What Do You Need on a Good Website?
4 essentials for a fully functional website that converts.
Modern website templates give business owners endless possibilities to create their online presence.
If you’re like most entrepreneurs, website creation and maintenance is a dreaded necessity:
It costs you money and time
Someone has to write stuff (maybe you?)
Customers judge your website within seconds
You may lose business if you don’t do it correctly
To avoid tons of unneeded work, what needs to be on a good website?
4 Essentials for a Website that Converts
Before you start your website or undergo a whole rewrite, here’s what you need to create a website that’s user-friendly and likely to convert.
1 - Homepage
… And a kickass homepage at that! Often your first impression with a customer, the homepage should serve 4 purposes:
Tell them who you are.
Tell them what you do.
Tell them why they should choose you.
Get them to take the main CTA.
All this information needs to be seen within seconds of coming to the homepage. It’s really important to focus lots of time and energy on the homepage.
Many businesses miss the opportunity to optimize their homepage, leading to high bounce rates and loss of leads.
If your website homepage headline currently says “Welcome to [company name],” it needs to change.
What makes a great conversion-generating, on-brand homepage? I’ve got just the post for you!
Read this: 5 tips for a great homepage
2 - About Page
Don’t skip the about page! Now more than ever, clients want to trust and relate to the people behind the brand. Building this trust enables you to foster brand loyalty and establish yourself as an expert in your industry.
What I love to see on a good about page is how this company stands out from the competition. Many businesses put their vision and mission statements in the about section, but that doesn’t compel customers to do… anything.
Instead, tell your customers why you’re unique and what you will do for them. It doesn’t hurt to give them the nitty-gritty details. When appropriate, people love connecting with brands through hardship, obstacles and real-world problems.
The main idea: Your about page shouldn’t really be about you.
Read this: How to Cut the BS in Your “About Page” and Give Them Something Good
3 - Call to Action (CTA)
No CTA = no business. Every webpage should direct a customer to where you want them to go.
And while you may want your customer to do everything in one visit - learn more about your services, subscribe to your newsletter, read a blog post, contact you - you need to prioritize what CTA is the most important.
Secondary CTAs are fine, but I see so many businesses muddy up their website with too many CTAs all at once. The messaging becomes less effective and smooth UX drops.
From a customer perspective, too many CTAs (and unclear CTAs) confuse them and take them to a dead end on your site.
4 - Contact Page
If you’ve ever been on a website where the contact page is missing or really hard to find, you know that icky feeling you get about the website. Is this a spammy site? Did this just get put up? Why can’t I contact them?
If you make it hard for customers to contact you, they’ll probably just leave.
Customers value service, easy communication and trustworthiness of a brand.
Always make your contact information easily available. Your contact page should have great UX and clear messaging.
Tell the customer what to do on the contact page and what happens next. Don’t you hate when you submit a contact form, and you’re not sure if it really sent?
Something Extra for a Marketing Punch
We talked about the bare necessities of a good website. However, websites need ongoing updates so that clients continue engaging and converting.
I like to think of a website as an onion. At the core, there are the essentials for proper functioning and website conversions. But then, you can always have additional layers of marketing and branding to amplify your efforts.
Once you have the essentials completed and optimized, here are the next things you should work on for better conversions and marketing streams:
Weekly blog program: Yes weekly. Here’s why.
Email marketing campaigns: Hello autopilot conversions!
Lead magnets: If you need ideas, here’s 20 killer lead magnet ideas.
