Before you have a new website designed, you need to ask yourself what it should include. If you want it to effectively engage customers there are some things that are essential.
Show Your Passion
Before anyone buys from your site, it is likely they will want to know more about the business. Include a clear and concise description of what your business does, what its aims are and how passionate you are about your products. Visitors love to see photos of who they are dealing with as well, so include some corporate headshots of the senior people in your organization. Just make sure that you all look as kind, efficient and professional as possible!
It should not be so long as they will be put off reading it if it is, but should be easy to understand and let them know what good value you offer.
Pick An Easy To Remember URL
Choose a web address that is easy to remember and to type. The same goes for email addresses. Your domain name is part of your brand and reflects on your company. Avoid using symbols and stick to simple names, then potential customers will find it much easier to return.
Keep It User-Friendly
Making your site user-friendly is vital. They need to be able to navigate from page to pages, and back again with ease, or the users will get frustrated and move on to somewhere else. Include a site map. This will not only help viewers to move to other pages, it will let the search engines know how your pages are linked, and this will help with your rankings in the search results.
Fresh, Original and Quality Content
There are several reasons why this is crucial. Firstly, without it, the search engines think your site has become irrelevant and drop you down the rankings. Next, it is a brilliant way of keeping customers informed. Content does not have to be pages of written text. You can include images and videos, they just have to be interesting and relevant to your site.
The more interesting the content on your site is the more likely viewers are likely to stay and become customers.
Customer Reviews
Customer reviews from people that have used your site before can help to build trust. Potential new customers feel more confident about dealing with you, and more businesses than ever now have a customer review page.
Making Contact
It should be easy for any potential or existing customer to get in touch with your business, and they should get replies as quickly as possible. Include your contact details in a prominent place, and then make sure that any queries are dealt with without delay. The Internet provides a 24-hour customer service, and although no one expects you to send replies in the middle of the night, any contact should be answered as soon as possible the next day.
Designing Your New Website
It does not matter whether this is a new business you are designing a website for, or if it is to refresh an existing one, the same rules apply. Most of them are common sense, but if you had not thought of them before, make sure they are included now if you want your website to be successful.
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