Top 10 features of successful website development
Posted on November 21, 2018 by Cathrin Rhind-Tutt
Whatever your business, it is critical to understand the benefits of professional website design and development for your online presence. In today’s internet-savvy world, your prospective customers are always online and searching for people, places, and lots of valuable information. To draw prospects, you first need to be visible to them. And, that’s why you need website development services to build a compelling website for your business. Let’s put it this way; your website is your identity on the internet. In this article, we will talk about the top 10 features that your website must have to attract customers and beat your competitors.
10 essential features of a persuasive website
Make sure you include these 10 essential features during the build phase of your website project.
You don’t need technical knowledge to understand these features. All the features are easy to comprehend.
A robust Content Management System (CMS)
The Content Management System (CMS) will help you with all the behind the scenes actions on your website. Using the CMS, you can add content, images, links, videos, etc. to your website and organize pages. CMS’s such as Coaster and WordPress come with hundreds of templates, plugins, and themes that you can use to make your website more impactful.
A mobile-friendly user interface
A mobile responsive website is critical to user experience. Imagine, a potential customer tries to browse your website on their smartphone, but all they get to see is broken pages and buttons. What kind of a first impression would that be? So, during the website development phase, make sure you pick mobile responsive themes to help website visitors easily navigate your website and minimize the loading time of your website. A common phrase to consider here it to ‘reduce friction’, the easier you make it for your visitors, the better response you will get.
Engaging content
Have you heard the popular saying, “Content is King?” Well, your website content is the most important aspect of your website. It is a lifeline for your website when it comes to SEO and engaging website visitors. While the content should be informative, make sure it is interactive too. Compelling copy can help you convert your website visitors into leads.
Powerful analytics tool
Once your website is live, how will you determine if people are finding your site or browsing it? That’s where the need for a powerful analytics tool comes into the picture. Google Analytics is a top-rated analytics tool used by millions of people. It is free to use and easily integrates with your CMS.
Shopping cart and payment options
If you are building an online shop, you can make the most of Magento 2 for a highly scalable design and an extensive support network. Magento 2 is a 360-degrees shopping cart solution and scales for all sizes of online business. It provides users with flexibility, payment tools, and powerful features to help grow their business. Moreover, Magento 2 is search engine friendly and responsive.
Inventory management system
This is another area where Magento 2 is leading. Magento 2 inventory management system is the best solution to help you manage your stock efficiently, track orders, and see what’s been sold. By integrating a smart inventory management solution with your website, you can help your customers find out what’s available for purchase and what is out of stock.
Captivating images and calls-to-action (CTA)
A unique font, large and captivating images, and catchy call-to-actions are some aspects of your website that require special attention during the website development process. Whether it is a product image or a background image, high-quality images can help you draw more customers, and clear calls-to-action can help you guide your website visitors to other informative pages of your website.
Testing
Testing is carried out throughout the website development process to ensure each element is working well and provides an excellent user experience. Once the website development process is complete, all the components of your website will be combined, and the final quality testing phase will kick off. Thorough testing is critical to accurate functionality, user experience, and compatibility. If the product isn’t as effective, the entire website development efforts will go in vain.
Social media integration
During the website development process, don’t forget to connect your social media pages to your website. You can add widgets on the footer of your website or the side menu. Using social media integration, you can also post website updates directly on pages and make this a key part of your social media marketing strategy
A reliable website hosting service
Your website host is like a landlord, renting a house to a tenant (your website in this case). All files related to your website will sit here. Choose a website hosting service provider who’s reliable and credible. You will get to pick your web hosting plan from different plans such as monthly, quarterly, and yearly. So, once your website development process is complete, you’ll need a website hosting to take it live. Be sceptical of ‘cheap’ hosting deals however, like many things in life, you get what you pay for.
The takeaway
So, after reading this article, we hope you would agree that website development is not just a task, it’s an art of compiling the top 10 features mentioned above to form an impactful website. High-quality website development requires critical thinking and planning, attention to detail is the key to a successful website. Once you’ve got your website working well for you, don’t forget to work on your marketing plan. If you want help with this aspect of your online strategy why not read our article about Marketing Planning and knowing your key marketing dates, you can even download a free marketing planning tool from the article!
If you have any comments, feedback or requests for other articles we’d love to hear from you – post your comments below and we’ll get back to you.