What your business website needs to have in order to succeed!

The great thing about having a website for your business is that it is accessible to anyone, anywhere and anytime.

Keeping your website updated and functioning properly with the latest features can be a time and money consuming process. After being frustrated that your current site isn’t performing the way it should you’ll be confronted with 2 options- either revamp it to make it more effective or recreate it from scratch. 

No matter which option you decide to go with, you’ll definitely want to have this business website checklist to make sure that your new site has what it takes to effectively compete in the online marketplace.

✔️ Calls to Action (CTAs):

No website is going to convert visitors into leads without calls to action (CTAs). 

CTAs take the form of a button or hyperlink with text prompting a specific action. They should appear in intuitive places on your site, like above the fold line or at the bottom. You can place it at the top right corner or across your banner image on the homepage. 

The idea behind a CTA is to catch a person’s attention with something exciting! A successful CTA button can vary in size and style, but always results in a conversion of some sort. The CTA is foundational for the success of any marketing initiative because it gives you the chance to motivate a visitor to take the leap towards becoming a customer or client.

Here’s a list of the typical call to action phrases you could use when designing your website:

• Sign-Up
• Register Here
• Subscribe 
• Try it Now
• Buy Now
• Order 

• Download Here
• Click here for…
• Add to cart
• Free trial

Get this one right….

✔️ Landing Pages:

A landing page is a single webpage that serves a single purpose—usually to drive conversions. Unlike your homepage, which might list all the services your business offers, a landing page encourages users to take one, specific action. They’re useful for directing visitors to content or actions that you want them to see.

Make sure when designing your landing page that you keep the layout simple. A good landing page design is minimalistic and attractive. To avoid sidetracking people with too many visual elements, use a clean, simple design with plenty of white space that keeps people on your product and call to action. 

Choose a big font to make it easy for visitors to read and understand what your landing page is all about, and have well-structured content to increase the conversion rate.

⭐️Remember, every detail matters, as it has an impact on the visitor. The simpler and neater a landing page, the better the chance it will convert users into leads.

Lastly, when designing your landing page make sure to add all the trust signals, marks and badges you can to show visitors that your offer and brand are reliable.

Examples of trust signals you could add:

• Show renowned brands you’ve worked with
• Show endorsements and recognitions you’ve received 
• Show groups and coalitions you’re a member of.
• Testimonials (Testimonials are considered a classic trust signal that reassures visitors)

All of these stamps of approval will give your customers more confidence in your brand.

Next up….

✔️ Great Images:

When it comes to designing your website, your goal is to make a great first impression on customers. 

So much of what we respond to nowadays is image-based- we’ve all heard the saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’; and as cliche that saying is, it’s true! 

When designing your website you need to have great images to compete. Your website represents your brand, service or products so don’t just add a bunch of stock images. Your best bet is to add as many high quality, professional images of your facilities, products, processes, and your team.

Hiring a professional photographer will ensure that your products and services look high quality. Using low quality, unprofessional photos on your website will communicate the same about your organization and the products and services you offer. 

So in the end when it comes to either hiring a professional for your website photos or adding a bunch of stock or camera photos- always choose to go Pro! 

Let’s not forget about….

✔️Mobile-Responsiveness:

It’s 2022. You need to make sure your website is mobile-responsive.

Responsive web design refers to a design strategy that creates websites that work well for mobile, tablet, and desktop devices. In a nutshell, if your site isn’t mobile-friendly then you’re missing out on a ton of traffic!

When adding a mobile-responsive design, make sure you think of touchscreens. Mobile devices (phones and tablets) are equipped with touchscreens along with a good amount of laptops; so you need to make sure your website offers some touchscreen and keyboard functions. Naturally, a responsive website will have to calibrate itself for being accessed via touchscreens. 

So how do you design your website to be touchscreen responsive? 

For example, let’s say there is a drop-down menu on the homepage you can

• On desktop view, each menu item must be large enough so that it can be pressed with a fingertip of a touchscreen.

• On mobile screens, smaller elements like buttons should also be easier to detect and select.

Other ways you can design your website to be mobile responsive are:

1)Choose a mobile-responsive theme or template

2)Change button size and placement

3)Space out your links

4)Use a large and readable font

5)Optimize Image Size

This one’s important!…

✔️ Fast Load Times:

If your site takes too long to load your design won’t be effective. In fact, most mobile users expect a website to load in less than four seconds. I know, we’re so spoiled nowadays! 

It’s also important to keep in mind that a slower loading website can affect your SEO, not to mention that Google penalizes websites with a low page load speed. 

More importantly, customers or visitors will stop returning to your website and new customers will simply just bounce (meaning the visitor will just leave right away) when your website page takes too long to render. This will result in the loss of potential customers and revenue for your business. That’s not good!

To keep load times fast when designing your website you can try: 

•  enabling browser caching
• optimize your images and CSS 
• control when the external Javascript files load.

You can’t leave this one out!…

✔️ Blog:

A good website without a blog isn’t going to do well. Why? Because content is one of the main ways to drive organic traffic from search engines to your website.

Keep in mind, it’s not enough just to have a business blog on your website, it should address the specific problems, challenges, and stages in the buyer’s journey that your ideal clients are experiencing.

If you produce enough informative and engaging articles then you will also find that other sites may choose to link to it, thus expanding your reach with no extra effort. And if a reader likes a particular blog piece, they may choose to share it on social media channels, expanding that reach even further!!

5 more reasons why adding a blog to your website it important:

1)It drives traffic to your website

2)It increase your SEO/ SERP position and puts your business as                     the leader in your industry

3)It allows you to develop better customer relationships

4)It creates content for your social media profiles.

5)It generates leads!

The IMPORTANT factor!…

✔️ SEO-Friendly:

Your website should also be SEO-friendly. SEO (search engine optimization) is another critical factor in getting your website ranked by search engines and appearing in organic search results for your desired search terms.

Whether faced with a redesign or building your website from scratch, SEO should always play a major role in your strategic approach as it’s one of the most essential marketing channels for acquiring customers. 

A few ways to help build your website SEO: 

• Analyze all of your website data and do that regularly.
• Conduct a thorough keyword research.
• Produce great content (look to see what your top competitors are posting)
• Optimize for on-page SEO. 
• Optimize for off-page SEO. 
• Optimize the website for mobile. 
• Speed up the pages
• Get quality backlinks

What is the ultimate goal?

By having one of those top spots we talked about in search engines, it will improve your business’ lead generation and makes it easier to sell products/services when people trust your brand. 

So in the end, when you decide to revamp or redesign your website, you need to make sure you add all the ‘good stuff’  we talked about above so your website will read, look and run perfectly! Because in the end, we all know what the ultimate goal is- Gaining more consistent customers which in turn will make your business more successful!

ModFXMedia builds Websites that bring results!

We are in a time where there’s lots of competition out there. Having a website that gets things done is a huge deal. Let us help you build your empire and establish your dominance on the web. As we’ve established, it’s not enough to just build your wesbite: You need to have great CTA’s, a good directing landing page, eye-catching professional photos and videos, fast loading times, an informative blog and SEO with a purpose! 

Doing all of that on top of running your business can turn into a full time job in itself which is why hiring a professional marketing agency is your best bet. At ModFXMedia, we’ve helped countless businesses get to the top and we can help you too. Based out of Jacksonville, Fl., we work with local businesses and businesses that stretch all over the US. 
Engage with us on a strategy to get you a website that does the work for you! Contact us today for a quote or call us directly at- (904)-673-7587