Features Every Website Must Have?

Did you know that only two-thirds of the small businesses have a working website in 2019?

If you are among that, number then excellent! Your business now has a presence online. However, just having a website is not enough anymore; you need to features to capture people’s attention when visiting.

What are the Features every website must have? The required features for any website includes responsive website design, Search Tools, Schema Markup, Loading time less than 3 seconds and contact form. However, there are animations and videos that capture people’s attention when visiting your website.

In this article, we will discuss the website features that may prove essential to the survival and the growth of your business.

1. Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design (RWD) is a fantastic feature that automatically arranges your contents and displays them in response to the devices used to view your website. Which means your website (which already looks stunning on a computer) will now seems just as good on a smartphone. Responsive website design is a method to counter content issues that would arise when trying display content on mobiles that was originally design for desktop. These issues will include structural and visual discrepancies such as font display.

A traditional website, which does not offer responsive design, requires a lot of zooming and panning in order to see the contents clearly, resulting in frustration from viewers. A study conducted by Search Engine Watch has concluded that 72% of customers want mobile-friendly websites and will leave a website that is not responsive, regardless of the quality reflected in their content.

Before this tool was available, businesses had to build multiple websites dedicated to each platform, even though they house the same information. Not only did this approach result in much confusion because of the sheer amount of websites you would have to manage.

2. Home Page

Think of a home page as a receptionist who your customers or clients will first see as they walk through your door. This is the face of your company where first impressions are formed.

Greet your viewers with a heartfelt welcome and try to make them remember you. Visuals can aid imprinting your brand into their minds, small but well-thought changes can make wonders. Remember, when you welcome visitors to your home, you would ensure your house is clean.

Do not fool yourself into the idea that home page plays a negligible role in your business. ESPN.com increased their profit by 35% after the homepage was redesigned based on feedback from users.

3. Logo

Every business should have a logo. after all, they are something people can remember you by. A logo is a trigger that you will flash around to ensure people associate this unique design to the products and services you offer. There is no better place to display your logo than in the header section of you website. This is a place where all can see.

Maybe you do not have a quite a memorable brand name or a catchy slogan yet but a well-designed and eye-catching graphic can make up for that as an image speaks a thousand words. However, that is not to say that you should not also have a catchy slogan.

4. Searching Tools

There are customers who will be directed to your product pages through Google and other means. However, there are also those who already have in mind exactly the products they want.

The search bar can navigate them to these products, saving them the time and effort to search in every nook and cranny on your website. So for their convenience and your businesses, be sure to put a magnifier icon on every page of your website at a location that all can see.

5. Live Chat

Having an instant communication is imperative. For example, in a shop your staff approach and support customers as soon as they walk into the building. A live chat is the digital option that can provide real-time support.

According to a study, 68% of American online consumers tend to engage in a live chat and 63% will return to a website if live chat feature is available.

A live chat can help build customer’s confidence through browsing and shopping, in turn increase the conversion rate. While staff can answer most of the questions, they don’t deliver the same experience as an agent in live chat. The anonymity status can help customer feel more comfortable in asking.

This feature will also cut your business cost. One expert on a live chat is more than enough to handle multiple customers at one time. An investment in intelligent live chat software, which automatically replies customers, will cut your costs even further in the long run. Once customers feel that their voice is heard and opinions are heeded, they are inclined to visit you some other time in the future.

6. FAQ Page

FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions. An FAQ page is a collection of common questions asked by customers about your products or services put together in one page. Thus, your FAQ page should be an information hub of high quality and dedicated to your business only. The quality of the FAQ will directly affect your conversion rate, which means it should clear up confusions about your policies while hinting the value of your product and services.

Having a quality FAQ will answer any doubting questions people may have about your business (especially, if they have never heard of you before). For this reason, an FAQ should always be able to address the needs of the majority and provide clear and concise answers.

7. Testimonials

The presence of a testimonial page this page suggests the professionalism and discipline to building positive relationships with your customers. Such things are the prerequisites in boosting sales and conversion rate. Moreover, Google rewards this, as it is a guarantee to quality.

By finding your business through Google they are is essence recommending you to people. Imagine if someone recommends a service to you and they did a bad job. This also looks bad on the person recommending. Testimonials is a good way to ensure you will get a good service as it is testament to the good work you have done in the past. As a result, Google will show to website in their search results with confidence.

