10 Must Have Elements for Your Startup Website

A website can make or break an online business. A good website can attract new leads, drive conversions, and keep customers coming back over and over again to develop a long term relationship leading to improved web performance. A bad website can alienate and bore customers, driving them away, which can be fatal to any online business. To have a successful website, one needs to ensure that it has all the necessary elements to generate sales and build relationships with potential customers. Below are 10 must have elements for startup website that every business owner should implement:

1. Design

Design is customer’s first impression of a website. This is because an impression is usually created by a visual design. If a website is poorly designed, all the efforts may go to waste because website users are unforgiving. If a website fails to impress them in the first few seconds, it is possible that they will exit the page no matter how practical or quality your content is. If one is not a designer, it is good to hire one to ensure that the website is of good quality.

2. Quality content

People say that content is the king and it is very true. After website design makes that first impression on user’s eyes, it is now content’s turn to impress the visitor further. A business owner should make sure that the content reinforces who he is, what the business is all about, and the products and services offered.
Content should be appropriate to the audience and one should avoid making it too complicated. The majority of visitors does not have enough time to read a lot and so the message should be clear, concise, and to the point.

3. Effective Navigation

User friendly navigation is one of the most important elements for a startup website. Nothing can drive customers away than a complicated and confusing navigation. Customers should be able to easily know where they are on a site and be able to see pages that they have already visited.
One should make sure that the navigation bar or menu bar is easily and clearly accessible. More preferably, it should be on the same page of your site and on the same place. Customers should not have to hunt for it. When it comes to navigation, consistency is the key.

4. Call to action

Many websites lose customers form making a call to action hard to locate, or simply none existing. If a website owner wants it to be effective, he/she should not give users hard time locating a call to action button.

5. Social media links

In today’s world, social media has become an important aspect when it comes to online marketing. This is because everything is done socially in one way or another. With the use of social media platforms, one can be able to reach many potential customers when creating awareness on the products and services offered.
The best way is to create a Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Google plus pages of the website and add them on the website. This way, these pages will easily be accessible, but not overpowering. This way, satisfied customers will get an opportunity to like your page, leave a comment, or even share the page with friends. This way a website will get more traffic in the future.

6. Blog

This may seem like no-brainer to some people, but one may be surprised how majority of online businesses fail, to have a blog. Blogs are search friendly and usually offer an extra channel that generates more visitors to a website.
If a website owner makes good use of a blog, the website will get great popularity. This is because a blog makes users as well as search engines start seeing a website as an authority and will end up building a loyal audience that may later be transformed to loyal clients. All one needs to do is to ensure that the blog is updated frequently with fresh, quality, and unique content that is helpful to the audience.

7. Logical website structure and SEO friendly URL’s

In the past, website structure was not important but today things have changed. Website owners have numerous options when creating logical website structure that is user friendly. All what a business owner needs is to choose an option that supports links that are SEO friendly and provides URL. URL’s are easy to remember and also reduces the risks of search engines failing to understand what the website is all about.

8. Establish a brand

One thing that every business owner should create and harvest in a business is a powerful brand. Brand here stands for a summary of the business identity, how unique it is from the rest, and why customers choose the products and services over other alternatives.
Branding is crucial when it comes to startup websites because the majority of new websites do not have enough funds to carry out expensive branding campaigns. A brand should be so powerful to reduce customer’s perception of risks and make them make a satisfactory purchase.

9. A FAQ Page

It is important to include a frequently asked questions page on the website. This is a place where the owner lists the most asked questions by customers and provides answers to every question. This gives customers immediate access to answers before deciding to purchase a product.

10. Contact info

To be able to close sales and establish ones credibility, it is important to provide full contact information on the website. This includes mobile phone number, address, fax, email address and any other form of contact. Websites that only put an email address may lose customers because a client may be in need or an immediate service and emails usually take long to be replied.
With the above elements for startup website, a business owner can be sure of his success. It is good to remember that the happier the customers, the more the sales, which leads to an online business’s success!