A website is the spearhead of your company’s online marketing strategy. It provides the first impression of your company to your customers and prospects. However, crafting a good website is somewhat easy once you know several fundamental principles. By making a few simple adjustments, you can make a wonderful website that attracts visitors, converts prospects into paying consumers, and helps you to grow your business on the next level.
Here are ten fundamentals you should include on your site:
1. Invitation To Friend / Follow and Subscription On Social Media
Social media is more than a trend that you can use to build a fanbase. It is as important as the website itself, and just having a social media “presence” is not enough. You must let people know you are active on social media by inviting them to interact. There are many ways to accomplish this. The simplest way is by adding an invitation button like “Follow me on Twitter” and include a link to your page.
2. Professional Quality Logo/Header
The world of Internet marketing is vast and competitive. While you can create your own blog header, you should probably leave it to the professionals. Make an investment in your brand and your business by creating a strong, relevant header and logo to reflect your business.
3. Simplicity
Make sure your visitors can find their way around your website in a quick and easy way. If you are not sure about how to accomplish this, then study websites that you visit often. Notice how they guide you through the site. Do they provide cushioned navigation tabs? Does the flow of the site seem logical? Is there a search function so you can head directly to the page or information you’re looking for?
4. Interaction / Comments
Your website should be able to invite visitors to comment on your articles and blog posts. One of the best ways to not only measure engagement, but to also create it, is to take a look at the level of interaction on your site. If you are using WordPress, you can manage the comment section by turning it on and off. You can also allow comments for a specific period of time. Engage them in conversation and invite interaction and comments. Do these and you will build a loyal community of customers in no time.
5. Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking not only adds value to your visitors and prospects, but also helps boost your traffic and brand awareness. By adding a social bookmarking function to your site, your visitors can bookmark using the bookmarking service of their choice. There are several top quality WordPress plugins that make social bookmarking easy. You can add buttons for the primary sites like Digg, Delicious and Reddit. When someone bookmarks your site it’s added to their account, where other users can browse, vote, and share.
6. Good Quality Content
This is the most important thing you can do to have your site hit the top. Make a good quality content. Make sure they are daily updated and topical. You’re not creating content about something that happened five years ago or even five months ago. You’re creating content about what’s going on right now. And catchy content varies depending on your niche and your audience.
Consider the voice and style you want to communicate to your readers. Are you serious kinda guy? Funny? Controversial? What makes your content interesting, different, and valuable to your reader?
7. Article Archives
This function is particularly important if you have a blog or other WordPress based website. Make finding information easy for your visitors by creating archives. Archives are essentially directories for old content.
No one wants to search through page after page of old content just to find something they’re looking for. They want to be able to find what they need with a few clicks of their mouse. Use keywords that accurately describe the subject of the content to organize your archives.
8. Search Field
It doesn’t matter what the foundation is for your website – Joomla or WordPress or anything in between – it is important to make it fully usable by anyone who visits. One of the simple tools you can use to make this happen is a simple search field. It was briefly mentioned in Item #3 above, where navigation was discussed. There are different search tools you can use.
For example, Custom Search Plugin is a WordPress plugin that allows you to create custom searches. Maybe you want people to be able to search for quotes or tips on your site. You can use this tool to add functionality to your website and to help separate your business site from your competition.
9. Inquiry Form
What do you want people to do when they’re at your site and they have a question? You might already have a FAQ page (hopefully you do), but what if the answer to a visitor’s question isn’t on that page? Ideally, you want your visitor to be able to reach out and ask their question. This keeps them engaged and connected to your business.
To make this happen, it has to be easy for them to contact you. One of the simplest ways to accomplish this is to have a contact form or an inquiry form on your site. They enter their email address, subject line, and ask their question. You or your customer service assistant receives the message and can promptly respond.
10. FAQ Page
Including an FAQ page on your website helps make it more user friendly. Create a list of the most common questions you receive and turn it into a separate page on your site. Make sure that like all your other valuable pages, this FAQ page is easy to find and read. As you receive more questions, you can add to the page. Also, consider occasionally linking to other important internal pages. This can accomplish two things simultaneously: first, it can help keep your visitor on your website longer, and at the same time it can help to boost the rankings for the page you’re linking to.