8. Schema Markup and Rich Snippets

To create a schema markup, you need to integrate data into the coding of your website. This code ensures that search engines can easily recognize your website data structure. These days, schema markup has been regarded as an essential feature in website developing, especially when it is a part of Google ranking algorithm. This is because the markup built-in helps communicate with the search engines, clarifies what the website is about, ensuring more accurate results to visitors.

Many businesses failed to comprehend the importance of schema markup and only 31.3% of today websites use Schema.

Rich snippets are the after product of schema markup. They are the additional information displayed under the search results, such as rating of a certain products or passages cutout. Whether the snippets are featured or not depends entirely on the whim of the search engines. If the search engines judge the presence of the snippets are beneficial to the search results, they will highlight these snippets which results in increase click through rates to your website (basically, more traffic).

9. Compelling Content

In a research by Econsultancy/Adobe, content marketing is ranked first in B2B digital priorities, accounting for 37%. This goes to show that more and more entrepreneurs are utilizing content for the marketing campaigns.

If this card is played correctly, it can deliver a tremendous effect on your business: A pricing page has successfully created a 927% increase in clicks by using content to stir up curiosity.

Overall, great content will sell your products and get your ranked on Google’s search engine results page.

10. Contact Us

Let us say a customer visits your website, becomes interested in your products and wants to have a look in person before furthering their decision purchase. Most likely, they will search for contact information of your business.

You can always find contact information in a contact page!

Contact pages are so simple but useful above anything else. Research shows that 44% of visitors will leave a website if there are no means to contact this business.

11. Animated Design

What other way to attract viewers’ attention you ask?

Try using animated design; this is innovative and just as equally effective in drawing interest. In the past, the adoption of animation in website was not as favored in web design, mainly due to the extra workload it has on your computer. Nevertheless, it was still a revolutionary feature for capturing the attention of your visitors.

Nowadays, thanks to the advancement in technology, animation has been demanding less and less computing power. The use of lightweight coding such as JavaScript and CSS plays a major role in this regard. It has been revealed that adapting animation video to your website can increase conversion rate by 80%. For example Integration of animation in web development can be used to enforce your selling points or story telling which brings in the inspiration or you can use it stir up the curiosity in viewers.

12. eCommerce

Statistics have shown that there are approximately 12-24 million e-commerce stores on the Internet. So if your website does not support this feature already, it is high time you did. But not worry so much because in spite of their overwhelming amount, just more than half a million yield $1000 annually. That comes to show that even you are late to the game, with careful calculation and execution, you can still win.

In addition, if you think you can avoid selling online and still survive as a business then think again. 51% of shoppers prefer shopping online to shopping in person. This is mainly due to the advantages consumers enjoy through online shopping. The abilities to preorder products or research have become much more effortless thanks to e-commerce.

13. Blog

Blog is a place to share your stories and passion to your customers, inspire them in the process. Nevertheless, do know that blog also plays a major role in SEO? The availability of a blog obliges you to update and refresh your website regularly. Google and other search engines usually prefer new and up-to-date website and content to outdated ones.

Google also rewards long articles with better explanations and rewards you by ranking you website high in the search results. On average, the first results on Google search usually are 2000-word long. This is chance to introduce your products and services to your customers. By integrating links to your website, you can increase traffic to these pages, making sales in the process.

14. Social Media Integration

Your website is the main façade of your business, your presence on the Internet. But in building customer relationship, none can best social media.

Social media allows for an easy interaction between customers and business owners while managing feedbacks and purchase orders. On social media such as Facebook, viewers can share your products between their friends and acquaintances, thus, even those that do not require your service can introduce you to those in need. Building an audience on social sites is a pathway to appeal to your potential customers and retain the loyal ones.

So, be sure to link your social media pages, such as Twitter, Facebook or Youtube to your website as well, and forget not the “share” button so they can tell all their friends how awesome you and your company are.

Conclusion

In this articles we talked about ever feature a website must have to ensure it makes a full time income for yourself and your business. These include having the ability for customers to finding your services through means of Google and also having them be able to contact you at their own convenience. 

If you are not there yet then these things will help you get there.