|
10_Things_Every_Business_Web_site_Should_Have
| 10 Things Every Business Web site Should Have
Business web sites are not just like any other sites. Companies
make them to reach a lot of prospective customers around the
world.Some times people forgot a lot of good things their
business web sites should have. Today in this short article I
list and explain ten things every business Web site should have.
There might be more than these ten things but I find them to be
the most important ones for every business Web site to have.All
right folks, I guess that is enough talk so lets get down into
the topic ....shall we? OK then here they come
1 Detailed About Us Page.
You might say there is nothing about us but this page is very
important.You should have it on your business web site and write
detailed information in it. You should write about your company
background, when you started it, who started it , contact
information at the end of the page and if possible the pictures
and names of your company workers/managers etc.
People want to learn more about your company before they can do
business with you .Sometimes when I visit a site selling
something online the first thing I do when it loads is to search
for the About Us page and if I find a link I click on it to I
can learn more about the company selling the products I'm
interested in but I don't find a About Us page or find it no
having a lot of information then what I do is just close the
site and leave .
By having this page on your business web site you avoid a lot of
emails and questions to be sent to your email because potential
customers will find the answers to their questions on it instead
of sending an email to you and asking those questions in the
same time waiting a reply from you so if you don't have one on
your business web site then it is the time to make one :) .
2 Detailed Contact Us Page.
This is another important page. In this page you should provide
all the ways your current and potential customers can contact
your company, don't leave anything. Customers and potential
customers want to be able to contact your company by email,
mail, telephone and fax etc. There are some people who would
rather phone you than to send an email to you because they just
want to get quick answers instead of waiting them from you . For
that reason make sure you have a detailed contact us page on
your business web site.
3 A News Page.
People want to know the news about your company so you should
have a news page containing the news when your company started
and its latest news.Try to organize it by year and month so it
can be found and navigated easily .
4 Page Titles.
This is also important . Yo should have have detailed and
descriptive page titles on your business web site . I visited
many web sites which most of their page's titles had Untitled
Document and NewPage1. As you can see it is not professional to
have such titles on a business web site
Great page titles help your site and your business in the search
engines as some SEO(Search Engine Optimization) experts said a
catchy title is better than a one that isn't so a good way to
make a good title is like this companyname.com-page name e.g.
Kooshin.com - About Us or About Kooshin.com etc. These are just
simple examples and I'm sure there are many other ways that you
can make a catchy page title.
I use this for my site and sites of my web design clients .Just
open any search engine web site and type something to see the
search results .....I'm sure you see the keyword you searched
being the title of every page that is in the search results.So
give a lot of attention to your business web site's page titles.
5 Page Names.
The page names are also important as the page titles. They
should be descriptive for example you can name the about us page
as aboutus.htm or combine the company name and the page name
like this aboutcompanyname.htm so it takes its part in the
search engine optimization .For that reason you should give page
names and page titles a lot of attention because they simply
work together and are good for your web site.
6 Web Site Language.
Business web sites should have clear language no matter what
language you use for your site it should be plain , very easy to
understand and if you use abbreviations then make sure to
explain and write what they stand for .I have seen business web
sites using slang throughout the site.
I find this very unprofessional language for a business web site
to use , I mean when you see a business web site which uses this
language - wazz up instead of what's up , we have 2 instead of
we have to ,you can find a lot of examples if you look around
and mostly in chat rooms - would you buy something from it?
You should stay around from using this language in any part of
your web site and make sure you spell check the text on every
page even if you checked it you need to double check or use some
spell checker software because after all we are humane and we
make mistakes!
7 Design, Colors, and Images.
These three are also important for every business web site .
Business web sites should have an easy to use design and all of
your products should be easy to find. If the potential customer
don't find all of the important information about all of your
products then they will just leave the site and visit a
competitor's site.
And about the colors you should use them carefully. Business web
sites should have a bright colors . Stay away from dark colors
not all but like the color black shouldn't be used for any
business web site .
Now for the images you should use images that have something to
do with your business and products . If you have a lot of images
, big ones then you should make small thumbnails and link them
to the big ones so they load faster.
8 Free From Broken Links.
Well basically every web site shouldn't have any broken links
but it is very important for business web sites to be free from
having broken links. I remember one day when I was on a site
selling something online and I wanted to order the products it
was selling so I clicked on the order link and guess what did I
get? A 404 file not found page .
At that time I no longer wanted to buy their products because I
said to myself if I need help later how will they help me when
their own order links are not working? It was a very important
question to me and I needed an answer but I know I had to answer
it to my self and said they will not be able to help you
Now I guess you got the point but if you didn't get it then it
is because of those broken links you are going to lose sales
just like that site which I was trying to buy something from
did. For that reason and so many other reasons which I can't
gather them together here your business web site shouldn't have
any broken links.
If you ever change your file names then make sure you make a
custom 404 file not found page designed as a site map so if a
visitor visits a removed page from a search engine or a site
then he will have that site map as a new guide to the new page.
9 Use Live Support and Ticket Tracking System.
Using live support system and ticket tracking system is very
useful for every business web site . Sometimes potential
customers want to get quick answers to the questions they might
have so by using a live support system then they will be able to
talk to a sales representative live. There are some good free
ones and low prices ones which you can get and install and use
within minutes .
And about the ticketing system , it makes email management a lot
easier . You can track every email with a special ticket number
and all the answers will be organized as threaded discussion.
Most live support systems come with a ticket tracking feature so
make sure you get the best one out there for your business web
site.
10 SSL(Secure Socket Layer) Certificates.
Even though they can be used for certain parts of the web site
but in the same time they can be used throughout the site.If you
use some third party scripts and softwares to make payment
processing etc then you don't have to use SSL because they are
used for sending sensitive information such as banking
information, credit card information etc and anything else you
find sensitive through the internet . You decide it whether or
not you need to use one for your business web site
Conclusion.
That is it, These were ten things every business web site should
have and you should consider them whenever you design a business
web site Of course any site can have them all but they are very
important for business web sites to have. Until next time make
sure you use the list :)
About the author:
Abdillahi Abdillahi is a web designer, founder and president of
http://kooshin.com , a company providing affordable web hosting
and web design solutions to small to medium sized businesses and
individuals. For more information , please visit
http://kooshin.com
|
|
| |
| |
