Businesses can cover a range of services and offer so many different products. However, there are some things that are needed across all company websites. It does not matter if you own a legal practice or an online furniture store or anything in between. There are some distinct features every website needs to have. Let’s take a look at what those might be now.
An Informative Home Page
The home page is often the first impression someone will get of your business. As a result, you need to make sure that you have a clear and informative page that will encourage visitors to stick around and explore more of the website.
There are some key things that need to be included here. The navigation bar needs to be easily accessible, and any images on the page need to load quickly. Try to avoid walls of text as they can be incredibly off-putting for visitors. Ultimately, you want this site to hint about more to come, before leading the customer further into the site on the hunt for what they came for.
An Easy Sign-Up Process
Most companies nowadays have some sort of customer log-in portal. Usually this won’t have any more data in it than addresses, payment methods, and order tracking and history. Nevertheless, it is incredibly important, and companies need to make sure that the sign-up process that prefaces it is just as easy to manage.
The most convenient way to handle a sign-up is with a pop-up. Try to avoid directing customers through too many forms, as this can make them frustrated and less likely to complete the transaction. You also need to follow up any sign-ups with a basic welcome to the site – here are some welcome email examples that can give you an idea about what is to be expected here. Both the sign-up process and the welcome email are fantastic first indicators that the visitor is very welcome at the site.
A Contact Page
Customers need a way of contacting you. More often than not it is not for a particularly good reason, but it is still incredibly important that they do indeed have some method of contact. As a result, it is incredibly important that a website has a contact page.
This should have information on it such as an email address for customer service. Not every company wants to disclose a telephone number, so it will be up to you as a company to decide whether or not you want to give one out.
Modern solutions here can include links to social media. This is a brilliant tool that you can expect to pick up messages through. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are all crucial for helping you interact closely with your customers. You can also install a small live chat widget here, that could be manned either by an AI or a customer service representative.
FAQs
Customers always have a great deal of questions about a brand. As a result, you need to be prepared to answer them. These are going to be key for keeping open lines of communication between you and your clients.
Most of the time, the questions they want answers to are fairly trivial. It can include things like how to reset their passwords, or where they can find more information. As a result, it can be something of a waste of time for a customer service representative to deal with such enquiries.
An FAQ section is therefore the perfect inclusion to try to minimise such trivial questions. Try to make sure that you have one which is live and ready to go with the website. The sooner your customers can find the answers they are searching for, the sooner they can return to browsing your store.
Delivery Details
Have you got a product to ship? You need to lay out all the details of what a customer can expect when ordering through you. Even with software or some other virtual product, this is still a necessary step. Will a download automatically begin? Do they need to download a client or manager to help install or use the product? Will it instead be emailed to them? Do they need an access code to get things started, and if so where will this access code be?
With physical products, you need to detail how the product is going to reach the customer. First, you need to say which delivery partner will be used. People have strong opinions about some couriers, and this might influence their decision to shop with you. It is better to just be open and upfront about who you use from the start.
In addition to this, you need to make sure that you list all of the costs and delivery times associated with the countries that you ship to. Some might have more costly delivery tariffs than others, and you again need to be honest about this. Finally, you need to look into customs charges. Some products will be taxed on the way into a country, and it can be a pain for the customer to arrange to pay such charges. As a result, you might gain more points with customers if you arrange to pay these fees and charge them as part of the shipping costs overall.
Get Started Today
The above five points are just some of the things that you need to do when setting up a website. No matter what you sell as a business, you will no doubt have to include some of the above in your website. These are considered to be a standard, not optional. You need to ensure that they are part of your infrastructure no matter what. Once they are in place, you can begin to focus on improving other areas of the site. With the proper infrastructure to hand, you are in the perfect position to deal with anything that a customer might bring to you. Make sure that yours is concrete now.