Have you ever noticed how a building is constructed?
You must complete the drawing and start digging the ground for the construction work. Then, you start fixing brick, cement, and sand. And finally, you install the windows and the doors.
You might be wondering about the relevance of constructing a building in this article.
Sorry but this is the best analogy that comes to mind when I think about building a website.
If you analyze both the context – you’ll find a lot of similarities in the approach. Just like construction work, building a website requires combining all elements.
Here, you incorporate all the chunks and aim to boost the number of website visitors by providing an optimum user experience.
Each brick of a building is a stepping stone for the entire building. Similarly, each element of a website has to be in order.
Here comes the million-dollar question – Do you know the most important pillars of a successful website? If not, we got you covered!
In this article, we will delve deep into the core components of a website. If you want to take your website to the next level, you must be with us for the next few minutes.
16 Must-Have Elements For Building An Effective Website
Let’s assume you come across an advertisement for a Shirt on Instagram. The shirt grabbed your attention, and you wanted to buy the product. But here is a catch – you know nothing about the brand.
Tell me, what’s the first thing you’ll do here? You visit their website and gather information about the brand.
Simply put, a website is the entry point of your product or service. So, it is obvious that you need to keep everything together for optimum success.
Whether you’re hiring a developer or you’re using any website builder, here is what you need to keep in mind:
1. Fully Functional And Tempting Designs
Your website must resonate with your brand (the product you’re selling, the information you share, brand positioning, etc.)
So, It’s A No-Brainer That Your Website Must Have The Following:
- Tempting design
- Professional look and feel
- Avoid uncluttered layouts
- Incorporate quality visuals
- Outshine through your message
Another important aspect is – creating a website that comes with seamless functionality.
From my experience, I have seen many websites fail to offer the desired user experience to their users.
When you embark on user experience, loading speed is paramount. Make sure your website is adhering to the web standards.
You must test your website multiple times before actually launching it.
Poorly constructed websites leave your audience frustrated. That, in turn, negatively impacts the website experience.
2. SEO Optimized Website
No matter how good your website is, there is no point if it fails to reach the desired audience. Only some people have the budget to run ads to garner traffic to their websites.
Here comes SEO into the picture. It produces free organic search traffic to your site for cost-effectiveness and long-term success. Search engines, especially Google, are where people turn to when they’re looking for information online.
While searching for something on Google, how often have you gone beyond the first page? People usually hover over the first page. This is why you must be visible on the first page.
Google and other search engines employ unique algorithms to rank sites for specific search terms, commonly known as keywords.
When it comes to SEO, your prime goal is to improve the visibility of your website. So it is important to earn backlinks from prominent websites.
Once the crawling bots discover your site, keep it up-to-date with plenty of new content related to the keywords you want to be ranked higher for.
This way, it will be indexed and analyzed for content, such as keywords, freshness, relevance, links, and multimedia.
3. Mobile Optimized Website
Put yourself into the shoes of the user. We need help opening our laptops or desktops to search for something on Google. This is why the number of mobile users is increasing day by day.
So no excuses – let’s get optimizing for mobile!
It’s essential that your site looks great and functions seamlessly on all devices, including mobiles and tablets.
Not only will this guarantee that your visitors enjoy their time on your site, but it’ll also lift your search engine rankings!
4. Engaging And Quality Content
I always suggest people produce fresh content. Rather than writing old boring content, it is a smarter choice that you’re representing your content differently.
Many writers need to correct a mistake here. They think writing content for a website is all about using fancy vocabulary. That’s not true.
With time, the attention span of users is decreasing rapidly. The goal here is to make it easily understandable.
Refrain from using jargon. Keep your paragraphs short. Please pick up a conversational tone and make it engaging.
Oh! I must remember to share another important thing- value creation.
When creating valuable content, I can’t think of anything apart from blogs. Write quality blogs and amplify the traffic of your website.
5. Easy To Use
Users of your website do not stay for a longer period! Here, the hack is to create a seamless website that allows them to get the information they seek.
What makes people stay with your site? User experience (UX).
Website Visitors Must Not Face Any Challenges While Searching For Information. You Should Delight:
- Someone who is searching for specific information.
- Individuals who are randomly browsing.
Build a robust website hierarchy that enables smooth navigation across your website.
Simply put, your job is offering what they are looking for. Plus, you can also engage them by suggesting related content.
6. Easily Accessible Contact Info
Do let your audience wait longer to fetch your contact information. Make it such easy that they get the contact information with a click.
Here You Can Offer Numerous Points Of Contact, Such As:
- Email id
- Mobile number
- Social media accounts
- A Google map
- Your address
If you haven’t created a contact page yet, do it without fail.
Those who take the time to scroll to the footer of your site are likely searching for more information about your business, just like they’d flip to the back of a book for an index or glossary. The footer is the best place to find contact information on a website.
7. Crystal Clear CTA
What do you want from your website? What is the purpose behind the website? If you do not entice your visitors to act, they will do nothing.
Do you want to sell your product?
Or you may be an information-sharing site that wants people to share their content on multiple platforms and garner more traffic.
My recommendation is to separate the color for your CTA button.
