5 things you need to include on your website
Redesigning your website isn’t just about making it look pretty. I used to spend the full lesson in school choosing the perfect wordart font and layout to make my essay look pretty and less focus on the actual content! What did I learn from this? Pretty pages didn’t get me an A!
Whilst design is still definitely important you need to find that perfect combination of neatly displayed content that’s well written and grabs your customers’ attention. Making them want to buy from you or work with you.
Here are my 5 website must haves below!
1. CLEAR SERVICES OR PRODUCTS THAT YOU SELL
Avoid jargon at all costs. We’re all human and we want to know that what you’re offering can help - are you the solution to my problem? It’s important that you firstly understand your customers and what they are coming to your website for.
For example if you’re a pet supplies company and you specialise in food for pets with special dietary requirements make sure you say that clearly on your homepage. Imagine Kathy is coming to your website to order food for her diabetic cat; where can she find this? Does she need to click on cat food and search through a bunch of filters? Can she use a search bar? Or is there a sub category on the homepage she can click straight away?
2. EASY TO FIND CONTACT INFORMATION
There are so many times when I’m trying to find a phone number or email address for a company I need to contact and it’s hidden away in the website somewhere.
Do not be this website.
Having a contact page is important to include your phone number, email address, a physical address and maybe even a map and a contact form but why not also include it in the header and have the fixed to the top of the page or in the footer? Maybe have a contact form in the footer on every page too so it’s easy for people to book an appointment with you or ask you a question.
People get frustrated when they can’t find what they are looking for so don’t make them dig for information as this could prevent you from making a sale!
There have been a ton of times where I’ve tried to find a page on a website and come across the longest dropdown navigation with a huge amount of sub categories and then I’ve moved the mouse slightly and lost my path in the navigation.
A simple way to avoid this is by having category pages in a dropdown but not leading onto a sub category and then another sub category of that as it can get pretty confusing fairly quickly.
Let’s use Kathy as an example again. She’s looking for her diabetic cat food so have “Cat Food“ in the main navigation with a dropdown for “dietary requirements” or even just “diabetic cat food”.
3. CLEAR CALLS TO ACTION
Let’s say Kathy has found the perfect food for her cat, she’s super happy and it’s a great price so she’s ready to order. How is she going to place the order if the “Add to Basket“ button is hidden or too small?
Hierarchy is important on this one and generally you want to make your money making button the biggest one on screen. Have it in the boldest colour in your palette with bold legible text. Make sure the button is above the fold too so it’s not hidden and you have to scroll to actually proceed.
4. SIMPLE NAVIGATION
There have been a ton of times where I’ve tried to find a page on a website and come across the longest dropdown navigation with a huge amount of sub categories and then I’ve moved the mouse slightly and lost my path in the navigation.
A simple way to avoid this is by having category pages in a dropdown but not leading onto a sub category and then another sub category of that as it can get pretty confusing fairly quickly.
Let’s use Kathy as an example again. She’s looking for her diabetic cat food so have “Cat Food“ in the main navigation with a dropdown for “dietary requirements” or even just “diabetic cat food”.
5. MAKE IT RESPONSIVE
The majority of people these days own a smart phone and are more likely to search for a product or service they need on their mobile phone than on a desktop.
This is why it’s absolutely vital that your website is responsive for both mobile and tablet screen sizes. Don’t make people use the desktop size website on their mobile and have to zoom in and pan around the page as they’re more likely to get frustrated with this and move onto one of your competitors!
Because most people use their phone to search online a lot of designers have no adopted the “mobile first“ approach to designing websites ensuring that all of the important content is visible on the much smaller phone screen as opposed to designing for desktop first and then cutting off important pieces of content because it doesn’t fit.
