By helloDarwin
November 27, 2019
Discover the 6 elements of an effective website
"You need a website to go into business!"
Ever heard that phrase?
In fact, "investing" in a website can be a company's worst investment. I've seen this mistake far too often.
And why?
Because far too many entrepreneurs believe that a nice, new website will bring them a host of customers and propel them to the stars.
Unfortunately, this is very, very wrong.
The marketing strategy around your website is far more important than the website itself, and it's exactly what's going to make your website effective or not.
So here are 6 elements you'll need to consider and conquer to make your website as effective as possible:
1. Marketing (web)
Marketing is, without exception, the most important point. It's what will make your website effective in the long term.
In this case, I'm talking about web marketing.
Anything that brings visitors to your website using the Internet is essentially web marketing.
While many people believe that the website is the most important thing, what attracts visitors to your website is far more important.
You could compare a beautiful website without visitors to a sports car without an engine.
It looks great and sounds powerful, but in reality, it doesn't go very far.
So, to get started in web marketing, you'll need to either deal with a web agency or learn one or more of the following disciplines:
- Search engine optimization
- Web advertising
- Social networking
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization (also known as SEO) increases your website's positioning and exposure in search engines.
It's a great way to achieve long-term results, but it takes time and knowledge to get the right results.
Web advertising
Web advertising allows you to pay for every click you receive on your ad.
It's a strategy that can be effective, but requires a certain budget and knowledge to analyze and optimize your advertising campaigns effectively.
Popular advertising platforms for web advertising include Google, Facebook and LinkedIn, each of which provide their own guides to finding out more.
Social networks
Social networks enable you to connect directly with your target customers.
It's a strategy that allows you to establish a more personal connection, but requires you to constantly publish relevant content on your pages, the idea being to keep your brand alive and in the public eye.
In short, web marketing, when used effectively, enables you to attract visitors to your website, which can greatly benefit your business and increase your sales impressively.
2. Performance
Website performance is a crucial element that many people without the technical know-how or knowledge overlook.
In fact, according to studies, if your page takes more than 3 seconds to load, 40% of people will leave and probably never return to your website.
To optimize your website's speed, here are a few points you should consider:
- Dedicated hosting using SSD
- Have images compressed and optimized for the size displayed
- Avoid "plugins" and scripts that are loaded on every page of your website, even those that don't use them
- Use a CDN (content delivery network) service if your audience is not close to your hosting server.
User experience is a big part of an effective website, and website performance is one of the biggest factors affecting it, so put in the effort needed to make a standard page load in 2-3 seconds maximum.
3. The structure of your website
The structure of your website is another point that affects the user experience and should be optimized.
A basic rule of the web is the "3-click rule", where a user should be able to access any page on your website in 3 clicks or less from a page where it lands.
So make sure your structure is simple and logical.
- Home page: Contains general information about the company and leads to the main action desired, such as a purchase or contacting you.
- Services page: Informs a person about the various services you offer, with the possibility of finding out more about each service.
- Service page 1
- Service page 2
- Service page 3
- Company description page (About us)
- Contact page
- Blog
- Article 1
- Article 2
- Article 3
As you can see, it never takes more than 2 clicks to get to any page on the website.
4. Content
Content refers to what information the page contains. This includes text, images and videos.
Is it a service page? A blog post? A home page?
Whatever the purpose of the page, it should contain quality content, and have a single, well-defined objective or theme per page. This optimizes the visitor's journey, where the aim is obviously to lead them to take a specific action (you'll learn more about this in the next point), such as contacting you.
Let's take a look at a few sample pages and break down the content they should contain.
Page: Home
Purpose: To lead people to a desired action (e.g. discover your services).
How: By displaying your services and showing your authority.
Example: Have a home page where people can clearly see what you do and why they should choose you (for example, by displaying customers and testimonials).
Page: A service page
Goal: Lead people to a desired action (e.g. contact you).
How: By detailing the problem you're solving with this service, the advantage of choosing you over a competitor, and leading people to the desired action.
Example: Have a service page where you demonstrate your expertise, your accomplished projects, your current and past customers, you answer the most frequently asked questions and allow people to contact you directly with links, buttons and a form.
Page: One article
Purpose: To lead people to a desired action (e.g. contacting you).
How: By creating articles that answer frequently asked questions and lead to the desired action (contacting you).
Example: Have an article page where you answer in detail a question your target customers search for on search engines. Demonstrate your expertise with this problem or question and allow people to contact you directly with links, buttons and or a form.
As you can see, content allows you to define a customer journey where you propose a path to your visitor, leading them closer and closer to your goal (that they do business with you).
5. The call to action
The call to action is simply a visually distinct section that makes it easy for your visitors to contact you or perform a specific action.
A call to action can take many forms:
- Calling you
- Sending you an e-mail
- Adding an item to your basket
- Buy now
- Request a quote
- And much more!
These calls to action are often found as a simple link in text, a button with a distinct color or a defined section with a form.
Be aware that you absolutely must ensure that your calls to action are clear and unique, so if the goal on a product page is to add an item to the shopping cart, the text should read "Add to cart" and not 'Buy', because a person who isn't ready to buy won't click on the "Buy" button, which, in reality, only adds the product to the cart.
In short, describe exactly what the action does. Nothing more, nothing less!
6. Data
Today, data is a gold mine, and it's vital that you accumulate and analyze it.
Essentially, it allows you to learn more about your potential customers, but also about your website's usage, shortcomings and much more.
To start accumulating data efficiently, here are the tools you need to integrate into your website at the very least:
- Google Analytics (to collect and analyze data about your website)
- Google Search Console (for tracking your web positioning or SEO in Google)
- Google Tag Manager (for easy management and integration of new marketing tools)
While there are a thousand other tools you could integrate into your website, these will greatly help you analyze your website and the Google search engine, which is the most widely used search engine at the time of writing this article.
Conclusion
By reading this article, you've discovered the key components for building a high-performance website and an effective online marketing strategy. Feel free to re-read this information to deepen your understanding of each topic.
For web surfers, the user experience on your site is paramount. I suggest you make a list of the improvements you need to make to your website, and plan to implement them in the coming year. Remember that competition on the web gets more intense every year.
When you're ready to take the plunge, our platform is available for you to submit your project. We'll help you find the best provider to meet your online site creation and optimization needs.
Related Tags
Website optimization
Website
Marketing
About the author
helloDarwin
We create successful business alliances through tailor-made partnerships. Web marketing, video production, ERP/CRM integration... Whatever professional service you need for your business, helloDarwin helps you find the best service providers for your project. Free of charge, without any obligation and within 48 hours on average. We help you find grants, loans, aid and assist you throughout your digital transformation.