6 Tips for Building a Modern Website for Your Business

Building a website for your business can be a cheap and effective way to drive sales and spread brand awareness. However, many businesses do not invest enough time and effort into building a modern website. Many business websites use ambiguous domain names, outdated web frameworks, and online stores that aren’t user friendly.

Consumers will often make the decision whether or not to stay on your site in the first 5 seconds of opening the landing page, which is why it’s incredibly important to build your site for the 2017 consumer. While there are many negative implications to having a poorly built website for your business, it’s not hard to build a great site if you use the right tools. Today, we’re going to go over several ways that you can build a modern website for your business without breaking the bank.

1. Use a short, clear domain name.

Although it can be difficult to find available domain names in a world where thousands of new sites are built everyday, having a clear and direct domain name for your site is very important. Not only is it easier to list your website on business cards and paperwork, but it also boosts your Google page ranking in search results. When consumers are looking for a product or service, they’ll perform a Google search with keywords that are relevant to what they’re looking for. Using a relevant, focused domain name will attract consumers to your site and increase page views.

Alissa Verland, a customer support agent from SocialDrift, encourages business owners to “invest in a great domain name, even if it will cost you $100-$1000.” She says that even though the right domain can be costly, your investment will pay off many times over in the long run. SocialDrift, the company that Verland works at, is an Instagram automation tool that uses artificial intelligence to boost your following on Instagram, 24 hours a day.

Another useful tip is to stick to well known top-level domains. These are the three to four letter extensions at the end of each web address, such as .com and .org. Consumers will always be more trustworthy of sites that use well known TLD’s, so even though it may be a bit more expensive, you should stick to an extension that consumers know. Namecheap is a great place to find available domain names for affordable prices.

2. Make your site mobile-ready.

Mobile responsiveness is an absolutely necessary feature of modern business websites. The vast majority of American consumers use their smartphones to access websites and shop online. If a customer visits a website in 2017 and is met with a poorly formatted, desktop-only site, they’ll be very disincentivized from visiting the site again. Additionally, even if a consumer wants to purchase your products, a desktop-only online store will likely cause issues for consumers attempting to shop on mobile, which will lead to a decrease in sales.

Fortunately, most experienced web developers have experience building mobile-responsive websites. For your business, make sure you hire an experienced web developer or web design agency to build your site, and require that it be mobile-ready. If you’re building your site yourself, use a website builder like Squarespace to ensure that your site is user friendly on mobile.

3. Place your contact information in a highly-visible area.

It’s important to make it easy for visitors of your website to find your contact information. Oftentimes, businesses will separate their contact information from the rest of the site on a “Contact Us” page, and leave the website landing page free of phone numbers or emails. If you’re a business that relies on sales through the phone, put your phone number on the front page of your site in large, legible text. If you take orders through email, place an easy-to-find button that links directly to your email that consumers can click on. If visitors have to spend more than a few seconds or click through multiple pages to find your contact information, it’s likely that they’ll leave the site and use another service in frustration.

Another quick tip is to make sure that you’re responsive to consumers when they contact your business. If a customer calls you and can’t reach anyone, they’ll be less likely to buy your product. Hire a customer service representative to respond to phone calls and emails and ensure customer responsiveness.

4. Keep information up to date.

One of the easiest ways for businesses to lose customers is to have outdated information on their website. If you put a wrong phone number, address, product price, or expired discount code on your website, consumers that try to contact you or purchase products will be very frustrated. Modern web users expect information to be up to date so that they have accurate information when they’re looking for products or services to purchase. Go through your whole site a few times a month and make sure that all information is accurate to ensure that you don’t frustrate your customers.

5. Optimize for speed.

One of the things customers hate the most is slow websites. Even if your business site is beautifully designed, if it takes more than a few seconds to load, consumers won’t bother to wait. Slow page loading has a particularly negative impact on online stores. Shopify found that just a two second delay in page load time can increase cart abandonment rates by 20%. To make sure that your site doesn’t experience these problems, optimize your photos and videos for speed and purchase adequate bandwidth from your web hosting service.

6. Keep it simple.

In the same way that outdated information and slow page load times can disincentivize users from visiting your site, websites that have too much information or cluttered pages can deter users from visiting. Focus on only displaying necessary information, and don’t use a design that’s too flashy or complicated. Use whitespace effectively and use sharp, web-optimized fonts to make reading easier. Keeping your website simple is a great way to drive web traffic and satisfy consumers.