10 August 2024

What are the 12 must-have elements of every successful business website

What is the first thing you do when hearing about a new product you might want to try out or a new business you may want to visit? That’s right, you whip out your phone and you look them up. And this is exactly what everyone else does when they hear about your business. They Google you more likely than not land on your website, probably the homepage.

Of course, your GBM or other social media profiles may be viable choices for a potential customer to click on, and you need to perceive them as an important part of your online presence but your ultimate aim needs to be to bring clients to your site, rather than another business, like Meta.

The information you provide on the homepage of your company website and social media channels is critical when it comes to building credibility for your small business

Yes, of course, you can sell your product in your physical shop only but think how this limits your reach. And what if you sell a digital service if you are a writer, creator, tutor or coach? How would you build your presence, how would you reach your potential clients without being online? How would you convert them without having a well-designed website optimised for conversion?

Of course, this leads us to a very important point, just having any old website isn't enough, and a poorly designed site can do you more harm than good. You need to provide excellent user experience and structure, quality content and many more pivotal requisites that are often neglected. As you know, the devil hides in the details!

So today, I am here to reveal the top 12 key elements your website must have, so your small business thrives and is competitive on the market.

Are you ready?

What is the main purpose of your business website?

Your website is your home and your leads, or potential customers are your precious guests. We all hope they become real customers. But if you want this to happen, you first need to impress these guests and start from the very beginning. What do I mean?

You can't welcome your customers with a messy homepage that lacks a clear value proposition, has poor visual and text content, and focuses solely on CTAs without offering anything valuable. You should consider your company's online presence as one of your greatest assets and invest all your effort into making it worthwhile.

Your business growth depends on the strategic composition between the critical components of a website thus ensuring it fulfils the following main purposes:

Create brand awareness;
Build trust and strong relations with your potential customers;
Provide informative and educative content;
Nurture your leads;
Convert.

Brand identity and your website - a necessary symbiosis for success

I already talked about brand identity and its importance for your business. Let's not forget the brand identity elements like logo, slogan, mission, voice, and colours, described in detail in our article about brand elements: part 1 and part 2. You can check the articles and give them a read to get a clearer idea of the topic because as you will see during the next few paragraphs, developing a company website incorporates and reflects your brand identity, ensuring you not only reach your prospects but turn them into loyal customers!

And here we start with the top 12 must-have elements every website needs to have!

12 essential elements of a successful business website

The elements can be divided into necessary and additional. We recommend you include as many as you can on your website, but don't worry! Some of the elements (the so-called additional) are with lower priority and not strictly required for your website launching let's say.

1. Logo

Do you remember the pivotal role your logo has for your strong business identity? It is one of the first things a user notices and later associates with your brand. After your designers have spent so many hours crafting the perfect logo you want to place it in a central place on your website - this is one of the most impressive and distinctive elements of your brand identity.

What are the important things to consider:

Placement:

Acting as your business emblem it needs to be in a place your visitors will notice it immediately - usually at the top of every page of your site is perfect; for the readers who read from left to write, the top left of the screen is the prime web property, which is why you see so many logos on the top left. Another good option is the top centre, which can look both elegant and sophisticated;

Visibility:

Ensure that your logo remains visible and is not obscured by other website elements such as headings. Verify its placement to guarantee it appears correctly on various devices.

Pro tip:

Favicon (short for favourite icon) is among the additional elements of a website but a very useful for catching customers' attention. This is the small icon (often it is the logo icon itself) which users see when they open your website in a browser tab. Such a small visual element and nowadays it is also easy to place. I wouldn't miss the opportunity to be distinguished among the numerous browser tabs some users often leave open.

You can see Digibees and NeuronWriter favicons in the tabs below - we both use our logos - smart, don't you think?

Did you know your Favicon also plays a role in SEO? Serving as a visual symbol for your website and business, it helps users associate it with your brand. Since SEO focuses on branding and marketing, having a visible and recognisable favicon increases the chances that users will click on your site and remember your brand.

2. Navigation

Nobody likes entering a messy home, right? It's the same when visitors come to your homepage and the information there is chaotic. I feel like I'm lost if I can't easily find what I'm looking for on a website easily, and I get frustrated and disappointed. Creatives in particular tend to implement playful mystery navigation (guilty as charged) but the average user just wants to get to the point. And we must remember our websites are not about us, they are for and about our clients. So, I doubt you want your potential customers to feel confused and have negative perceptions navigating your website, right? Their poor user experience on your website will directly and immediately reflect negatively on your business and brand as a whole.

How to create an intuitive website navigation?