8. Easy-To-Remember URL
An URL is the most underrated component o a website. Not many people talk about the significance of an URL. To be frank, they do not know.
Take some time to think while deciding the name of your URL. Do your research, be mindful, and create a URL that people can recall easily.
Here Are The Best Practices For Creating An Attention-Worthy URL:
- Simple is effective. Make it easy to type into the address bar.
- Make it crisp and easy to remember.
- It’s best to go with .com or .org web addresses. From the standpoint of users and search engines – these extensions are more trustworthy.
9. Add A Description About Your Business
First impressions matter!
You must create a good impression when someone visits your website for the first time. People should easily recognize what the business is all about. Explain to them the purpose of your website.
Ensure your homepage has a mission statement or a hero message explaining the services your business offers.
10. Declutter Your Website
How difficult is it to move your car in a traffic jam? Really a cumbersome task!
If I put it in simple words, a cluttered website comes with too many elements (such as pages, images, ads, and design elements).
And it is challenging to navigate through a cluttered website.
Unfortunately, these websites are quite common, and you may have already encountered one.
Here Is What You Can Do:
- Remove all the unnecessary pages from your site.
- Create a strong website hierarchy.
- Avoid using multiple color palettes.
- Consider building a responsive website.
11. Fast Loading Speed
As per Forbes data, “40% of users will leave a site if it take more than three seconds to load.”
Nearly half of the users don’t spend time with a slow website.
From the standpoint of search engines, slow website negatives impact SEO.
Ensure your website runs smoothly – keep the software updated, optimize your videos and images, and manage your website host.
Do you want your users to fetch the information quickly from your website? Use a CDN (content delivery network).
Another way to improve your website speed is by reducing the number of HTTP request it makes.
Make your CSS and Javascript files slightly smaller to improve the loading time.
12. Audience-Centric Website Copy
Think like a user!
Why would anyone land on your website?
They can come with purchase intent.
Or, they may be looking for some informative content (blogs).
Or, your prospect may want to know more about your brand.
No matter what the intent is, make your copy aligned with the specific goal. Imagine as if you’re the prospect and then create the documents.
Ask yourself the following questions: What are they expecting? What expertise do they already have? Do they like reading elaborative information or short content?
Once you’re clear with this, craft a website copy that resonates with your audience.
13. Creating A Perfect Home Page
Do you know that experts believe that almost 90% of your website user decides whether to stay or move depending on the home page of your site?
So it is pivotal that your home portrays your offerings. Make your home page in such a way that hooks your reader’s attention span right away.
Give time to check your logo, tagline, hero text, and video (if required).
Your goal is to let users stay with your website and explore more about you.
14. Craft A Perfect ‘About Us’ Page
If you craft an effective About page, you can create a strong brand and establish yourself as an authority within your industry.
Don’t get trapped into creating a boring and cliche about us page. Be smart and creative.
A Good ‘About Us’ Page Tells The User:
- What the brand is about.
- How the journey has started.
- A brief about its founding members.
This is how; you can create a humble and engaging portrait of your team before visitors. You should present your information attractively in this section of the web.
15. Robust CMS And Backend Infrastructure
The structure of your CMS significantly influences your website’s performance, especially for eCommerce sites. Plus, it can also impact – how smoothly your website updates content and interacts with visitors.
When choosing a content management system for your website, consider the platform based on its usability and performance and ease of updating content and interacting with users. Pay attention to the language, tone of voice, and other important aspects.
Following Are The Factors That You Can Consider:
- Content editing must be easy with the CMS from any device and at any time.
- You have an extensive network of designers and developers, so you can get the help you need with WordPress.
- It must be SEO-friendly.
- Capable of preventing hacking attempts.
- It must come with a faster loading speed.
16. Incorporate Necessary Details
Website is something that reflects your professionalism! So you must incorporate the details.
(i) Business Hours
Do you possess a physical presence? Are you only reachable at certain times?
If yes, then consider adding the same on your website. People should know when to contact you, whether in person or over the phone.
(ii) Contact Form
A contact form is a touchpoint that allows your audience to reach out to you. Adding a contact form on your website makes your audience feel heard, included, and you care for your audience.
It is also a great way to establish one-to-one communication with your audience. Upon analysis of their problem, you can tweak your existing efforts and create a stellar business plan.
(iii) Social Media Icons
With the accessibility of the internet, social media has taken over the internet. Every reputed organization has its presence on social media.
Having multiple social media accounts depicts that you’re a credible entity.
(iv) Blogs
I have already discussed this. Given the impact blogs have, I have to reiterate this.
When you try to garner website traffic, blogs are a must-have thing. So make sure you have a separate section for blogs on your website.
And it’s A Wrap-Up!
If you reached this point, thank you for reading through. Do you feel these 16 components are enough to take your website to the next level?
I hope you found a “wow” moment.
I want to know which part of the article you liked the most. What’s your takeaway from this article? What is that one thing that you’re going to apply immediately?
I hope you may have many questions in your mind. Please let me know. I will be more than happy to resolve your doubts.
This is it. I’ll see you in the next article. Till then, goodbye. Thanks for reading!
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