Therefore, creating an effective business website is a must if you want to be known. Studies have shown that 97% of consumers and 94% of B2B buyers begin their journey with a business with an online search. While creating a website is not a difficult task today, the real catch is leaving an impression on your website visitors so that they get interested in working with you.

But exactly how does one make their website effective and impressive? Well, we have some handy tips that you would want to keep in mind.  

1. Stick to the Purpose

When creating an effective business website, it is important to remember why you created the website in the first place. A business website exists either to provide information about your company, showcase your portfolio, act as a direct platform for eCommerce, or any or all of these.

Therefore, your website should be designed in a manner that these functions are given the most priority. A business website cannot look like a magazine with tons of information, nor must it look like a graphics portfolio with absolute minimalism. Strike the right balance between simplicity and adequate information, a smooth website journey and striking attention points.

The key is to have a website where the goal of your business website is reinforced in its contents and design.

2. Make it Easy to Spot

The domain name is one of the most important elements of a business website because it is the website URL that you will be sharing with your clients, on your social media pages and other platforms for publicity. The domain name should not just be short and clear, but also devoid of any acronyms, numbers and abbreviations, as far as possible.

The domain extension is significant as well, .com being the most popular choice for many. However, you can always opt for domains based on your country (.uk, .in) or based on your business (.marketing, .law) and so on.

3. Ensure that it is Mobile Responsive

You cannot do anything worse for your business website than make it look terribly out of place on a smartphone. Most of your business website’s traffic might actually come from the phone’s internet browser, for people tend to spend more time online from their phones instead of computers.

Therefore, make sure that your business website is mobile-responsive in its design, and can showcase all features, information and design elements with equal clarity on the phone.

4. Work on User Experience

One of the most important aspects of website design is how appealing and simplified it is to users. Therefore, take special care to categorize all your service or information points carefully, placing yourself in the user’s shoes and check is your website user friendly? Hire an experienced web design agency to create a smooth and visitor-centric web design if needed.

5. Clear Contact Information

If one of the key priorities of your business website is to get more people to contact you or your sales team, you must ensure that your contact information is clearly visible to website visitors. They should not have to browse multiple pages or scroll down to the bottom to be able to contact you. It is best to have contact and social media links on the header for clear access, or even publish your contact information at the top of the home page.

6. Easy Navigation

According to Dan Veltri, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Weebly, being able to navigate through your website seamlessly can draw clients to your business more swiftly. Limit your top-level navigation menu to five properly labelled tabs. Organize any related pages or archives under these menus. As far as possible, help the customer avoid the search bar when it comes to navigating pages or menus.

7. Short Loading Times

Let’s be honest - nobody has the patience to wait for anything more than a few seconds for a website to load. Getting later than this can prove disastrous for both your website and your business.

Therefore, make sure your website loads fast enough by limiting files and file sizes on your page, restructuring it immediately if you spot a time lag and continuous checks on both computer and mobile phone for optimum loading speeds.

8. Prominent Call to Action

Design each page on your business website as if it is asking the customer to do something – surprisingly, this is exactly what your customer needs too! Therefore, use more Call to Actions – signing up, using a service, getting a quote, buying a product, downloading a whitepaper, and so on. Make sure that your web visitors do not have to hunt for these options in case they need them.

9. Make it Interactive

When designing a business website, it is important to show how lively and thriving your business is, or at least has the potential to be. One way of doing this is by creating an interactive website, with interconnecting hyperlinks, surprising elements that could catch your visitor’s eye, interesting themes and so on! The idea is to make your website’s navigation a fun experience for the visitor, besides being informative and helpful.

10. Show Yourself

Last, but not least, it is important to let your customers or clients know that they are not dealing with a machine, but a real human. Make your “About” page really about yourself – tell your story, put up a professional picture and get them interested in your personal brand.

There! Those were some easy tips to keep in mind when designing an effective website for your business. If you want your venture to stand out of the crowd in these competitive times, it is important to focus on user experience and uniqueness at the same time.