Place the navigation in the most visible place:

Use either a hamburger menu to keep the style of your site consistent on different devices or easy-to-understand logical labels for the menu items to guide your visitors. The menu is typically visible on the header section, not far from the logo. Don't let the visitor guess where you place one page or another - make everything evident and straightforward so they can find what they're looking for;

Keep it neat and simple:

Don't be overwordy, your menu should be brief and clear and navigate right to the point. Use no more than 6-8 menu items redirecting to the most important website sections and internal pages;

Group similar items logically:

If you have similar pages, it's a good idea to use a common, logical label (category) to avoid ambiguity. Remember, as users, we all want to find what we're looking for as quickly as possible. And we hate finding it in the least logical place.

3. Headline and subheadline

The first impression is everything (and I mean the best, of course). It's essential when your customers come to your website to find answers to these 3 important questions:

Who you are and why they should trust you with their hard-earned money?
What do you do, exactly, for them?
What benefits can your product or service bring them or What problems your product/ service can solve?

Don't forget the answer to these questions is your unique value proposition. You don't want to risk your clients misunderstanding you by trying to be witty or obscure - it's much better to be clear, honest, and authentic.

See the Headline and Subheadline of Mailchimp: you can understand what the business is about, what their service is and how they can help you immediately, without browsing their website and reading tons of articles, but just by reading their headline and subheadline!

Pro tip:

Just as it's best SEO practice to use clear headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.) in a blog post for a structured presentation, the same principle applies to creating a well-structured website. Readability and consistency are essential rules to follow.

Relevant and up-to-date content

Chess and a figure with crown

"Content is a King!"

Bill Gates

If your content is not fresh and adequate, if your blog posts and articles date back years ago - your customers would think you are not very engaged with your website and you don't really care to provide them with useful and up-to-date information that educates. One of the primary roles of your website is to create brand awareness, educate, provide qualitative content, to nurture your leads. And your final goal, is, of course, for these leads to make conversions.

This would be almost impossible if your content is not useful to your customers, so don't neglect its power. Make upgrades regularly and keep up with the trends and your users' interests. You don't want users to leave your website dissatisfied and turn to your competitors for the information they need.

Pro tip:

Almost every business has the potential to develop a blog section and publish new content regularly. Think of creating blog posts as a great way to show care for your customers and an opportunity to provide them with valuable content. It's a far more effective strategy to educate them about your product and how it can solve their problems, thus guiding them through your marketing funnel, rather than trying to sell to them directly.

If you’re unsure how to start a blog, what topics to choose, or how to write a catchy post that keeps readers engaged—don’t worry! Digibees is here to help with SEO and content writing services.

4. Imagery

We are all attracted by visual content and presenting information only with text can be boring. If you have a small local restaurant or you are a Chef let's say, nobody will be attracted if they only read about your delicious food without seeing the cuisine.

See the appealing and mouth-watering images of Happy restaurants - far more attractive than simple descriptions, right?

Hamburgers

Pro tips:

Use your authentic images:

It's more valuable to use your own photos and images if you can instead of polished stock images. Your users would appreciate the authentic images you upload to your website. Just ensure you use high-quality images, of course;

Include photos of the team:

People love to connect to real faces and sharing behind-the-scenes experiences about work-life would help build trust and strong relations with your customers.

Optimise images for speed and fast loading (they should be uploaded in compressed size) and SEO-optimised (it's important to add alt tags and titles to the images you upload - you will find more details in our article about the 10 essential SEO tips for small businesses).

5. CTA (Call to Action)

We talked about the importance of guiding your customer through the marketing funnel starting with brand awareness, education, giving useful information and nurturing. Your ultimate goal is to make the customers become real buyers. Being armed with your perfectly built website with the most relevant and valuable content in it is your halfway to success. The final and one of the most important tasks is making your ultimate proposal!

Calls to action are prompts that encourage your website visitors to take a particular action. They are essential for navigating people through the customer journey providing a clear direction on what users should do next and converting visitors into customers.

Types of CTAs may vary depending on what your business is about, but most often they are requests for making a purchase, booking a consultation, downloading a free guide, or signing up for a newsletter.

How to make your Calls to Action effective?

Make them visible and distinctive:

You may place your CTA at the website top of the page (called website header), in the dropdown menu, or on sales-related pages. Ensure your CTA buttons are visible, appealing, and stand out from the surrounding content. You want people to click on them, so make sure there is no hesitation or difficulty in finding where to click at all;

Create compelling and action-oriented text:

We recommend using simple and short messages in your CTA buttons or links. Be straightforward and tell your customers directly what to do like "Read more", "Contact us", "Download here", "Order", etc.

6. Contact page

There is probably nothing more boring than trying to figure out how to get in touch with someone and ask a question either by calling or messaging. Oh, probably the most annoying is finally reaching the phone number, hidden between all fancy layouts, colours and text boxes, only to find out that it's not clickable and you need to dial it. Sounds familiar?

