A business website is one of the most important things you can do for your business. It’s the place where you’ll interact with customers, tell them about your products or services, and sell to them.

If you don’t have a good website, how are people supposed to find out about your company in the first place?

The answer is simple: they won’t! And if they can’t find it, then they’re missing out on all sorts of opportunities to learn about what you have to offer and maybe even buy something from you.

For this reason alone, creating an effective business website should be high on every entrepreneur’s list of priorities, and building one doesn’t have to be difficult.

Here are ten tips that will help make yours stand out from those of competitors:

1. Know your audience.

If you’ve ever visited a website and thought, “This isn’t for me,” then you’re probably familiar with this feeling. A well-designed and effective business website should look like it was designed specifically for your audience and their needs.

This doesn’t just mean using many words that sound like they came out of a marketing textbook; it means truly understanding your audience’s wants, needs and expectations.

This will help shape the way that information is presented on your site.

For example: if you have an eCommerce business and have built an online store to sell products, then there are certain aspects of how people shop online that is different from how they shop in stores or even over social media networks like Facebook or Twitter.

2. Focus on user experience.

The user experience is everything. If you can’t make your website easy to navigate and use, then it won’t matter how beautiful or well-designed it is, because no one will come back.

The best way to keep your users happy is by keeping them on their toes: don’t be afraid of change! If you find that things are not working the way they used to, try a new approach; it might just turn out better than expected.

Build your business website with your users in mind. They should find your website easy to navigate, responsive and easy to use.

3. Make sure you have compelling copy.

In order to build a great website, you need to make sure that your copy is compelling. You want people to read what you have written because it’s interesting and informative. One way to know the content isn’t exciting or engaging is if your visitors aren’t reading it.

Using specific techniques within your site’s text can help encourage readership with the following tips:

• Use Short Sentences And Paragraphs – People tend not to read anything longer than about 8 words in length, so keep your sentences short, and keep paragraphs down to around 4 lines long for optimal reader retention.
• Use Bullet Points – People are more likely to skim over bullet points than block paragraphs of text; this makes sense because bullets make it easy for users who may be scanning while they’re trying not to miss any important information on the page (as opposed to those who are reading every single word).
• Use Subheadings And Lists – Subheadings help break up large sections of content into digestible bits while lists provide visual relief from large blocks of text. Both these strategies aid comprehension by providing reference points that allow readers’ eyes to travel back up from lower levels of hierarchy (subheads/lists) allowing them to reorient themselves with respect to previous headings/sections as well as provide very simple cues on how big each section will be before diving into them fully

4. Take advantage of page titles and meta tags.

This is one of the most overlooked SEO best practices and yet, it’s an extremely powerful way to increase your rankings.

Title tags are those little titles that appear in the browser tab when someone clicks on your website or social media post. These titles have a lot of influence over whether or not someone clicks on your page and so it’s important to make sure they are descriptive and include keywords related to what you offer.

Meta descriptions are another opportunity for you to attract visitors by enticing them with a short summary of what your page offers. Meta descriptions should be unique for every page but keep in mind that Google prefers concise ones (between 150-160 characters) with active verbs because they provide better click-through rates than long paragraphs of text.

5. A business website won’t be effective if you don’t pay attention to internal linking.

If you’re running a brick-and-mortar store, you want your website to reflect that. That’s why internal linking is so important. It gives people who visit your site a sense of what kinds of content are available on it.

The first step toward making this happen is to make sure every page has some form of internal link pointing back to the homepage or some other relevant landing page (e.g., “Our Products” or “About Us”).

In general, there are four types of internal links:

• Contextual links: To other relevant pages on your site: This can be any page that’s closely related to the one where it appears. For instance, if you have an article about how credit card fraud works, put in an internal link at the end of this article directing readers back to another article about credit cards in general.
• Navigational links: They are links that connect pages on your website. They are mostly used on the navigation bar of your website. These kinds of links make website navigation easy.
• Footer links: These are links in the footer section. They are useful to display important pages on your website.
• Image Links: Useful to reference image sources on your website. They are often placed under images.

6. Develop compelling content for each keyword.

• Write content that is relevant to the keyword.
• Include the keyword in the title and meta description.
• Use the keyword in the first paragraph of the article.
• Use synonyms for the keyword in the article
• Use variations of the keyword throughout your content

7. Understand social signals and their effect on SEO.

Social signals are a good thing. They can help you rank higher in search results, get more traffic to your website and generate more links. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that social signals are THE most important on-page SEO factors. They are factors that directly affect your website’s ranking.

But how do you get social signals? Well, there are two major types:

• one is called “followers” or “likes”, which are typically associated with Twitter and Instagram.
• the other is called “mentions” or “shares”, which apply to Facebook and LinkedIn.

8. Make sure it’s mobile responsive.

Mobile responsiveness is a must. If you’re ignoring this, you could be putting yourself at a disadvantage.

According to a survey by Google, users are now accessing the web on mobile devices more than on desktop computers. And it’s only going to continue getting worse for those who don’t have mobile-friendly websites.

Luckily, there’s an easy way to test whether your website is optimized for mobile use:

• Simply head over to Google’s Mobile Friendly Test tool and enter the URL of your site. It will run through a series of tests that evaluate how accessible and user-friendly your site appears on smartphones and tablets.

9. Consider using an SEO plugin (if you are using WordPress)

If you’re using WordPress, it’s important to choose an SEO plugin that is regularly updated.

This ensures the most up-to-date functionality and compatibility with your website. Some plugins are more difficult to use than others and some may not be as secure.

10. Get a team of people involved in reviewing and improving your website.

It’s difficult to determine what is working and what isn’t when you are the only person working on your website.

You need to get other people involved in the process of reviewing and improving your website so that it can be as effective as possible for all users, including your target audience, business partners/employees/customers, and yourself.

You also want this team to include an outside professional web developer with experience creating websites that meet current search engine optimization (SEO) standards and other best practices for building websites that convert visitors into customers or subscribers.

An effective website will help get your business noticed, so do what it takes to make a great one.

You’re probably aware that having a good website can be vital to your business’s success. You want your website to show off the best of what you have to offer, and it needs to do so in a way that makes people want to keep coming back for more. But how do you make sure that happens?

The first step is getting the basics right. A lot of people don’t realize that these basic things are just as important as anything else when it comes to making an effective business site:

• Keep it simple – Don’t try and cram everything into one page, or use too many different fonts or layout styles on one page; this will only confuse visitors and make them leave quickly.
• Make sure it works on all devices – If someone views your site on their phone, they should get access to the same information as someone who visits from their laptop or desktop computer screen size; if they’re using a tablet-sized device like an iPad then even better!

Conclusion

I hope these tips have helped you get started on creating an effective website for your business.

If you have any questions about the process or need additional information about our services at 247Media, please don’t hesitate to contact us!