Elements Of A Good Business Website

So, what makes a good business website? Probably a stunning website design that wows your users, right? Well, that’s only partly correct. A good business website is much more than a stunning design, it’s more than that. Sadly, most business owners think so and invest so much time and effort in the design of the overall website without considering other important elements.

Keep in mind, that this does not mean that website design is not important, it is very important but all we are saying is that website design is not the only factor that makes a business website good or even great.

Therefore, what are the elements of a good business website?

Well, that’s exactly what we are going to cover in this article.

First of all, we have to cover the basics.

Why a good business website is important?

What’s the main goal of your business website? The answer should be simple, more leads and sales. This is the most typical answer we get when we ask our client this question and that’s absolutely correct. That’s why it is known as a “business website”, it is meant for business.

With that said, your website is an investment for your business, and if it does not generate an ROI, it would be just a bad investment on your part. As this is the case, your business website has to be able to attract your target market, keep them on the website, and persuade them to take an action that you as the business owner desire.

Therefore, how do you make your website visitors go along that process? Well, it’s simple, your business website has to be engaging enough to your target market that they stay on your website and interact with it.

For example, imagine you are in the market for branded headphones. You visit a tech website that sells headphones and as soon as you enter the website, you are greeted with a dull and boring interface (not techy at all for a technology website) with limited product description and information such as shipping details. Would you still buy from that website? Absolutely not. Therefore, as a result of the business not being able to attract you, keep you on the site and make you engage with them, they lost your sale. And the same thing happens to you if your business website is unable to make your visitors engage with your business.

Now that you know why a good website is important, lets now dive into the elements that makes a good business website.

1. Proper CTA (call to action) Placement

A CTA is an element on your website that persuades a user towards taking action on your site. This can be to make a call to your business, fill out a lead form or make a purchase on the site. Without a proper CTA, you will not be able to make/persuade your website visitors take a particular action on your site. This is why a CTA is a crucial element on any business website. With that said, the place of it is also very important. If you have the wrong CTA placement on your website, it would be the same as having no CTA at all as you will not be able to persuade users to take action on your site effectively.

For example, a CTA like “buy it now” or “add to cart” will be much more effective next to a product itself rather than at the bottom of the page or at the top of the page where the product image is nowhere near to be seen. Just imagine, you visit a website to purchase a pair of headphones as for the above example, and you cannot find a CTA next to the product itself. You will have to search for the CTA where in this day and age website visitors don’t have the patience for and will bounce from your site to another.

2. Proper Content

Proper website content is also another very crucial element in a good business website. Your website content is the backbone of your entire website and it is your sales pitch to your users. If your content is not up to standard or does not cover the points that your users wish to read and see, then your business website will not be as effective as it could be as a business website with proper informational content will persuade users into engaging with your business by persuading your visitors towards your website CTA. As you may have now noticed, both website content and CTA work hand in hand to convert your website visitors.

Just imagine, you visit a website to obtain some sort of service and if that website has very little information on the service itself and how they provide that service, will you be confident in obtaining that service from them? The answer would be “no”. But if you visit a website that gives detailed information on the service and how they operate you would be more confident in obtaining that service, right? This is because the content is high quality and it indicates to us that this service provider is an authority in the industry while winning our trust.

Also, having relevant content about your business on your website allows search engines like Google to identify what your site/page is about and rank you higher on search engines making content a non-neglectable element on any website.

Therefore, you must always put a lot of thought and effort into your website content to make it as engaging as possible to your target market to get them to engage with your business.

3. Trust elements (reviews, testimonials, SSL, etc.)

The overall trust that you represent from your business website is very important to make your website visitors engage with your business.

Some of the main areas that your website can represent trustworthiness are as follows;

• Have a valid SSL certificate to make your website visitors comfortable with entering their personal information such as phone number and address along with their credit card information to make a purchase.
• Have positive reviews and testimonials from your previous customers to boost up the confidence of your potential customers.
• Have privacy policies clearly mentioned on your website.
• Establish your attractiveness in a specific area of business by providing free resources such as blog posts to your visitors. For example, as a leading web design company in Sri Lanka, we offer our clients free resource articles on web design and development just like this one to make them more educated with our knowledge and meanwhile, our authority and trustworthiness increases on their minds as well.

After you have established all these or at least some of these trust factors on your website, your conversion rates will increase for sure. You would not buy anything from a business you don’t trust, right? The same theory applies to your own business website as well. This is why trust factors are so important to a good business website.

4. Proper Target Market researched website design

Proper target market researched website design is the single most important element of a good business website. This is because when you do target market research, you are able to make identify their preferences (what they like) along with their biggest turnoffs (what they don’t like). This information is very valuable as you are able to design an effective business website with the elements that your target market does like and avoid the elements that your target market doesn’t like.

For example, let’s say that you sell headphones. The ideal target market is teenagers and young adults, right? And if your website is designed in a boring and dull way like using plain colors and whatnot, your target market will not be attracted as teenagers and young adults like flashy colors with lots of animations that represent youth culture.

This is why we always put a high priority on target market researched website designs for our clients as it directly influences the performance of the business website.

Note: If you are an ecommerce store owner or planning to start an ecommerce store and need to connect with your potential customers more effectively, you can read our article on ” 5 ways to reach personalization in ecommerce“.

5. Good Website Speed.

The overall website speed is another important element that makes your business website good. It doesn’t matter if you have all the functions in the world in your website and design it in the best way possible for your target market as the bottom line is that your website visitors will bounce if your business website doesn’t load quickly.

This is because internet users are really inpatients nowadays as they want information as quickly as possible. And with thousands of similar websites just like yours, they will not think twice to bounce from your site to another if your website loads slow.

We would recommend optimizing your website to load in under 5 seconds maximum. Search engines such as Google recommends a load time of under 2 seconds which is best for better SEO performance, but in reality, it is impossible for some sites especially if it has lots of functions that use a lot of java scripts and CSS files. Therefore, we would recommend aiming at least under 5 seconds load time.

Wrapping Up

Now that you know why a good business website is important and the main elements that directly influence a good business website, we believe that you will implement these elements on your business website to increase its performance as well. With that being said, if you want a leading web design company in Sri Lanka to handle your website design process and take care of all these elements for you, contact us, as we are at your service.