Simply having a business website isn’t enough these days. It’s important that your site is easy to navigate, interesting and eye-catching, and consistently usable no matter what device or browser it’s being viewed on. If your website isn’t up-to-par, you could be losing A LOT of potential business. So, what exactly goes into a successful business website? There’s a lot of ways to answer that question, but below we’ve listed 5 of the main features of any successful website.
1. CLEAR NAVIGATION / IMPORTANT INFORMATION IS EASY TO FIND
When a potential customers lands on your site, they should be able to easily navigate it. This means, your main navigation should be clear and straightforward. Also, none of the navigation should be “broken” or incorrectly linked, this is a surefire way to deter users. Lastly, you want to make sure some of the main navigational elements stand out. For example, most people will be immediately interested in your “about” page and/or how to contact you. Don’t make them search for these items.
2. CONCISE, YET INFORMATIVE CONTENT
Nobody has ever landed on a site with tons and tons of content and read through all of it. In fact, most people would probably exit out almost immediately. Your content should be concise, but still get your message across successfully. Also, it’s important to make the text scannable, so people can read through briefly and still get the point. A great way to break up large amounts of text is with images and titles/subtitles.
3. IMMEDIATE INTEREST FACTOR
There’s a “15 second rule” that says if the user’s attention isn’t grabbed within the first 15 seconds of being on a page, they will “bounce” or leave the site. That being said, it’s important to make sure that your home or landing page has immediate eye-catching qualities and the most relevant information in plain sight. Also, it’s important to have a clear call-to-action, so the user knows what to do next. For example, a site with a button on the homepage that says, “Find Out What You’re Missing” that takes you to another page will likely perform better than one that’s all text content without any encouragement to continue navigating the site.
4. FAST SPEEDS
This one should go without being said. Nobody wants to navigate a slow site. Generally, you should aim for a page load time of 1-4 seconds. This is because load time is a major contributing factor to bounce rates. For example, take a look at this graphic from Hobo Web that shows the probability of a user bouncing from your site as the page load time increases:
5. RESPONSIVENESS
Responsiveness means that a site is optimized to look and perform for the device it is being displayed on. The first ever responsive website made its debut in 2001, but by 2013 it was being adopted by the majority of sites. Today, about 90% of web traffic is from a mobile device. This means, if your website isn’t optimized for mobile, the user experience is seriously compromised. We’ve all been on a non-responsive site on our smart phone and became quickly frustrated to the point of leaving the site. Just like with all of the previous points, a non-responsive website could be costing your business.
Here at Sierra, we know website design and development can be a challenge for a busy or non-technical business person, and that’s why we want to help. Our internal design and development team can help you build a fully-responsive, modern website that will keep your business competitive in 2019. Not quite convinced? How about we give you a completely free evaluation of your current website? Simply click here to get started.
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Sierra Experts is an IT Managed Service and Support provider, specializing in IT Monitoring and Management, Cloud/Virtual Systems, Hosting, VoIP/SIP PBX Trunks and Solutions, Physical Server Hosting, Website Design and Development, Software Development, and Hardware and Software reselling. For more, check out sierr001-2.sierradevops.com
