Maintaining a website for your business can help bolster your online presence and attract new customers. However, it’s extremely important that your business site is quick, sleek, and easy-to-use. Rather than attracting new customers, a poorly constructed business site will actually push people away, and may even damage your brand’s reputation.
The good news is that creating a good business site has never been easier. There are so many different website building tools out there that make it simple for the average person to create and manage a website. There’s also an ever-expanding list of features you can add to your business site that can potentially improve it and, in turn, improve the experience of your site’s online visitors. In this article, we take a look at six of the most innovative features to consider adding to your business site.
An informative blog
There are a few upsides to creating and maintaining a blog on your business site. First off, it provides your company with some important SEO benefits. By writing blog posts that contain relevant SEO keywords, especially long-tail keywords, you can potentially improve your business site’s Google search rankings.
Additionally, your blog posts can get shared on social media and be linked to by other websites or blogs. When an external website links to your business’s website, this is called a backlink, and when you accumulate backlinks from reputable sites you’re more likely to appear higher in Google’s search rankings.
So how do you get started with a company blog? Typically, the best strategy is to create high-quality, engaging content that provides value to your target audience. You should try to write about topics that are likely to be relevant to people who would be interested in purchasing your products or services. For instance, take a look at the below blog post by the estate planning company Trust & Will.
While they’re not technically in the business of memorial services, they understand that people who are looking for memorial service ideas may be interested in the other end of life services they offer.
Frequently asked questions
Including a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page on your business site can benefit both you and your customers. For starters, it can answer any questions your customers may have, thus making their experience smoother and more convenient. On your end, you and your employees will have to devote less time and energy to personally answering customer inquiries, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business.
To create an FAQ page, you should brainstorm questions you anticipate receiving from customers and make a list of questions that customers have already asked more than once. Then write out clear answers to all of these questions.
Depending on the type of business you’re in, it may be helpful to come up with both a general FAQ and product-specific FAQs. General FAQs will answer questions that revolve around your company in general (“Do you offer gift cards?”), while product FAQs will answer questions directed at individual products (“Is this sweater machine washable?”).
An effective search function
A search function is important because it helps visitors navigate your site and find what they’re looking for. Additionally, easy navigation is one of the top features that consumers look for in a website. According to a survey conducted by the data and marketing platform Clutch, 94% of consumers reported that easy navigation is the single most useful feature in a website.
Including a search function can make it easier to find specific products that your company offers, articles on your blog, and much more. Just remember to make sure the search function is actually useful — it should produce unique results based on the search terms entered. If it just produces the same page of results no matter the search terms, this will only annoy your site visitors.
A suggestion box
The best way to optimize your business website for your audience is to go straight to the source. Invite feedback from site visitors about what they would like to see or what problems they’ve been experiencing while browsing your site.
You can integrate a virtual suggestion box directly into your business website. If you have a customer service page, that may be a good place to request customer feedback. You can also use a service like Qualtrics to simplify the process of collecting customer data and analyzing it to improve the online experience for your audience.
Employee profiles
Posting employee profiles can be a great way to connect with your audience. Profiles that include pictures, descriptions, and maybe even fun facts about employees help to illuminate the people behind the scenes for those visiting your website. It reminds potential customers that your company isn’t a faceless entity, but an organization made up of real human beings.
This website feature may work better for small businesses as opposed to big corporations. After all, if your company employs 10,000 people, you’re obviously not going to be able to include every single one of them on your website (although you could still include profiles of the company’s executive board, for instance).
Customer testimonials
Modern consumers are pretty savvy when it comes to traditional marketing tactics. You can try to build up your products or services as much as you want, but many consumers will remain skeptical as long as the praise is coming from your mouth. Therefore, you should show them how your products have helped other people — and use their own words to do it!
A customer testimonial page helps reassure consumers that you really do, in fact, offer a high-quality product or service, and that it’s not all hype. Pick a few positive reviews to highlight and display them prominently on your website. You might even reach out to reviewers and see if they’ll give you permission to place an image of them next to their review. This will humanize them and make their testimonial appear more authentic to other people who visit your website.
Proactiv is one company that does a good job capitalizing on customer testimonials. They regularly share customer stories in their marketing campaigns, and on their website they even have interactive before and after profiles from real customers.
Keep in mind that it’s always good to do regular maintenance on your business site and update it here and there. While you don’t want to get carried away and overhaul the site every other week, some gradual change is good in the long-run.
When it comes to implementing new features on your site, perhaps the best strategy is to experiment with different things and see what works. Most importantly, listen to any feedback you get from customers who visit your site and review any available analytics on a regular basis to ensure your site is working for your target audience.
Samantha Rupp
Samantha Rupp holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. She is the managing editor for 365 Business Tips as well as runs a personal blog, Mixed Bits Media. She lives in San Diego, California and enjoys spending time on the beach, reading up on current industry trends, and traveling.
