The Top 10 Must Have Features For A Successful Website

By Author: philip ardavies
Total Articles: 11
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There are millions of websites available today, so what does it take to ake your website stand out in the crowd. This is a very good question that is asked of us all the time. We all have different tastes but there are common values that most of us share when it comes to success.

Therefore, we believe your website should have the following 10 business critical inherent features to enhance the overall visitor experience. We are confident that the following features will deliver you a successful website:

1. Professional Look and Feel.
Having a professional looking website will give it instant visitor appeal compared to a poorly designed website that does nothing more than put visitors off straight away. The look and feel of a UK web design goes hand in hand and choosing the right colour, images and content is a major factor and makes a significant difference.

2. Structured link navigation for easy access to buy or enquire.
Probably one of the most important features for a visitor is to easily navigate through your website to ...
... get the information they want instantly. The 3 click to info rule is the most a visitor will take before they give in and go elsewhere.

3. Primary sales message to engage in products/services.
This is about targeting the website to the needs of the visitor. When they land on your website in search of your product or service, be sure to state exactly what you're offering from the start. The visitor will know they have landed on the right website and continue to browse.

4. Clear consumer confidence messages throughout the website.
These are the secondary pages that make up your web pages but very important for the vast majority of visitors. Privacy policy - If you're encouraging visitors to join the newsletter or are using a customer database, it's always advisable to stipulate a privacy policy. Terms Conditions - Well defined Terms and Conditions about how you manage the product or service you offer to the consumer, they will then know where they stand with you should something go wrong?

5.About Us page so visitors can relate that you're a real company.
Relationship is key to growing a healthy customer base and visitors like to relate to the people or company behind the web design. So, tell the visitor about your company, the vision as a business and the products or services you deliver. Mention a mission statement so that that can actually relate that you're a company that will be around for a long time. It makes a difference.

6. Contact Us page with email, telephone and postal address.
If a visitor is unsure of a service or product be sure to let them know that they can contact you. A telephone number is a clear sign that your happy to help and include your opening times or office hours. Contacts at all touch points will further instil customer confidence. This is especially important if you have an online store with a shopping basket or shopping cart facility.

7. Focus on keywords throughout the website to do well in the search engines.
The fact that Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation is very important to your website, spend a bit of time defining the keywords that will be best suited to your overall proposition. If you need help with this we can certainly help you.

8. Search Engine friendly SiteMap.
Search engine bots look for site maps when they visit your website. Providing a standard HTML site map will help improve the indexing of your web pages and allow bots to find web pages that they might otherwise have missed. You can now also provide and submit an XML site map which all the major search engines have took on as a standard. Use your robots.txt to tell bots where to find your XML site map and also submit it to Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer.

9. Testimonials for visitor confidence.
This has been proven to instill visitor confidence in an enquiry or buying decision. Visitors will look to see what positive experiences other visitors have had and it will persuade those visitors who are not quite sure to engage with you.

10. Hosting with fast response to load
Visitors will leave if it takes longer than 4 seconds to load. This is another critical factor, response times and availability, good UK web hosting services are essential. If you have a great website, you need a great UK hosting company to keep it fast and available. If the pages take too long to load the visitor will lose interest and go elsewhere.
About Jomongee Internet Services
Jomongee Internet Services offers powerful, affordable and reliable UK web hosting, Domain Names, UK Website Design, UK Reseller Hosting, UK Virtual Private Servers, UK Dedicated Servers and Internet solutions such as online marketing and e-commerce web design functionality. Jomongee provides a breadth of Internet Services with a depth of experience - from hosting to development and right through to promotion giving you all that you need to start and maintain your very own website. Professional, customer focused and friendly, what more could you ask for?