to link to your site.

If you are using a website builder like Squarespace, the tool already has SEO features, including page title customization, meta description, personalized URLs, SEO-friendly heading structure, and more.

Add a compelling CTA

After all the investment and hard work of building a website, sometimes webmasters forget to add CTAs. CTAs are the main element that you want your web visitors to click.

Here are some stats that will help you identify the power of an eye-catching CTA button:

Personalized CTAs helped to convert 42% more visitors.
Anchor text CTAs were able to convert 121% more visitors.
Placing CTA above the fold can decrease conversions by 17%.

Whether you choose to use anchor text CTAs or button CTAs, it is recommended that you stick to only one CTA per page unless necessary.

Also, keep the CTA simple and brief, create urgency, use responsive design, use contrasting colours and white space to make your CTA stand out, and see that the links are going where they are meant to go.

Here’s an example of a simple yet effective CTA from Dropbox:

Source

Notice the use of white space and subtle and simple graphics on their homepage. Owing to these factors, their blue CTA button (which is of the same colour as their logo) stands out and successfully entices their target audience.

Wrapping-Up

Owning a business website gives your business plenty of opportunities to scale.

However, the success of your business website is going to depend on how well you build, design, and implement your strategies. Satisfying your customers should be your primary goal.

While at it, don’t forget that you are building your site for search engine optimization as well.

Author Bio

Lucy Manole is a creative content writer and strategist at Marketing Digest. She specializes in writing about digital marketing, technology, entrepreneurship, and education. When she is not writing or editing, she spends time reading books, cooking and traveling.