6 Critical Features Your Website Can’t Go Without

Image by Kevin Phillips from Pixabay

If you want a website that accurately represents your brand, you need to invest both time and money into the building process. Unquestionably, web design can be overwhelming, especially when you know that the website has a direct impact on your business.

The vast majority of people leave a website in a matter of seconds if it doesn’t catch their attention effectively. That can really harm a website’s rating due to Google’s bounce rate.

Surely you don’t want your website to be lost somewhere behind the first page of the search results. The goal is to attract more people, not to get rid of them, right?

If you want to have a killer website for your business, take a look at some critical features that your website shouldn’t go without. Alternatively, you can look for websites for sale, and that way you can acquire a website and then just make the necessary changes that best suits you.

Good hosting plan and DNS

Every rock-solid website has to have a solid infrastructure. Without it, your website cannot succeed. That’s why skipping out on good website hosting services is never a wise move.

First of all, avoid shared hosting plans as they will make your website slower to load. The user experience is highly dependable on loading speed. If the user instantly encounters problems upon clicking on your website’s address, well, you’ve set yourself up for failure.

What’s more, a bad hosting plan will make the website slow in general, and there is a high chance that your website will be disrupted or even unavailable. Whenever your website is down, you lose potential customers, and ultimately revenue.

Another important area to cover in the initial stage is the domain name server (DNS). DNS is used to resolve human-readable hostnames into machine-readable IP addresses. In addition, DNS also provides other useful info about domain names.

DNS is like a phonebook of the entire internet. If you want people to find you, your number along with the exact name of your business has to be in that phonebook. The main idea is to help people find you easily. To achieve that, the DNS performance has to be top-notch.

Nowadays, many people opt for cloud DNS because of its reliability and security. If you think it would work for your website, research all available options.

SEO-friendly structure

Image by Lalmch from Pixabay

If you want to rank high on Google, you need to think about a search-engine-friendly structure when developing your website. Aesthetics matter, there is no doubt about it. However, if Google doesn’t like your website, there will be no one to see how beautiful it is.

Search engine bots should be able to crawl your website easily. If this seems too difficult to understand, you should consult an SEO expert to help you out.

When you have a website that is not SEO-friendly, every marketing campaign you run will amount to fetching water into a leaking bucket.

Hence, if you aren’t so familiar with the best SEO practices, make sure to find someone who is. Have that professional examine your website’s structure, a process known as an SEO audit. Based on the results, you will know whether you only need to tweak a couple of things or revamp your website completely.

Use Google Analytics

This invaluable piece of software isn’t an on-site feature, but you can easily add it to your site. Nonetheless, it is crucial as a tool to monitor everything about your website.

Once you add Google Analytics to your website, you will be able to measure the results of individual campaigns in real-time. Additionally, it will allow you to compare the data to previous periods.

With this software, you can see data from all external channels directing traffic to your website, track conversions, and even see how engaged your customers are.

As these metrics are important, it is wise to keep an eye on them. Google Analytics lets you do just that. You are able to monitor the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts, on-site content, user experience, and even device functionality.

All these stats let you know what is working well on the website and what you should try to fix. Essentially, this tool is a vehicle to improve your website and make it the best it can be.

A converting landing page

A landing page is a really important page. It is a standalone page, different from your homepage, that serves a single and focused purpose.

In a word, it has the goal of turning a visitor into a customer. So, if you want more conversions, you need to feature a great landing page on your website. Your landing page needs to zero-in on the offer, not the company.

Here are the most crucial elements of a converting landing page:

• compelling headline
• explanatory sub-headline
• converting copy
• a relevant and educational image
• a short but effective form
• descriptive and unique call to action

Although an extension of your brand, the landing page should not be a detailed history of the company. It should give the customer what they came for.

The content on your landing page has to be clear and concise, so free it of distractions. The end-goal is to give the user what they want while also completing the registration process.

Naturally, the forms should be as simple as possible. Lengthy forms are daunting to visitors and make them leave, searching for another website. So, the best approach is breaking the form into a couple of simple steps to make the process as easy as possible.

To sum up, make it simple and easy, visually attractive, short and sweet, and focus on your customers’ wants and needs. That’s a recipe that will take you one step closer to conversions.

Looks matter too

Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay

Seven seconds.

That’s how much time you have to make a first impression.

Therefore, looks are important and you should try to make your website as attractive as possible. Aim at an appealing design.

For instance, in a choice between a beautifully designed or clear cut and simple content layout, a whopping 66% of them would prefer the first option. The number is a clear sign that your website’s design matters.

So, if you feel like your website might need remodeling, no matter whether it is a redesign of your logo or the entire site, don’t shy away from it. It can make a significant impact on your business.

The design determines the first impression and if the response isn’t positive, visitors will bounce. To make matters worse, they will associate a bad design with your business, which will immediately make them think your business is no good.

Bear in mind many people build trust (or fail to do so) based on the website’s design. If they see that your site is poorly designed or the information looks outdated, you won’t even get a chance to earn this trust.

Aim to make your website look professional. A good-looking website appeals to your audience. Therefore, give them the opportunity to trust your business and feel more comfortable checking it out further.

A good opt-in form

Introducing an opt-in form on your website is an effective way to register a prospect’s interest in a product and provide further contact details.

This form is widely used in eCommerce as a powerful marketing tool to get permission to send newsletters and other promotional materials to subscribers.

There are various ways of presenting such forms. You can have them pop up on your product pages, as an element on your homepage, or you can opt for other alternatives. Some businesses even devote a separate landing page just for the form to which the prospects get directed to.

Just remember that such a practice has to be executed within legal boundaries. That is, you can never send unsolicited emails to your recipients. Make sure to abide by the laws concerning data collection. Also, you should, by all means, avoid having your emails land in the spam folder.

Other than that, opt-in forms are great to remind customers about your products, new launches, and everything that can spark an interest and take them back to your business.

Sort things out with subscriber permission, laws and regulations and you will boost your conversion rate in no time.

Final thoughts

All these features of your website matter to a great extent. However, they are only some of the more prominent ones that can be referred to as ‘critical.’

Start by taking care of the aspects of your website mentioned in this article. Remember, when you have a website that is performing well, your business will perform well.

All of that provides value potentially making your name an attractive business for sale one day. So, even if you decide to sell, you will still be a winner at the end of the day.