Yes, a small detail you may say, but important regarding user experience I would add.

How to incorporate your contact details:

Usability:

Make sure your contact details are:

- easy to be found: usually placed at the bottom of the home page in the footer
- clickable: no matter whether the phone number is dialled automatically or the email address redirects you to writing a new message screen in your inbox.

Users typically consume huge amounts of content and want to complete what they do most effectively and easily so you should provide a clear and readable contact form or details available at one click.

7. Social media icons

According to Statista, for 2003 UK online audiences spent approximately one hour and 49 minutes per day on social media. If people like your brand and business, they would probably want to follow you on your social channels like Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, etc. engaging with your content more. Be sure you put links on your website home page to your social profiles. These links are typically positioned at the bottom of the website as clickable social media icons.

8. Search bar

A search bar on your website may not sound like a must-have but if you are a big e-commerce store, or have a blog section with more than 20 pages of content, you should probably think of adding a search bar in a prominent place. A best practice is to position it in the header of the website around the main menu and dropdown to be visible and easily accessible to users.

Pro tip:

Enhance the search functionality on your website by optimising the search options or integrating advanced search filters. This will improve the user journey and facilitate easier navigation through your content, products, and other offerings you have available.

9. Social proof

Without a doubt, trustworthiness is a crucial factor for achieving business success. To prove to your potential customers they can trust you, the easiest way is to tell them more about you, and your achievements, and to share reviews from other satisfied customers - in brief it's time to show your best!

How to brag about yourself:

About page:

Publish a brief description of your business, what inspires and motivates you for example, how did you decide to start. Your mission, values and business goals can be placed on this page as well;

Users’ reviews and testimonials:

Give your customers the option to rate your service or product and leave their feedback. Commenting and rating are powerful tools especially if they are positive thus persuading other people to become your customers too;

Case studies:

Publish your customer success stories describing the steps and actions taken during some huge project implementation for a client. Don't polish the story and include details about the difficulties as well. Don't forget your future clients will value your honest and authentic way of dealing with things;

Achievements, awards:

If you have some significant achievements or business awards you are proud of, why not place them on your website? You want others to see you as a trustworthy business partner who is constantly striving for improvement and success;

Press Page

Have you been featured in traditional media, printed publications or TV? Shout about it 🥰

Have you written guest posts for other publications or been on someone else’s podcast? Include it on your press page.

10. FAQ page

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page is regarded as a service page where users know they will find summarised essential information regarding any possible difficulties or questions they may have. It is particularly important for e-commerce sites. Most typical questions are related to signing up to your website, subscription conditions and payment terms, or your policy for warranty and post-warranty services, for example.

Pro tip:

If you wonder what type of questions and answers to include in the FAQ section, ask your Customer support department or just analyse what the main requests users write you for. This means they probably found no suitable information on the website or even more - this may be a sign your functionality doesn't work properly and some messages need to be rewritten or some redesign to be made.

11. Desktop and mobile consistency and optimisation

Consistency between all different devices is an extremely important factor for a low bounce rate. If your site doesn't have a mobile version or mobile app, your clients probably won't be very satisfied taking into account that they mainly consume content on their mobile phones while travelling to work, doing their cardio routine in the gym, etc.

We recommend investing time and effort into making your website mobile-friendly and optimised.

12. On-page SEO

On-page SEO practices refer to everything that you can do on your website to help you rank higher than your competitors.

Here are our 10 recommended tips for SEO on-page optimisation:

Identify the right keywords for your business;
Don't skip the meta description and include keywords in it;
Use H1-H3 structure: H1 for the title and H2, H3, etc. for the subheadings
Be sure your URLs are SEO friendly;
Use internal links and guide users throughout your website and content;
Don't overlook the engaging visual content;
Apply descriptive ALT texts to your images;
Make sure your content has high quality and is shareable;
Ensure your website is mobile-friendly;
Make sure your web pages are indexed.

Conclusion

Your website is a powerful tool to tell your story and guide customers on a journey, highlighting why they should choose you and your products. Be specific, authentic, and bold, investing effort into creating impeccable design and content. Use beautiful images and, most importantly, provide high value to your customers. Your business website is crucial for connecting with your audience and conveying key information. It should align with your brand, enabling potential customers to connect with you and leading them through their journey, ultimately resulting in high conversion rates. By offering valuable content and facilitating easy interactions, you won't need to persuade them to buy your products or services; the value will speak for itself.

I hope this article was useful for you and feel free to share it with other people who need a new website or redesign of their current website. Book a consultation with just a few clicks and let us help you!