If you’re wanting to gain more visitors to your company’s website, it might be time to do a little updating. Considering that, we thought it would be helpful to create a list of popular website features.
We’re going to list many popular website features and why they’re so important to have. With that in mind, here are the top 15 website features to include for more customers and happier visitors in 2020.
1. Begin With a Great Structure
Source: Wise SEO
Whether it’s a company or a website, having a structured set up is incredibly important. Structuring a website might sound complicated, but it isn’t.
Having a structured website simply means that it’s for visitors to navigate through. For instance, Amazon organizes its website by categories including clothing, electronics, home, etc.
Let’s say that you’re a wholesaler who buys electronics from Apple and Samsung. Having a single page for both companies might get confusing for sellers. It’s also not going to do you any favors in the SEO (search engine optimization) department.
With categories, it’s easy for visitors to get where they need to as fast as possible. With that said, it’s often much harder to restructure an existing website than it is to structure a new one. So, it’s best to structure your website around its main topics sooner rather than later.
2. Design a Logo
Depending on where you’re at in the stage of creating your business, you might already have a logo. If you do, make sure to include it in a prominent place on your website.
If you don’t have a logo, now is the perfect time to create one. We understand if taking lots of time and energy to design a new logo isn’t for you.
Fortunately, you can find someone on a popular micro job site. If you have the funds, partnering with a logo design company is another option.
To try out designing a logo for yourself, we recommend using a website like Canva.
3. Create a Blog
At Trade-In Tech, we’re big fans of content marketing. One reason for this is because we know how effective it is.
Content marketing is a way for companies to connect with consumers. When it comes to creating content it’s best to create something with text, images, and videos.
But what do you do with so much content? You place it within a blog. Think of your blog as a book that’s written by your company. Each blog post is a chapter. Best of all, you control everything that goes into this book.
If you want to take a closer look at what a blog looks like, you can visit Trade-In Tech’s blog here.
Having a blog allows you to communicate with your website visitors. It’s also great for improving the popularity of your website. After all, every new blog post is another chance to start gaining more web traffic.
4. Have an About Section
As we’ve mentioned, many new visitors to your website are there to learn more about your company.
Having a testimonial section or reviews are both great to let customers know more about you. But, if you want to go the extra mile, it’s also a good idea to have an “About Us” page.
This important page is where you let visitors know everything about your business. Use this space to inform others about how your business started, what its beliefs are, and other important information.
Also, don’t be afraid to use this space to brag about your business. You can post accomplishments, awards, and other company wins in this space.
5. Display Social Media Buttons
Source: Photo by Magnus Mueller from Pexels
For most business owners, social media pages are just as important as having a nice website. However, many business owners understandably struggle to get more traffic on social media.
What’s good is that you might already have the traffic you’re needing from your website. To capitalize on this traffic, utilize social media plugins or buttons. The buttons contain links that go from your website and to your company’s social media pages.
Social media plugins are great because they instantly let website visitors know about your accounts. There are many of these types of plugins available and most have a free option.
6. Think About Setting Your Website in Dark Mode
Whether it’s on a smartphone, tablet, or computer monitor, people spend lots of time looking at brightly lit screens. In most cases, these screens are going to emit blue light.
While it doesn’t affect everyone the same way, many people feel side effects after experiencing too much blue light. These side effects commonly include headaches, blurred vision, and eye strain.
Considering that, many companies create “dark modes” for their respective devices. Instead of lighter backgrounds with darker text, dark mode reverses this.
If you’re wanting to do something to spruce up your website, using a darker theme might be the way to do it.
7. Start Using a Chatbot
Source: CSO Online
It’s impossible to respond to every customer around the clock, right? With chatbots, you don’t have to worry about not being there to respond to an after-hours customer. Chatbots are simple programs that can use a set of predetermined responses to interact with people.
There are many reasons to use chatbots. They can help nurture leads who might want to know more about your company before doing business with you.
Another reason to use a chatbot is to gain valuable insights about your customers. With chatbots, you’ll start learning what questions visitors are asking. It’s also valuable to help you learn about any problems that might require your immediate attention.
It’s also much less expensive than hiring customer service employees. Juniper Research found that chatbots will save the banking industry alone about $7.3 billion by 2023.
If you want to get a headstart on futuristic website features, install a chatbot.
8. Use Customer Testimonials
Another feature you don’t want to miss out on is customer testimonials. There are several ways to go about doing this.
