There is some basic information that most, if not all, websites will contain: what the company does, who they are, and how you can reach them. However, if your website hasn’t been updated in the last few years, or if you’re starting from scratch with a new site, there are a few standard features that will help make your site look more modern and provide a rounded user experience.
Here are five details that your website should include, and that most users have come to expect, that will help kick it up a notch:
Social Media Icons/Feeds
Repeat website visits are ideal, but unless you give people a reason to regularly come back – a store or news feed, for example – chances are most won’t. So how do you keep them captive? One of the best solutions is to get them to opt in to your social feeds. An easy way to achieve this is to provide easy-to-find social icons that link directly to your profiles. Or, better yet, combine the icons with content feeds from your social sites.
This will give your website visitors a quick and simple way to follow or Like your social presences, making it more likely that they will stay engaged with your brand.
On this client site, we combined social icons in the website header, a social counter that gives visitors a snapshot of their audience size, and feeds in the sidebar that appears across the site.
And on our own website, we made sure our icons were bold, colorful, and easy to understand.
Forms
Whether it’s to schedule an appointment, contact customer service, sign up for a newsletter, or apply for a job, it’s very likely you’ll want website visitors to be able to get in touch with you. We see many websites that will include their phone number or email address on their site, and that’s a great start. We recommend utilizing forms across your site as an easy option for visitors to get in touch with you.
One of our favorite plugins for WordPress is Gravity Forms. Its drag and drop layout makes form building super simple, and provides a lot of customization features, including redirecting visitors to a Thank You page once they fill out your form – fantastic for tracking website conversions!
Mobile-Friendly Phone Listing
As internet usage continues to go more and more mobile, it’s imperative that you make it as easy as possible for your website visitors to contact you. Mobile users expect to find solutions right at their fingertips, so if you want your website visitors to call you, one-click phone calls are the way to go.
Google Analytics Tracking
This isn’t something that your website visitors will see, nor will it make a difference in their experience on your site, but it will make a big impact in helping you understand your website traffic. How do people find your website? How much time are they spending on your site once they’re there? What pages are visited most often? Google Analytics provides this data and so much more, which will be an invaluable asset in helping you understand how to make your website and marketing efforts work together in your favor.
Many WordPress themes provide an easy Google Analytics form, but if your website doesn’t include this, have your website developer place the code for you.
Smart Use of White Space
Maybe you don’t have a lot of photography to include on your site. Or your content is very text heavy. That doesn’t mean you have to include all of your website copy in one giant, difficult-to-read block of text. View your white space – the areas on your site where there is no content or images – as part of the overall design. How can you break up chunks of copy to give visitor’s eyes a break? How can you use headlines and paragraph breaks to keep the eye moving and not overwhelm people with too much text? If you consider these things while building the site, you will have already succeeded in providing a much more user-friendly website experience.
If you’re in need of some website help, fill out our free consultation form, and we can talk website development for your business.
