All successful websites start with just one thing: a really good idea. So if you’ve got a good idea for a business that you’re excited and passionate about, then you already have some of the core elements you need to begin. The online marketplace is an incredibly competitive arena, but that doesn’t mean you should be tempted not to bring your business online. In 2021 alone over 2.14 billion people shopped online. That incredible figure accounts for 27.6% of the world’s total population. If you don’t have a website, therefore, you could be missing out on a significant marketplace for sales, as well as isolating your more tech-savvy customers, or those in overseas markets that you hadn’t considered. Regardless of your budget, ensuring that your business has a robust web presence is essential.
Now that you want and know you need a website, what happens next? Every business wants a successful website: but how do you make a successful website? The good news is that it’s actually much easier than you might think. Here’s everything you need to know:
Key Elements of a Successful Website
If you can ensure that your website adheres to the following key elements, you will have all of the basic building blocks you will need to create a successful website:
- Have a Call to Action. What is your call to action? What do you want your website to achieve? If you don’t know the answer to these questions, then how can you expect your users to. That’s why it Is important to have a clear call to action in mind before you begin your website design. Each page on your website should entice your reader to do something: click to buy, learn more about your business or call you for an appointment for example. Whatever you want to achieve should be your constant focus when building your website. A great way to achieve this is to give your users a noticeable invitation to take the action: a button, a link, or clear instructions within the text.
- Utilise User Interface: Ensure Your Site is Clean and Easy to Navigate. A website with too much information on each page can be overwhelming. Ensure that your top-level navigation is clearly labelled and limit the number of top-level options to no more than five choices. This will make it easier for you to guide your website users to where you want them to go. For search engine optimisation (SEO) purposes, you should aim to have no more than 600-700 words on each web page. On product promotion pages, you will need considerably less text, so that your product imagery can do all the talking. For blog posts you will likely need 1000 words or more on a page, to tick that SEO box. You can find lots of information and checklists on User Experience and User Interface online, though these aren’t to be confused.
- Don’t Overlook Your Mobile Site. Both mobile and desktop computers play a huge role in online shopping and sales, with some consumers preferring the convenience of shopping via their mobile phones. More than a third of adults will shop exclusively via their mobile phones. For this reason, it is important to take the time and ensure that your site is mobile optimised. Ensuring that your website is responsive to mobile will provide your consumers with a more positive user experience: if it is difficult to navigate via mobile, then they could simply abandon their purchase. For this reason, it’s not enough for successful website design to simply focus on computer-based design.
- Consult Your Potential Users. When you’re building your own website, it’s hard to be objective. What looks like a successful website design to you may be confusing and difficult to navigate to an independent user. For this reason, you should consult potential users before you let your website go live. Ask them to find a specific piece of content, or to make a purchase. Watch their user journey, and any locations where they simply can’t find what they’re looking for. Use this information to tweak your design and ensure that your site is as easy to use as possible.
- Make Your Website Shareable. A simple and easy-to-implement extra that you can add to your website is shareable links to your social media presence. Put your social links in the website header or footer, where they are easily found. This is a quick and free thing that you can do to promote other ways to connect to your customers, and every time a customer or website user shares one of your pages with their own followers, they are essentially gifting you with free social media advertising. You can consider syndicating your Facebook, Instagram and any other social media pages together, so when you post to one it does this across all your social pages for brand consistency.
- Testimonials and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). The decision to trade someone’s hard-earned cash in return for a product or service you’re providing largely comes down to trust. Using testimonials, case studies or success stories are great ways to demonstrate to prospective clients that you’re worth their investment. Additionally, a comprehensive FAQs section enables prospective clients to answer any major questions they may have and move them along the buying journey without having to engage with anyone from the company.
- Edit, and then Edit Again. The final key element of a successful website is accuracy. There are so many fun and exciting elements of website design that the basics can often be forgotten. But users will not trust websites that feature glaring spelling errors, and this could diminish their trust in your brand. For this reason, it is important to edit your website if you want it to be successful. What successful websites have in common is that the spelling, grammar, and accuracy of the information on the page are all checked before the website goes live.
Conclusion
Building a successful website does not have to be expensive or time-consuming. Even a very basic website, done well, can enhance your brand and increase your customer base. The key is to ensure that you keep your website users in mind throughout the design process and that you make using your website as easy as possible for them. You should also view your website as a constantly evolving force, just like your business. Don’t leave static or outdated content on your website too long: scheduling even small windows of time into your week to keep your website updated can have a huge impact on how successful it is. If you’re wondering how to get started, or where to host your website in the very beginning, get in touch with Thames Cloud Services and we’ll do our best to help you get started.
