Your website is the HEART of your brand — so you want it to stand out from the crowd.
If you’re launching a new business website and spending the wee hours obsessively Googling stuff like “things a good website should have,” “what am I forgetting to put on my website,” and “what should a website contain”…
…I’ve been there.
This is why I’m sharing these 5 super-important-yet-often-forgotten things EVERY website needs.
5 Things Every Website Should Have
1. Clear Navigation
When someone visits your website, it needs to be CRYSTAL CLEAR to them how to navigate it, whether they’re looking for something specific (such as the pricing of your product or service) or just browsing.
Your goal is to make it a no-brainer for your leads to want to stay on your website.
Here are some tips:
- Make sure your navigation bar is easy to find. Your website visitors should be able to easily see what kind of pages you have on your website and how to get to them. Think of your navigation bar as an overview of your entire business — DON’T hide it somewhere random!
- Keep your website clutter-free. It’s awesome to have a lot of content on your website, but make sure that there’s a solid logic to the flow of your web pages. Your website should feel like a journey — NOT a laundry list of every single thing you’ve ever created.
- Think like your lead. You know your business inside out — but your website visitors don’t. Whether you’re writing your website copy or working on your website design, keep your leads’ level of awareness in mind and make THEIR clarity your top priority.
The bottom line is —
The more ENJOYABLE it is for your visitors to navigate your website, the higher are the chances of them staying on it.
So, aim to turn it into the smoothest experience they’ve had all day 😎
2. Calls to Action
Impressing your leads with quality content is great…
…but what’s even MORE important is giving them strong calls to action throughout your website so they actually DO whatever it is that you want them to do, whether it’s submitting your contact form or checking out your case studies.
You don’t want them to just browse through your home page and leave, right?
End most — if not every — section of your website with a strong CTA and don’t be afraid to infuse them with a healthy dose of FUN.
3. Mobile Optimization
Here’s a stat many people don’t know —
Over HALF of web traffic comes from mobile, according to Google.
This means that more than 50% (!!!) of your potential customers will be checking your website out on their phones — especially if you do a lot of your digital marketing on social media.
(I personally hang out on Instagram!).
If your website is not optimized for mobile, your user experience will go down to zero for over 50% of your traffic…
…and it’ll be VERY hard to convince your leads that they should buy from you — even if you genuinely have the best product or service out there.
PSA —
It’s not just your web design that needs to be mobile optimized, but you copy as well.
When you’re writing your website copy, remember that over half of your audience will be reading it on their phone screen.
In other words, chunky blocks of text, never-ending-Leo-Tolstoy-style sentences, and long paragraphs gotta go. Like, stat.
Your goal is to make your website copy easy and engaging to read — even on a tiny screen.
Before your launch, go on your website using your phone and see how it feels to interact with it.
4. Contact Page
A contact page is as basic of a website need as a bag of candy corn on Halloween night…
…YET a surprising number of businesses simply forget about them.
(Trust me, I pretty much stalk websites for a living and I see it happen a LOT.)
Your website should make it VERY obvious how to get in touch with you and have your contact information easily accessible.
That said, DON’T put everything from your email to your phone number on your contact form.
Pick ONE way that your leads can use to get in touch with you and stick to it.
Going back to the clear navigation point (see #1!), it should also be very clear how to get to your contact page from pretty much anywhere on your website.
Above all, a website should be clear!
5. SEO Optimization
SEO — or search engine optimization — is a practice of making sure that your website’s structure and content help it rank higher on Google so more people can find your business when they search for solutions to their problems.
(Don’t know anything about SEO? Here are the most important terms for beginners!)
When people think about SEO, they typically think of blogging…
…but your overall website can — and should — be optimized for SEO as well.
There are quite a few things that you can do for your website’s SEO even if you don’t blog, such as:
- Using keywords in your website copy. Yup, it’s not just blog posts that can use keywords to become more relevant and rank higher — you can do this in your website copy, too.
- Creating correct heading structure. Your web pages should have a heading hierarchy, with no more than one H1 heading per page.
- Optimizing your titles and meta descriptions. Keep your titles to 55-60 characters, include your main keyword in them, and write a compelling meta description to encourage clicks.
- Adding alt text to your images. Alt text describes what the image is for accessibility and is indexed by Google, so adding alt tags to your images helps with SEO.
- Paying attention to the backend. Optimizing your website for SEO also comes with technical elements, such as making sure that your site is indexed and that your URLs are optimized. Here’s a great starter guide from Google themselves!
The truth is —
Optimizing your website for SEO takes time and effort, but all the new traffic you can get from it is SOOOO worth it.
What Do Websites Need? Final Thoughts
A great website needs many different pieces to come together — and remembering the ones that many people forget about will put you ahead of the competition 👀
Ready to stop Googling “what should be on a website” and get to work?
