6 Basic Requirements for a Successful Website

Modern business takes place almost exclusively online. When entrepreneurs start their own businesses instead of leasing brick-and-mortar spaces they build their own websites. However, building a website isn’t easy. It takes extensive knowledge of coding, programming and marketing; rather than focusing on marketing however this post will tell you what features you need to incorporate into your website’s design.

If you are planning on building a website for your business or you just want a space of your own on the internet then keep reading. Here are six basic requirements for a successful website.

1. Hosting Services

Until you find a professional hosting service to work with your website will not be able to go live. A lot of first-time website builders make the mistake of trying to save money on hosting and hiring the cheapest services they can. According to the experts in hosting over at JustHostMe® a good host can deliver superfast service meaning your website will perform at fast speeds.

When internet users visit people’s websites they tend to avoid ones that are not fast. Slow site speeds will push people away and make them want to do business elsewhere. There is a lot of competition on the internet right now so people will have no trouble whatsoever finding a fast website to buy products from if yours does not deliver the speeds they are looking for.

2. Professional Design

The next thing that you need to think about is your website’s design. Unless you hire a professional web development service or are an experienced coder yourself good design is likely not something you will be able to achieve. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that they can create a good design for their website using a template service but to be completely honest template services are not that good and are quite obvious.

Using such a service to design your website will likely show consumers you do not particularly care about their experiences browsing your website. Another thing to note is that when you use template services, there will always be another business or service out there using the same template as you. As a consequence of this, your website will never look unique; it will always belong to somebody else too.

3. Quality Content

Something else you need to think about is the quality of the content that is being posted on your website. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that they can get away with posting subpar content. However, posting content that is not written by an expert content writer will likely only result in people developing disdain for your website; it is especially important to have good content on your website if you are a business owner. Posting content can make you look like an authority in your niche.

However, bad content can make you look like you know nothing about your industry which can in turn lead to people choosing not to do business with you. Why would somebody want to do business with you if you do not seem like an expert in your niche after all? There are thousands of other businesses like yours that are experts. An alternative to writing your own content or hiring somebody is using machine algorithms and chatbots.

4. Unique Images

The images posted on your website should always be unique. While no customer is going to purposely leave your site and avoid doing business with you because you post an image that has been reposted somewhere else, unique images make your site look a lot better. When your site looks good and customers genuinely enjoy using it they are more likely to return and make purchases.

A good way to get your own unique images is to hire a professional photographer. A professional photographer will be able to shoot just about anything for you. Bear in mind  photographers are not cheap to work with. Some can cost thousands just for a few hours of service. You can cut costs on photography by taking pictures yourself. To do this you will need some knowledge or experience in photography first, however.

5. Contact Us Page

A lot of first-time website builders make the mistake of setting up their site and not creating a ‘Contact Us’ page. If you do not have one of these pages then you could end up annoying customers. When people want to get in touch with your business to ask about products or services they usually go straight to the ‘Contact Us’ page. If your website does not have one of these then consumers will have nowhere to go to find important information; if there is nowhere for them to go most likely they will just choose not to buy products or services from you.

Bear in mind when you are creating a page for people to use to get in touch with you that you should give them several different ways of reaching out, such as SMS, email and via telephone. Set up a live chat feature on your site as well. You can automate live chat if you want to although you do need real customer support agents there to deal with issues that cannot be resolved via AI.

6. Robust Security

The very last thing that you need to think about is your website’s security. Cybercrime has never been more of a threat to online entrepreneurs than it is right now. Unless you take steps to make sure that your website is secure and protected then you could end up opening customers up to fraud. If cyber criminals target your website and manage to hack it, they could steal customer data and information.

Robust security measures such as hiring a managed security service will prevent this from happening and keep your customers and their information safe. Security measures are very easy to install on your website and there are lots of guides you can use to help you do this.

Creating a website isn’t as easy as many people make it seem. You will need support from experts and professionals if you want yours to look its best. There are lots of guides and tutorials like this one for example that you can use to manage certain things on your own. A host, managed security service and web developer are all professionals you will need to hire whose jobs you cannot do independently, however.