One popular way to do this is by displaying your reviews on the front page of your website, as this is where most users will end up visiting first. Since space is going to be limited here, try to highlight important parts of your reviews.
Reviews are incredibly important for winning over visitors, turning them into customers. A recent study found that 84% of people trust online reviews. So, make sure that visitors see excellent reviews of your business when they visit your website.
Another great way to display testimonials is by devoting an entire page of your website to them. Many companies do this - it’s a great way to give potential customers a first-hand experience of what it’s like to work with you.
9. Begin Using Responsive Images
Responsive images don’t just look great, but they’re also good for having an optimized website. Search engines don’t want to rank websites highly that have design issues. Unfortunately, certain design issues can begin popping up after you start placing images on your website.
One of the most common issues with website images is that they’re not responsive. It’s important to only use responsive images because people use the Internet on many devices.
In the past, most people only accessed the Internet through a computer. Soon, people would start visiting websites on smartphones, computers, laptops, tablets, and other devices.
This situation increased the need for pictures that could fit properly on mobile and non-mobile devices, otherwise known as responsive images.
You don’t need to be a professional photographer to start using responsive images. Many content platforms automatically make images responsive.
10. Hand-Drawn Designs Are Becoming Popular
Another popular website feature in 2020 and beyond are hand-drawn designs. We understand that this might not be the easiest step for you to complete. And, having these designs isn’t essential to have a fully functional website.
In the past, many people wanted websites that looked professional and were free from any errors. Now, there are trends showing that people like a little imperfection.
This doesn’t mean having a website that’s filled with errors. Instead, this movement focuses more on tiny design imperfections that build character.
If you don’t consider yourself to be good at drawing, you might skip this step. But, if you or someone you know considers themselves artists, this is a great way to jump on a popular trend.
11. A Contact Page
One of the most important features for a website to have is contact information. Without this, it might be almost impossible for interested parties to speak with you.
To make things interactive, there are many free tools that can help you create contact forms in a matter of minutes.
You can also type in your company’s phone number and make it a clickable link. When someone clicks this link, it will connect mobile users to your business line.
12. Integrate Your Email Newsletter
These days, almost every company sends out email newsletters. In fact, you likely have more than a few of these emails sitting in your inbox right now.
It’s easy to see why so many companies utilize email marketing. Research shows that, on average, email marketing provides an ROI of $44 for every dollar spent.
Before you can gain a large email list, you need to have traffic coming your way. Once this happens, it’s a good idea to include an opt-in form on your website.
We’re sure you’ve seen these forms on many websites. This quick pop-up asks if you want to sign up for an email list and features a place to include your email address.
13. SSL Certification
Source: Outreach Digital Marketing
Not all important website features will be ones that visitors notice. With so many websites out there, certain measures were taken to separate “safe” websites from “non-secure” ones.
To help separate secure websites from others, experts created Secure Sockets Layer security or SSL. This is a way to establish a safe connection.
Your visitors aren’t the only ones looking for secure connections while browsing websites. Search engines like Google and Bing also prefer websites with SSL certification.
Fortunately, it’s fairly simple to receive this certification for your website. In some cases, hosting providers automatically include this certification into their hosting plans.
14. An Automatic Backup System
We’ve spent a lot of time discussing how to make a website look great. But what do you do when errors occur and your website isn’t looking quite right?
This is where automatic backups enter the picture. If you’re familiar with computers, you might already know what backups are.
When it comes to having a website, backups save and store all of its data. This includes posts, pages, images, links, and all other aspects of your website.
What’s great about backups is that they don’t require a lot of technical know-how to create. Many content management systems include automatic backup creators. Other times, hosting companies will provide backups of your website data.
Regardless of how you do it, always make sure you have a backup system in place. If not, it could mean having to restore your website from scratch. Anyone who has been through this can tell you it’s not fun to go through.
15. Links to Your Pricing Sheets
Almost every wholesaler knows the importance of pricing sheets. These sheets contain information about the items a supplier is either buying or selling. As the name implies, these sheets also contain pricing information.
In most cases, wholesalers list this information on some type of spreadsheets. Whether you use Excel or OpenOffice or something else, you’ll need to get this spreadsheet on your website.
Fortunately, you can either create a new price sheet or import any you currently have into Google Docs. After doing this, go to the “Share” section and you’ll get a link to your spreadsheet. Just make sure you don’t allow anyone to edit your pricing sheet.