Today, the digital world is changing, and having a well-designed website that has some of the essential features is very important. A well-designed website serves as an important touchpoint for businesses, influencing first impressions and user engagement. With the increasing reliance on online platforms for information, shopping, and services, businesses must have a visually appealing and functional website that can significantly impact a brand’s credibility and success.
No single aspect of marketing is more important than a quality website. This is because “a good website” is not enough to break through in these competitive times. What you really need is – a great website. There are thousands of templates and designs that can be used to make the website professional enough. But to compete and stand out, you need a website that has some of the most important features and is as unique as you are.
Features such as an easy-to-use interface, accessibility, visual appeal, and SEO optimization are important, of course, but there is more to a website than just a makeover for enhancing users’ experience.
We will read more about some important features in this blog, so stay tuned and stick till the end.
5 Features Your Website Needs
Your brand’s online presence serves as its face. It influences visitors’ initial perceptions: Is the website reputable? Dependable? Expert? Including these 5 key components will assist you in building trust and credibility with your customers.
- Responsive Design
Responsive design is important for modern websites due to the increasing diversity of devices used to access the internet. With over 79% of online searches coming from mobile devices, having a responsive website design ensures that content is easily accessible and visually appealing across various screen sizes. This adaptability enhances the user experience, as visitors can navigate the site without excessive zooming or scrolling, which ultimately reduces bounce rates and increases engagement.
Moreover, responsive design positively impacts search engine optimization (SEO). Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites in its rankings, meaning that a non-responsive site is likely to be penalized, resulting in lower visibility in search results.
- Fast Load Times
Not only is a slow-loading website design a typical web design error, but it may also be detrimental to all of your SEO and CRO efforts. A single one-second lag in page loading time can lead to a drop of 7% in conversions. These kinds of statistics highlight how important speed is to current web design, on desktop and mobile platforms alike.
Websites must load quickly, because your potential and ideal customers are busy and are looking for an instant solution. They literally hate waiting for the page to load, so they choose to leave the website and go to your competitor. This increases the bounce rate, which is bad for traffic. Fortunately, it’s not hard to construct essential components of web design faster. Here’s how you can increase load time –
- Select a reliable hosting environment, such as a server that is just used for your website or a VPS hosting or shared hosting option.
- All photos should be optimized, regardless of size.
- Remove unnecessary render-blocking JavaScript.
- To keep files smaller, use compression.
- Limit the number of HTTP requests.
- Use browser HTTP caching.
- Limit the use of redirecting.
- Intuitive Navigation
Have you ever landed on a website and felt completely lost? No idea where to go? Well, if you found this annoying, then, as a business owner, you must know, if a visitor visits your website and finds it tough to navigate, they will instantly run away.
94% of website visitors prefer simple and intuitive navigation, which enables users to instantly get the material they want in a seamless online experience. Provide a navigation bar that is constantly displayed so users can quickly navigate between pages on your website from any location.
Intuitive navigation serves as a guiding framework. It allows users to easily find information and navigate through content without frustration. Some of the important elements that allow effective navigation include –
- Clear menus and links – A clear menu provide straightforward pathways to important sections.
- Dropdowns – Dropdowns help organize related content, making it accessible without frustrating or overwhelming users.
- Breadcrumbs – Breadcrumbs offer a visual trail of the user’s journey, enabling them to backtrack effortlessly.
- Search bars – Search bars allow users to quickly locate specific information, further reducing the time spent searching.
Your users are more likely to stay if your website is easy to navigate. This leads to lower bounce rates and increased interaction with the site’s content, ultimately driving conversions and fostering customer loyalty. Also, poor navigation can make it difficult for crawlers to index your site, which affects your SEO efforts.
Modern site design and intuitiveness go hand in hand. If both elderly people and youngsters cannot access your website, you have a serious problem with your design. Your target audience can easily understand the design and navigation of your website with a quick analytical analysis, regardless of whether your team chooses mega menus, accordions, drop-downs, or hamburger menus. Any mistake or superfluous navigation will cast doubt on your company. You can fix this with the aid of an industry-leading approach called visual testing.
- High-Quality Content
To ensure your website is at its best and ranking, create unique content. Avoid using jargon and superfluous terminology that could confuse your target audience. Also, it is important to understand that people’s attention spans are limited. Hence, it is advised to make use of infographics, images, videos, etc.
A blog, often known as a weblog, is a specialized webpage with content and thought leadership on niche subjects that is intended for a particular target market. Having a blog is an excellent digital marketing tactic since it enables you to locate prospective clients via search engine searches.
When someone searches for “how to clean a watch,” for instance, they can find an article about the subject written by a watch-selling company. Following up on the corporate blog’s useful information, visitors are more likely to visit the main website and make more purchases. They will, at the very least, have a favorable opinion of the website for providing useful information.
Create content that answers your users’ queries, and high-quality content motivates them to stay a bit longer and explore other blogs and content on your website. Moreover, Google uses the quality of the content and the links within the content to establish page rankings in SERP (Search Engine Result Page).
- Strong Call-to-Actions (CTAs)
A prompt or button that urges a website visitor to take a certain action is known in marketing as a call to action, or CTA. It basically lets your visitors or customers know what to do next.
CTAs typically push prospective clients one step closer to completing a purchase, but they can also be used to promote free downloads, email signups, and much more. Common CTAs include “Buy Now,” “Subscribe to access more articles,” and “Check out this holiday discount.”
Make sure CTA buttons are simple to see and read when creating them. Utilize design elements like color, font, and form to set them apart from the background. For example, on a product page that is otherwise subtle, a red “Buy now” button could be placed right underneath an item. There are several types of CTAs, such as –
- Buttons
- Banners
- Text-Based
The best way to write a click-worthy CTA is to analyze your competitors and target audience. To learn about your target audience, you can use the One2Target tool, and you can see the audience’s gender, location, age, and other demographic information.
Bonus point?
Use content-specific and useful images. Not sure why? Read this!
When you post an article or a blog post, images can be used to break up the text to improve readability and provide visual context to the written content. Think of it like branding, just like fonts and colors, the images need to be consistent with your overall theme and the brand design of your website.
This does not mean you have to use the same images over and over again. All you need to do is, make sure the images you are using are of same style. There are several free websites, such as Pexel, Unsplash, Pixabay, and many more, that allow you to download high-quality pictures. Always use royalty-free images.
It is also advisable not to use too obvious stock images. Choose the one that relates to the content and your website.
These were the top 5 essential features that a modern website must have. Integrating these features is crucial for creating a modern website that stands out in the digital landscape. By keeping in consideration user experience and aligning with industry best practices, businesses can establish a strong online presence, attract and retain visitors, and ultimately drive conversions and growth.
Also, if you design the website for all of your users, there is an increased chance to expand your potential customers and clients. As more people are able to use your website, the chance of converting your potential customers into loyal ones increases.
Looking to start your new web project? Contact Rewind Production, as we help you create an aesthetic and functional website with precision and quality.