Top 10 things your website should have!

We have come across a variety of websites over the years and found that most websites are always missing at least two of the important things every website should have! So to help you and to show you the important elements your website needs, we have put together our Top 10 things your website should have list:

1. Responsive – A responsive website is when you can view a website perfectly on any screen size or device, this is ever so important for your website it can mean the difference between visits and no visits! We all know that most people do pretty much everything from their phone and if they try and view your website on their phone but struggle to read the content and have to zoom in and out that they will probably leave quite quickly. Users want a website that they can view perfectly on their device and do what they came on the website to do, whether that’s reading a blog post or purchasing a product. A Responsive website is especially important when you have an eCommerce website, it allows users to easily purchase products from your website no matter what device or screen size they are viewing your website on. The difference between a sale and no sale. Something to think about!

2. Good SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) – Every website should have good SEO, good SEO will mean your website can be found on search engines using the search results your target market would enter on a search website. If you find your website isn’t easily found on search engines it maybe time to look into your websites SEO and see what is missing, for more help on this see our SEO Guide.

3. Social Media Icons – Social Media Icons should be found somewhere on any website you visit, sometimes they are found in the website’s header and other times in the footer, either area is fine. Just make sure you have added your social media icons to your website and that they link to your social media sites, users may visit your website and like your products or blog posts and decide they want to be kept up to date, so they may decide to start following you on social sites. If you don’t currently have social media icons on your website there are many websites out there that let you download FREE Social Media Icons. Here is one of them, enjoy! 🙂 http://www.vandelaydesign.com/free-social-media-icons/

4. Blog – We have come across so many websites that don’t take advantage of having a blog, some think they don’t need one, that they wouldn’t have anything to write about. No matter what your company does there is always something you can write about, whether it’s about new products, a new service, helpful tips and information or just some general latest news. All this content is worth sharing (even if you don’t think it is), share it across all your social media sites linking to your blog post and also add social media share icons to your posts to allow others to share the post as well, this does wonders for your websites SEO and your company exposure. Just give it a try, you have nothing to lose 🙂

5. Website Slider Banner – You may see when you visit a website they have a banner on their homepage which slides through to different images, this is a website banner or a hero banner (same thing). This feature is definitely worth having on your website, you can use it show offers you have on products, a sale, your services and you can even make it seasonal. Another great thing about website banners if you can link the individual banner image to a page, so if it’s about valentines day products when a user clicks on the banner it will take them to all the valentines day products. Website banners can also be very eye catching, users will see them as soon as they enter your website and it might be showing just the thing they are looking for!

6. Newsletter Sign-up Form – If you have a monthly newsletter that you send out (and if you don’t you should!), then you should look at adding a sign-up form to your website, if you are using Mail Chimp for your newsletters (which we highly recommend) it is quite easy to integrate into your website whether it’s WordPress or just a standard website. You should also look at incentives to encourage people to sign up to your newsletter via your website, such as offer a free eBook when they sign up or a discount code to use on your products, the options are endless!

7. Sitemap – No matter what type of website you have you should always have a sitemap! A sitemap is a page that lists each page you have on your website in order with a link to that page, this feature is so handy to have, if someone struggles to find what they are looking for on your website they can just visit your sitemap and hey presto they have found the page they were looking for! Sitemap’s are also great for website SEO and for search engines being about to pick up pages within your website, every little helps.

8. Terms & Conditions – We would like to think that every website already has this, however that is not the case so many websites aren’t adding a terms and conditions page to their website. Terms and Conditions is page that should include information about your website, including copyright for your products and website content. If you don’t have this page on your website stating which areas are copyrighted anyone can copy content from your website and you can’t stop them as you haven’t stated on your website that it’s your content. So please make sure to include this page on your website! Also always include a copyright tag in the footer something like Copyright 2015 (company name). All Rights Reserved. Very important!

9. Contact Details – I know some companies don’t like to display their contact details on their websites, however having this information allows potential customers to easily get in touch with you. A lot of users want to see contact details on every page of a website somewhere where they can easily click on the phone number or email address and get their messaged sent without any hassle of having to go to the contact page first. Just a little something to consider 🙂

10. About Page – Most websites seem to have an about page which is great, however I have seen a couple that don’t. An about page is quite important it allows the users to get to know you on a personal level and people really do prefer to work with companies where they can get to know the faces behind them it helps add a level of trust. Even adding company photos to your about page works, such as photos of each team member and little bit about them, but nothing too corporate add their hobbies and maybe a funny story. It makes all the difference.

We hope you have found this blog post helpful and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch either via email at sales@littlebigbox.co.uk or via phone on 078135 69755 🙂

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