Your website is your business’s most important online asset. It’s where you drive traffic from your marketing channels, and it’s where you convert people into customers. Your website is also often the first impression potential customers have with your brand.
So, having a high-quality website is essential for growing your business and staying competitive. Here are six fundamental website elements SMEs should apply.
1. Professional and Consistent Branding
When you create your website, you need to make sure that it looks good. This involves applying consistent branding across your site. Make sure that each page on your website looks professional and aesthetically pleasing. This will help people take your business more seriously. If you’re not a web designer, you can easily use a template-based website builder to create a professional and modern-looking website.
2. Search Engine Optimisation
If you want to get organic traffic heading to your website, then you need to apply search engine optimisation (SEO) best practices. There’s a lot that goes into successful SEO, but some of the most important elements include:
- Targeting each page around a main keyword
- Ensuring your website loads fast and has no technical issues
- Maintaining a good internal linking structure
- Using relevant keywords across your website to help you gain the right kind of targeted traffic
- Earning backlinks from other sites
3. Contact Pages
People will need to get in touch with you when they visit your website. This is necessary for turning visitors into customers. There are a couple of different ways you can do this. You’ll need to have a clear contact page on your site, that lets users reach you via SMS and phone. You could also have a direct chat line, incorporate a chatbot on your website, or have a contact form for visitors to fill out.
4. Website Security
Make sure that your website meets all relevant security standards, and that you have an HTPPS URL (not HTTP). Offering strong security is important for a good user experience and maintaining brand credibility. This is especially important if you process payments on your website.
5. Good User Experience
There’s a lot that can go into a great user experience (UX). This includes having easy site navigation, an intuitive website design, offering enough information, including plenty of CTAs in the right places, and more. If your website doesn’t focus on the UX, you can expect a lot of visitors to leave your website before converting.
6. Great Content
SME business websites should publish compelling content that attracts and engages their target audience. This is important for SEO, and for improving the user journey on your site. Try to publish plenty of targeted blog content that addresses your audience’s pain points and interests. Having an FAQ page on your website can also help you address common questions and concerns potential customers might have.
While there’s a lot that goes into building a great website, these are six of the most important elements your small business should incorporate. Make sure you apply these must-haves to your website, and you should be able to achieve better results from your site.
