Important Aspects of a Website

12 November 2015

A company’s website is often the heart of their online marketing campaign. But is your website really doing all it can to help your business?

A strong web presence is crucial for companies across all industries to succeed in today’s business market. A well designed, well populated website will enable your company to promote itself in the best possible light.

The internet has completely transformed the way in which companies conduct business in the modern day era. Over 2 billion people worldwide have access to the internet, so it‘s no surprise that companies of all shapes and sizes would look to expand into the online market.

Effective use of online promotion and marketing strategies can make a massive difference to the number of conversion rates and sales profits a company can achieve. It goes without saying that your website should act as the hub that controls how your business operates online. Launching a website will supply the basics for online success, but there are a number of features that need to be included within a website in order for it to succeed.

These are the most important features you need to incorporate within your site to not only provide an exciting site for your existing clients, but also to branch out to any potential clients.

Overall design

First impressions mean a lot. Running a business website is all well and good, but if it does not include vibrant and impressive design features throughout, then it can fail to reflect the professional nature of your business. It is so important for any company website to make a long-lasting impression, be this through the use of colours, graphics or fonts that are both appealing and eye-catching.

It’s very difficult to get the balance right when it comes to the design of your website – it is easy to overdo it! Your website should reflect you and your business and suit the style of company. The overall design of your website should get people to stay on your website once they have clicked onto it, but also to get them to remember it.

Content

Your website needs to have great content. It does feel like the digital marketing world has gone content mad – but there is good reason for it!

A commercial website may be visually stunning, but that can count for nothing if it contains no content – or if the content is dull or irrelevant. It’s massively important that your website is user friendly and provides a good user experience. The level of information on the homepage landing pages need to accurately portray what your company has to offer.

Content, whether in the form of articles, blog posts, or services and product information, should be refreshed regularly with fresh material to provide users with something new to experience. Integrating search engine optimisation techniques within every section of text can also make a big difference in achieving more success within search engine rankings.

Navigation

Any company website, irrespective of which industry the company operates in, has to be easy to navigate. An amazing design and a load of fresh exciting content will mean nothing if nobody can get around your website to access it!

Your current and prospective customers need to be able to navigate their way around and find the pages they want without becoming lost or struggling to find it. As previously mentioned, user experience is key and navigation is the groundwork of a good user experience. A user will get irritated or bored if it becomes too complex to find what they are looking for, whether it is a particular article, product or an information page.

There is an unwritten rule within web design that suggests that users who access a website must be able to find the information they are after within no more than three clicks, otherwise they will become frustrated and search elsewhere.