Let’s face it. To run a successful business in 2023, having a website is crucial. But not just any website, a website that is both modern and contains essential information that every business website needs.
How do you know if your website has the right stuff? Check out our list of the six essential elements your website needs to succeed.
1. A Fitting Web Address
As the web gets more popular, finding a short and to-the-point domain name is getting more challenging, especially if your business has a common name. But finding the simplest domain you can is vitally important in helping your customers remember how to find you.
A great domain name also helps to build trust with your customers. It makes your website look more professional and established and shows you are serious about your business. Additionally, having your domain name can help with search engine optimization (SEO) by making it easier for search engines to find and index your website.
2. Branding
Does your business have a brand guide? If so, make sure you follow your guidelines when developing your website. Use your brand colors, fonts, and logos, and gear your site to your target audience to create brand consistency across your marketing.
A consistent brand identity will make your business more recognizable and memorable to customers. Using consistent branding across all marketing materials, including your website, can create a lasting impression to help your business stay top-of-mind with customers.
3. Responsive Design
Responsive design means your website will work on both smart devices and desktop devices with no lags or difficulty viewing certain elements. With 92.3% of web users accessing the internet via mobile devices, you could miss out on a lot of business if your website does not have a responsive design.
4. A Purpose (and a CTA)
A call to action (CTA) is a prompt that encourages website visitors to take a specific action, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or subscribing to a newsletter.
Using a strong call to action on your website can increase conversions, guide visitors, create urgency, provide focus, and improve the user experience. It’s an essential element of any effective website design and marketing strategy. Studies have revealed that CTAs on a landing page can increase conversion rates by up to 80% and increase revenue by 83% when the CTA is relevant and well-placed.
Website design by Byte for Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County using strong CTAs to Donate, Volunteer, or Find Food
5. Contact Information
If your customers need you, how can they reach you? Whether you want them to fill out a web form, call a number, or send an email inquiry, ensure you have the correct information for them to contact you and inquire about your services.
Including contact information on your website shows that you are transparent and open about your business. This can increase your credibility with potential customers and make them more likely to do business with you. Including easy-to-find contact info makes it easier for potential business partners, vendors, or suppliers to get in touch with you. This can lead to new business opportunities and partnerships.
Byte’s contact page info shows various ways to get in touch
6. Modern Design
Modern design is essential in website creation because today’s customer is more web savvy than in recent years. That’s why we recommend incorporating at least a few web design trends from 2023 into your website. Following your brand guide, use elements like asymmetrical layouts or “broken grid” layouts which break the rules when it comes to conventional website grid structure, or a parallax scrolling effect, where the background of your site moves at a different speed than the content in front of it.
Another new design element is motion graphics, similar to short video animations but a bit less expensive and limited in how they move on the screen.
Website design by Byte for Gateway X-CUP using current web design trends
Does Your Site Have What It Takes?
Of course, you will want to add more information than this to your website, such as products, services, an ‘about us’ section, or any other information you feel is important to your business, but make sure no matter what your site includes that you at least cover the essentials we listed above.
Whether starting your business website from scratch or looking to upgrade, our website design and development team can incorporate all of these features into your site. Contact us to get started today.
