Essential features every Website should have

You spend days, weeks, even months working to build your perfect website. You utilize a chunk of your business budget to create this incredible user experience, hoping it leads to customer satisfaction and increased consumers or visitors.

Website usability is a critical tool in gaining conversions and increasing revenue. Without it, a business will struggle or have to work harder to attract customers. But, if you have ever embarked on building a business website or a complete website redesign, you know the task can be daunting and overwhelming!

Don’t fret! Include the following features and functions in your website

Content Management System
A content management system (CMS) is a web application designed to make it easy to manage a website – especially for non-technical users. A content management system helps internal users add, edit, and manage a website – often doing the heavy-lifting by providing an intuitive interface, permission-based editing options, previewing edits before publishing, and more. Having a content management system for your website helps with content editing and publishing while helping you engage with your website visitors in a deeper way.

Content Creation
A content management system won’t be any good if new, relevant content isn’t being developed! Whether in-house or contracted out, fresh content that is optimized for search engines is key to attracting customers. Conveying expertise and thought leadership in your field of work will develop trust with current customers while attracting new customers to your site. Once the content is created and published – ideally once a week or more as your business has the capacity – it can be shared to social media accounts, other industry-relevant websites, and more.

Mobile-Friendliness and Responsiveness
This is essential and could very well be the difference between a thriving business and a struggling one. Today more than ever, people rely on their mobile devices to access the web and complete research. This means that you have to make sure your website will display nicely and seamlessly on smaller screens. Making this a priority shows you value your customers and website visitors. It can also give you an advantage in search rankings!

Calls to Action
So, you’re developing and publishing content on a regular basis and have made it easy for visitors to navigate your site from a mobile device. But, what actions do you want them to complete on the site? Schedule a call, download a resource, or purchase a product? Getting those visitors to convert to customers requires clear action steps. That’s where call-to-actions come in: carefully crafted messaging, often in the form of a button, that makes next-step actions clear for the visitor.

Learning Management System

Depending on your business, a learning management system (LMS) may be a key component for your new site. These systems help you design specific metrics for lessons, courses, people, and groups and track performance levels. A learning management system is ideal for educational institutions but could also be valuable for large companies that have multi-step onboarding and employee training processes.

Clear Navigation
Finally – navigation. All of the content, calls to action, and learning systems will be useless if there isn’t a legend for the visitor. Make sure your website has a clear navigation setup with easy-to-understand names. Whether it’s a first-time visitor or a long-time customer, you want them to know exactly where they can find information without being confused by clever or “catchy” names and/or titles.