Whether you conduct your business online or not, having an effective website is necessary. A website helps your business build trust and establish credibility with your customers. Read on for 13 tips for developing a successful business website in 2022.
1. Pick the right domain name
The domain name, also known as the web address, is the entry point to your site. It is also your identity on the web and builds the first impression regarding your business and brand. You should pick a domain name that influences how your target audience finds and remembers you. The following are tips for choosing an optimal domain name:
- Use a proper domain extension. Strive to stick to a .com domain name.
- Ensure it is short and easy to spell.
- Avoid hyphens, doubled letters, or numbers.
- Use relevant keywords for search engine optimization purposes.
- Ascertain that it is memorable.
- Opt for a broad address to accommodate future growth.
- Research the domain name to avoid infringing on another brand’s website name.
- Be cautious when purchasing an existing website name.
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2. Choose a simple website design
Most people think an extravagant design will help capture the target audience’s attention or build a successful site, which is often untrue. Limit the use of flashy colors, fonts, and GIFs as they confuse or distract users from your website’s core message. Make your website information scannable by using bullet points, short paragraphs, and not more than three colors or different fonts on specific website pages. Simplicity is important, and even the most minimalist web design can be attractive. If you’re not sure how to create a simple, mobile-responsive, and eye-catching website design for your site, seek professional web design services.
3. Make your website mobile responsive
“We all know the importance of responsive web design in this era. Your basic SEO depends on the responsiveness of your website, and there are more than 70% of users who are surfing the website on their smart devices including mobile phones and tablets.” – as nicely elaborated by Pjay Pokhrel in one of the recent blog posts. Pjay is the director and the designer of Keen To Design.
Adult Americans spend more than five hours on their phones each day, and more than a third shop online via smartphone devices. Search engines such as Google and Bing also prioritize the mobile versions of websites over the desktop versions.
This shows that you need to create a mobile responsive website to avoid losing a chunk of prospective customers to the competition and rank on Google. Mobile-responsive website pages can quickly load on mobile devices and desktops. To create a mobile-responsive website, you should:
- Select a mobile-responsive web template and builder.
- Use bullet points, visuals, and shorter paragraphs in your text instead of long block content.
- Make hyperlinks easy to click on.
- Reduce animation usage.
- Create large and easy-to-click buttons.
- Make images easy to scan and large.
4. Reduce the page loading time
The time it takes for your website to load significantly impacts your site ranking and visitor retention. Search engines like Google and Bing only rank sites with fast loading webpages, and 53% of your web visitors will leave your site if it takes more than two seconds to load.
To ensure your website runs smoothly and increases the page-loading time, you should optimize videos and images for faster downloads, use web-safe fonts, remove unnecessary plugins and add-ons, minimize redirects and keep software up-to-date. Be sure to choose a website host that can handle current and future bandwidth demands.
5. Ensure your website is easy to navigate
Users visit a particular website in search of specific information. If they do not get the data within a few seconds of browsing, they often get frustrated and leave for your competition. Search engines like Google and Bing use robots to scan through web pages and try to make sense of the information to catalog websites.
When the bots understand the value of your web content, they will make your website more discoverable on search results, so you need to make your website easy to navigate. Here are tools you could include in your site to improve user experience and navigation:
- Categories.
- Search bar.
- Internal linking.
- Breadcrumbs show your web visitors exactly where they are within the website.
6. Include clear CTAs
A call to action is a prompt that nudges your website visitors to take a specific action. Call-to-action (CTAs) come in the form of large buttons that indicate a course of action. It could be “buy now,” “Subscribe,” “get started,” “learn more,” or “sign up for free.” If you do not include a call to action, your website becomes another source of information. This is because it is not apparent what clients ought to do with the information they have garnered from the site. Be sure to place your website’s CTA at the top of your homepage so that visitors do not struggle to find it.
7. Place contact information strategically on your website
Customers may want to reach you for clarifications or solutions to their queries. Your business may also require clients to contact or call the sales team, so you need to include contact information on your website, including phone numbers and email addresses. You should ensure that this information is easily visible, preferably at the top of your website’s homepage.
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8. Display customer testimonials and reviews
Most customers today rely on the views of others to make purchasing decisions, so you should consider adding reviews and testimonials to your site. Reviews and testimonials show your ability to deliver, boosting your business’s credibility and trust. Ensure that your website reviews and testimonials are brief, plausible, specific, natural-sounding, and genuine. There are many ways to incorporate reviews and testimonials to your website, including:
- Adding links to reviews and testimonials on your business’s social media pages.
- Include links to reviews and testimonials in your email marketing campaigns.
- Adding links in the footer of all your web pages.
9. Create and publish quality content regularly
Content is one of the most significant elements of your website. No matter how well designed or developed your website is, it will not drive the desired results if it does not feature content that’s engaging and easy to understand.
When choosing the kind of content to include on your site, try thinking about it from your target audience’s point of view. What type of information would be most valuable to you if you were a potential client? By paying more attention to your prospective client’s needs, you are likely to trigger them to spend more time on your website, create long-term relationships and drive more sales. Remember to publish new content frequently to improve your ranking and encourage users to return to your website again and again.
10. Do not skim on security
While advancements in technology help businesses improve efficiency, productivity, staff coordination, and collaboration, they also increase security risks. Malicious individuals and hackers find new and more sophisticated ways to access sensitive data every day, which could compromise your website’s integrity. For this reason, you must put measures in place to combat security breaches and threats, primarily when you handle transactions on your site.
An effective way to combat security threats if you accept online payments is by getting an SSL certificate. A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a security protocol that secures the connection between your website servers and visitors’ web browsers. It encrypts data, preventing anyone without an encryption key from accessing sensitive information.
11. Develop an SEO strategy
Did you know that 75% of users do not go past the first page of Google results? Clients rely on search engines, especially Google when looking for products and services online. However, their search does not go beyond the first page of search results, so this is where your business website ought to appear.
A cost-efficient and effective way to improve your website ranking is by implementing an SEO strategy. SEO can help you research high-volume keywords and cultivate backlinks to your website to establish domain authority. This boosts your brand’s credibility and visibility, leading to more traffic and leads. Be sure to invest in SEO tools such as Moz Pro, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Ubersuggest, and Keyword Finder to improve your website SEO strategy.
12. Add social media integration
Adding a social media integration to your business’s website can help you increase traffic and engagement. Having social media buttons on your site makes it easy for users to share your website content on their social media platforms, allowing you to reach a more extensive target client base. Social media integration also enables you to track your website content performance on social networks.
13. Develop a website maintenance plan
Creating a well-developed and designed website is not enough. You further need to maintain it properly to ascertain that it ranks on the various search engines and does not get hacked. To create a successful website maintenance plan, you should:
- Install webmaster tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics to analyze your website traffic and performance.
- Use performance data collected by your webmaster tools to optimize and fix errors.
- Exploit traffic data to learn more about your clients to develop strategies to better cater to them.
- Run security checks and scans regularly.
- Backup website data.
- Find practical ways to market your business online.
- Ensure all software is up to date.
- Check what your competition is doing to boost their online presence and determine what could work to your advantage.
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Endnote
Developing an effective website is the first step to establishing the online presence of your business. This makes it easier for clients to find you, which increases your sales volume and revenue. Implement the above strategies to build a website that drives the desired goals.
Web developer and SEO specialist with 20+ years of experience in open-source web development, digital marketing, and search engine optimization. He is also the moderator of this blog "RS Web Solutions (RSWEBSOLS)".
