What Makes a Good Website
We’ve built a number of websites here at the Maltshop, and I speak from experience when I say no two clients are the same. Sure there may be similarities, but they all often differ on two key issues when it comes to websites.
What do you want your site to do for you?
Will you be editing anything on the site in-house?
These questions are often the first ones we ask or glean from the conversation. For those less informed on the capabilities of the web, they often don’t want to make edits themselves and primarily want the site to just “exist” so potential customers can find them through Google. But the harsh truth is, a site that just “exists” is probably not going to get you the Google searches you want. With that in mind, here are our top 5 things every website should have to get you the results you need.
Top 5 Things Every Website Should Have
A unique/personalized domain. With as affordable and readily available as domain and hosting sites are today, there’s zero reason why a reputable business should have a .wordpress.com or .wixsite.com domain. If you bought one, but aren’t sure how to hook it up, call us. It’ll take us about 15 minutes to fix for you.
Correct contact information. You should always have up-to-date phone numbers and addresses (both physical and email) on your site. If your customer can’t find you or contact you, then they are not going to want to do business with you. Plus, it can make you seem evasive and secretive which isn’t conducive to a good client relationship.
Who are you? Since anyone can buy a domain and build a website, it’s important to let customers know that there’s a real human being behind the company. Include an “About Us” page, with info on the owners, managers, top executives or front-line employees. Pictures with these bios are preferred but not required.
Mobile-friendly is a must! Make sure your site is legible, scrollable and easily viewed via a mobile phone. 51% of website traffic is done via a mobile device, so if your site isn’t designed to be responsive, you could potentially be alienating 51% of customers. No one wants to have to pinch and zoom to read super tiny squished text or likes a menu that runneth over.
Dynamic content. Now this one, I’m going to dive into a little more deeply today.
We often counsel clients on the need for dynamic content. Dynamic content is proof to customers that you are still in business, and the site isn’t old. Think of it as having the lights on and the “open” sign turned around on the front door. If your site’s copyright at the bottom doesn’t reflect the current year, and the last time you had anything date/time stamped on the site was in 2013, then it’s going to be hard for them to tell if you’re still open. (After all, you may not even notice that recurring domain or hosting charge on your credit card because it is so insignificant.)
A simple way to signify you are paying attention to your site is by changing out your header, hero image or main slider on the homepage at least quarterly.
Moreover, the best kinds of dynamic content are actually textual. I hear you saying, “What? But social media is the opposite! You’re supposed to use pictures and video.” Right. That’s exactly correct. Because social media is so image/video heavy, you often don’t have room or scroll-time to tell a full story. But on your website, you have all the room in the world!
Wanna know the best part about this textual content that is updated on your site at least monthly? It helps you rank higher in search engines. That’s right! Having a blog or monthly article written by a staffer is a quick and easy way to bump up your SEO (search engine optimization) rankings. There can definitely be a science to writing SEO content, but even with no knowledge of keywords, you can easily increase site traffic by just writing about what you know: your product.
Easy peezy, right? If not, give us a shout, and we’ll walk you through the basics of a great website, dynamic content that’s right for you or build something custom just for you. Call us today!