5 Elements to Make a Website Successful

In today’s technology-driven world, it is imperative for businesses to ensure that they have the right ingredients for a successful website.

So, the question is – “Do you have the right ingredients for a successful website?”

Let’s find out!

What Makes a Website Successful?

When we talk about a successful website, a lot of people consider it to be mainly about a visually appealing one. But it takes more than just a pretty website to succeed.

In fact, a successful website requires solid web design, branding, and marketing to achieve desired outcomes. Moreover, you need clear goals and objectives for building the website in the first place.

Whether you are launching a website to represent your personal brand or establishing a website to accomplish digital marketing objectives for your business, it is important to be clear on your goals and have a strategy in place to achieve them.

Here are five critical elements that make for a more functional and successful website, aside from getting the technical bits locked down, such as mobile-friendliness and fast website loading speeds.

1. An attractive yet user-friendly web design

Human beings are visual creatures. Nothing impacts us quite like visual content. According to a report by WordStream, visitors can retain up to 95% of information in a video as compared to 10% of information in text. This goes to show that you need to work on the visual aspect of your website to ensure people retain more of your content.

An attractive and user friendly website design is a key element that will make visitors stay and look around for the information they need. If your website is not appealing and intuitive, visitors won’t bother staying around to see what your company’s services or products are.

Ensure your web design is not only visually beautiful, but also user-friendly and intuitive to navigate and use.

2. A clean and consistent homepage

The first impression matters a lot when visitors land on your website. Visitors formulate thoughts and opinions about a website within milliseconds of landing on the page.

Given that most website visitors will be greeted by your homepage, make sure its layout is great and its content high quality and meaningful. Every element on the homepage must have a purpose and be consistent with your brand, including colors, typography, and imagery.

Keep the homepage clean and clutter-free, with plenty of white space. Include social sharing buttons, as well as social proof and testimonials as necessary. Don’t forget to simplify navigation and personalize your approach to the design and layout based on the nature of your business.

Your homepage should help visitors get to know your business. It must answer all their questions right away – what your business is all about, how it works, what it provides, etc. If you manage to answer those questions quickly and accurately, your visitors will be intrigued to read on.  

3. Effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you want your website to rank higher in search engines like Google, and receive a large amount of organic traffic, then SEO is essential. It is vital for digital and search marketing.

Today, SEO is not just about adding some keywords and meta descriptions to improve organic search rankings. It also about building links, creating fresh content, updating old content periodically, and keeping up with new search trends, like Google’s new BERT algorithm and the overall reputation and E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) of your company and the individuals who publish content on behalf of that company

Aesthetically pleasing web design is not worth much if your website can’t be found by people searching online. Websites that show up on the first page (Page 1) of search engine results generate more traffic and steadily grow their business.

According to statistics by ProtoFuse, 90% of Google traffic for website comes from the page 1 placement of the website’s content in search engine results pages (SERPs).

However, keep one thing in mind: SEO results take time. It requires patience, quality consistency, and long-haul strategizing.

4. Clear Call-to-Action

Making visitors aware of your products and ranking well in SERPs is one thing and pushing the visitor in the right direction to convert into a buyer or subscriber is another. This is where a clear Call to Action (CTA) comes in.

A CTA is essentially a statement which acts as an instruction on what to do next. After the visitor has landed on your site and read or watched your content, you’re basically telling the visitors to do what you’d want them to do next.

The CTA can be to “Buy now,” “Call now," “Enter your email address here,” or even “Download now," for example.

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With a clear CTA, you can easily increase conversion rates by as much as 80% when the CTA is relevant and well placed.

In addition, websites with clear CTAs and intuitive navigation have lower bounce rates, eliminate confusion, and help visitors decide what to do next.

5. Accurate contact information

Another vital element is your business’ contact details. Presenting your contact information in a clear and comprehensive manner is crucial to let your visitors reach you. It boosts trustworthiness of your website and business, while enhancing customer satisfaction as they can reach your business to express their views, concerns, and other feedback.

Accurate contact information mainly includes defining the company name, address, contact number, and email address. Aside from those details, create a solid “About us” page that provides a clear insight into the website and business.

Moreover, a clear “Contact us” page is an absolute must for easy access to the contact info on the website.

In Conclusion

Your website is your online storefront and deserves your considered attention. You may have already incorporated these vital elements, but if you top it up with excellent content posted regularly and consistently on your site, you will delight both your visitors and search engines.

However, it will be a real waste of time and money if you are not nailing these five key elements. Lockdown these elements and you’ll set yourself on the road to success.