Your website is the mother of all online real estate, and arguably your best marketing asset. If the web was a shopping mall, it would be your storefront. Having a website for the purpose of driving leads and sales is also known as inbound marketing—a strategy focused on bringing customers to you via company-created content on your website.
So, first, you need a website. Second, your website needs to be five things on order to be successful:
- It needs to be fast – Your website needs to be fast. While website speed is largely subjective, every single visitor needs to see SOMETHING happen on your website within three seconds. After three seconds, 53 percent of mobile consumers will click the “back” button.
- It needs to be secure – Your website needs to be HTTPS instead of HTTP. The modern consumer is informed. One side affect of this is that they’re much more aware about the dangers of visiting an unsecured website. in 2016 alone, the number of data breaches in the United States amounted to 1,093 with close to 36.6 million records exposed—and your website visitors know this. If your website has any place where users can fill in personal information (even if it’s just a phone number and email address) it needs to be secure.Heck, even if it’s just a blog with no contact form it should be secure because website security is a search ranking factor.
- It needs to be mobile-friendly – Mobile website traffic (website traffic that happens on either a tablet or a smartphone) now outpaces desktop web traffic, and experts predict that at least 30 percent of searches will be done without a screen by 2020.
- It needs to have a clean, easy-to-use design featuring your contact info – Your design needs to look good and add value. Key components are having contact into in the upper-right corner, clear calls-to-action, a clear navigation that can be easily tapped on a mobile device, and an easy way to contact you.
- It needs to be optimized for SEO – People need to be able to find your engine, and most of the time, they find it with a search engine. Learn more about search engine optimization (SEO) below.
- It needs to be fast – Your website needs to be fast. While website speed is largely subjective, every single visitor needs to see SOMETHING happen on your website within three seconds. After three seconds, 53 percent of mobile consumers will click the “back” button.
- It needs to be secure – Your website needs to be HTTPS instead of HTTP. The modern consumer is informed. One side affect of this is that they’re much more aware about the dangers of visiting an unsecured website. in 2016 alone, the number of data breaches in the United States amounted to 1,093 with close to 36.6 million records exposed—and your website visitors know this. If your website has any place where users can fill in personal information (even if it’s just a phone number and email address) it needs to be secure.Heck, even if it’s just a blog with no contact form it should be secure because website security is a search ranking factor.
Almost three-fourths (74 percent) of online consumers get frustrated with websites when content is not personalized/related to their interests.
- It needs to be mobile-friendly – Mobile website traffic (website traffic that happens on either a tablet or a smartphone) now outpaces desktop web traffic, and experts predict that at least 30 percent of searches will be done without a screen by 2020.
- It needs to have a clean, easy-to-use design featuring your contact info – Your design needs to look good and add value. Key components are having contact into in the upper-right corner, clear calls-to-action, a clear navigation that can be easily tapped on a mobile device, and an easy way to contact you.
- It needs to be optimized for SEO – People need to be able to find your engine, and most of the time, they find it with a search engine. Learn more about search engine optimization (SEO) below.