8 Critical Components of a Website
Having a website that is functional and in line with your brand is critical. In this blog, you’ll learn about eight qualities a website should possess to ensure you are maximizing it as a marketing tool.
Design
You shouldn’t take the appearance of your website lightly. Using your brand guide is critical. Don’t have a brand guide? You NEED one! Consistency in the appearance of your website matters a lot. Ensure that your website maintains consistency throughout, from webpage to webpage, the navigation, the fonts, margins, spacing, color, heading sizes, button styles, etc. As readers go through your web pages, they should feel like they’re in a peculiar space that has a single identity that captures your brand. Your website should not lack coherence. As they go from page to page on your site, the unique identity of your site should still be glaring. This means that you shouldn’t use design elements that look out of place with the rest.
Responsiveness
How responsive is your website? Being able to answer this question correctly is one of the qualities a good website should possess. You are building for your users, and your users do not all use a single device.
Building a website that is responsive across devices is crucial to creating a fantastic user experience. A responsive website will function well on both old and new desktop devices, and on different types of mobile devices as well, be it smartphones or tablets. So, when creating your website, your web designer has to ensure that your site is built with themes that can function well on all devices. In case you didn’t know, Google is now mobile-first, and that means that Google considers how mobile-friendly your site is when calculating the ranking of your site.
Content
Apart from a good design and responsive website, content is equally important. Your design won’t be of much value if you are not sending a clear message to your users. Capturing readers’ interests with good website content can be really challenging. Most visitors will spend just a few seconds on a web page before deciding what to do next.
Good website writing is the key to beating these odds. Well-written content that’s optimized for the web rises to the top of search results and holds readers’ attention. The content must also be consistent with your brand’s personality.
Load Time
Your website loading time is another factor to watch out for. The average load time of your website is one of the qualities that make an excellent website. Optimize your website to ensure it doesn’t take too long to load.
When you have a website that loads fast, you will simultaneously reduce your site’s bounce rate. Website loading time is the speed at which your website loads when a visitor tries to access a webpage on the site. Bounce rate, on the other hand, is how frequent and how quick visitors leave your website when they visit. If your site’s visitors are impressed with what they find on your website, they will spend more time on it, but if they are not impressed, they will leave almost immediately.
Contact Form
Tracking user activity and conversion and collecting user data is a good practice that can be used to improve your website and your business at large. Using a contact form makes it easier for your visitors to enter their details without leaving your website. Your contact form should always be accompanied by a thank you message.
Call To Action (CTA)
A quality website needs to have a call-to-action feature(s), as this can help increase your conversion rate by a large margin. The call-to-action feature can be used to build a mailing list, give out coupon prices or make an actual sale. Call to action is a key marketing strategy; hence you need to have it as part of your website, and you must implement it strategically to get the best results.
Your call to action (CTA) isn’t just a text asking your target audience to make a commitment, it is a pitch, so polish it and make it look appealing and convincing.
Security
The security level of your website is paramount to the users. A good website must ensure proper security measures are in place to shield it from hackers. If your website is insecure, do not expect users to keep their information with you, nor will they trust you enough to make use of your website.
The first thing to do if you want a secure website is to host your website on a web hosting provider that offers strong security. Your website should also have SSL encryption.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization is a crucial part of a quality website, so ensure your website follows SEO rules and guidelines. A website with a poor code structure won’t fare well when it comes to SEO, which reduces the ability to attract traffic from external sources and search engines correctly.
There are several SEO practices you can do to make your site rank well on search engines — good use of keywords, internal and external link building, optimizing your title tags, optimizing your images, etc.
Hyve Marketing is a full-service marketing partner, that offers a concierge approach to tailor solutions to meet your needs. We can manage all aspects of your marketing needs: branding and design, website development, digital marketing, social media management, paid search, content management, photography, and video production. Contact us today for complimentary marketing analysis of your existing brand and collateral.
