A successful website is like a salesperson that never sleeps! Your website is available 24 hours a day and is a cost effective method of providing your clients with the latest information about your services and products.

If you’re going to have a successful website, you will need to follow certain principles in order to make sure you can attract new potential clients.

From the smallest business to the largest business, all will be able to benefit from the following 7 keys to a successful website.

1. Good Domain Name

When choosing a domain name for your website, ideally you should use your business name as the domain name. For example, if your business name is “Wedding House” it would be best if you could register the domain name www.weddinghouse.com.au. This will make it easier for people to remember your website address and will also help with your Search Engine results.

Another way to make it easy to remember is to find a short domain name. Technically your domain can be up to 67 characters long, however the longer the domain the harder it will be for your potential clients to remember.

If you need help finding a great domain name, you can use the following website: Bust A Name. This website will come up with available domain names based on your business name.

2. Professional Design

When potential customers view your website, the first impression will decide whether your business is worth their time, so you need to make sure your website design is outstanding.

Grab the attention of your potential customers by making sure that your website is unique. Show these potential clients why it’s worth their time to go deeper than the home page of your website.

Some of the key points you need to take into account regarding your website design are:

1. Clear Layout – Easy to navigate.
2. Accessibility – Must display correctly and quickly on all browsers.
3. Visually Attractive – Capture attention.

3. Search Engine Optimisation

A large number of people who visit your website are getting there by clicking on a link from a search engine (ie. Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc). Search Engine Optimisation is the process of positioning your website to be found on these search engines which increases the traffic to your website.

These days it is vital to use SEO on your website. If you’ve invested in a website, you really can’t afford not to have your website optimized. After all, what’s the point of having a website if it can’t be found.

Here are a few tips you can use to improve your website’s SEO results:

1. Write fresh content regularly.
2. Use links within the content of each page.
3. Share your website with Social websites (Facebook, Twitter, etc)
4. Share articles from your website with www.ezinearticles.com
5. Create a sitemap of every page on your website.

4. Update Regularly

Original content is important. People may come to your website once, but in order to keep them coming back, you’ve got to add fresh original content regularly.

Most of the time, when people are searching online for a product or service, they will be looking at multiple websites at once. Often they will not immediately make a decision on which business to move forward with, and will come back to these websites at a later time to make their final choice. Having fresh original content, when they return to your site, is a great way to convince them to do business with you.

Some good examples of fresh content are:

1. New menu items for a restaurant.
2. Weekly live music schedule for a café.
3. Latest promotion or special.
4. Instructional tips for your industry.

5. Encourage Interaction

There are two types of visitors that will view your website:

1. New Visitors
   Those that visit, read, and leave. They might not return if they received all they could from your website.
2. Returning Visitors
   These visitors are those that visit, read and interact. For example, they might submit their vote on your latest poll, or leave a comment on your latest blog post. They might also bookmark your website to return and visit later in order to see the response to their interaction.

In order to encourage interaction, you will need to be prepared to respond to comments and emails. The benefits of encouraging visitor interaction far outweigh any time spent on these small tasks. Remember, it often takes 6 or more ‘touches’ of contact before someone will do business with you.

Here are some tips to increase the interaction on your website:

1. Publish a Poll – Ask your visitors for their opinion
2. Set up a Blog – Create a post with a question for the title
3. Upload a Video – Allow comments
4. Hold a Contest – Give away valuable information

6. Use Testimonials

Testimonials are important as they help your potential client to build their trust in you. When done correctly, testimonials can be a strong aid in establishing the credibility of your website.

If you do decide to use testimonials, make sure you use honest comments from real customers. If the testimonial is not real, it may actually have a negative impact on your brand. In order to maximise the benefit of testimonials, it is important to include at least the customer’s full name rather than just their initials. You can improve the credibility even more if you include the full name of the customer, a photo, a video and possibly a link to the customer’s website.

You can take your testimonials a step further by including case studies of some of your clients. A case study presents a detailed story of how you helped a particular client. You can explain how you helped the client and display the work you did for them.

7. Contact Details Clearly Visible

One of the most important goals of your website is to convert your readers into potential clients. In order to do this, they are going to need to contact you at some point. If your potential client can’t easily see your contact details, they might be forced to take their business to your competition.

You may have a great website that provides lots of useful information for your clients, however sometimes they just need to call or email you. Most people tend to look for a link on your website that says “Contact Us” when they want to phone or email you.

Here are some of the ways to make your contact details more visible:

1. Name your main contact link “Contact Us”
2. Add a contact form to the bottom of each page.
3. Add a signature to your emails or newsletters.
4. Show your phone number on every page in large font.

One of the common misconceptions companies new to the web have is that if they put up a page, people will visit. However, in order to have a popular site you have to offer something useful to the user. This might include good information, interactivity, fun, something for free, etc. You can’t just add your 1300 number and expect phone calls the next day.

The web is an interactive and rapidly changing environment. Here at OE Design, we are continuously finding ways to achieve better results through your website to take it to the next level. We can provide help for you in any of the 7 areas mentioned above + much more.

Contact us today to see how we can help you.