If you’ve chosen to try your hand at entrepreneurship, give yourself a pat on the back. It’s not easy, but if you’re successful, it’s worth all the hard work it requires. Successful entrepreneurs all over the world have come up with a unique business idea, service, product or platform to engage with potential customers and gain momentum. The one thing almost every successful entrepreneur has is a fantastic website to showcase who and what they are to the world – and to showcase what they offer. In order to have a website that impresses visitors, these are the 10 things you need to have in place:
1.A short and catchy domain name. Coming up with a domain name goes hand-in-hand with naming your business. Most of the time, the domain name matches the name of your business. This might require some trial and error, because you’ll have to create a list of possible domain names and check to see if they’re available or not. Your domain name should be short (nobody wants to type out long domain names) and easy to say (so that word of mouth referrals about your website don’t get lost in translation) and catchy, so that it’s memorable.
2.A reliable web hosting service. A web host provides the tech support and security that you website will need to run. Web hosting is vital to your website, which is why you should carefully choose a reliable provider. A reliable provider will keep the bots away and keep your site up and runnin.
3.An intriguing ‘about’ section. The ‘about’ section of your website tells visitors your story. It tells them who you are, what you do, what you’re offering, and why you’re better than competitors. This is a section people who are interested and curios will likely read before making any decisions, so make sure it’s good.
4.Clear categories that are easy to navigate. You website must be easy to navigate. Your social media buttons should be at the top so that visitors can follow you. A contact button should be very clearly visible. A top bar should offer visitors categories such as “products”, “services”, “about”, “FAQ”, “press”, “testimonials”, “contact us”, etc.
5. Well-written website copy. You’ll have to hire a talented copywriter to write your website copy. Each page on your website – whether it be the ‘about’ section, the ‘FAQ’ section, etc – must be well-written and free of grammatical errors. If the website copy is poorly written, this will reflect very badly on your business and look both unprofessional and amateur.
6. A clean and simple website design. Your website design should use simple colors, simple fonts, and look clean and pleasing to the eye. Yes, this is an investment and will cost money, but don’t get ripped off. Do your research and compare a few different quotes from a few different website designers.
7. A blog. Your website should have a blog with educational and interesting articles that relate to your business. Search engines like Google love informative blog posts, so this will help increase your visibility on search engines as well. Again, you’ll likely need to hire a talented writer to get this done.
8. High-quality images. Every professional-looking website will use visuals such as high-quality stock images. You’ll need images to give visitors a visual of what you’re offering, and you’ll also need images to use as feature photos for each and every blog post on your website. Shutterstock is a great option for quality stock images, and the fee to be a member of Shutterstock and to have access to these images is quite reasonable. Alternatively, if you happen to be a photographer (and you have friends who are willing to be models) you can take your own photos.
9. A pop-up in the form of a call-to-action. You can set up a pop-up message on your website that pops up after a visitor has been surfing your site for a certain amount of time. Usually, it pops up within 30 seconds of a visitor arriving to the site. The call-to-action in the message should encourage visitors to follow you on social media, subscribe to your newsletter or some other action of your choice.
10.Testimonials. Your website should have a section that allows you to showcase all of the positive feedback you’ve received regarding your business. Always ask clients and customers to leave you a review. Publishing positive testimonials on your website will help you get business.
