5 Things Every Professional Website Should Keep In Check

Web design and development can be an overwhelming process, but one that’s absolutely necessary when you have a business. Fortunately, when it comes to your business website some things are more important than others, so we’ve come up with a list of what you should prioritize when it comes to your business’ website. Your main concerns should include your customer’s experience while on your website, your website’s security, and your visibility on search engines such as Google. Here are 5 things every professional website should keep in check:

  1. A reliable web hosting service

A reputable web hosting service will help protect your website from hackers, keep your website secure, and generally keep your site up and running around the clock without issues. Web hosting providers offer 24/7 tech support and help when you need it. Not having good hosting can result in a slow-running website, a website that sometimes fails to load, increased bounce rate, a poor ranking on Google (and therefore less visibility) and a lack of site security. Website security is crucial, as hackers can steal your data, wipe your records, and cause irreparable damage.

  1. Regular SEO audits

Since SEO strength optimizes your website for search engines, this leads to more visibility and more traffic. You don’t need to me to tell you how beneficial higher traffic to your website is.  Search engines change their policies and algorithms every once in awhile, which is why regular SEO audits are necessary to ensure your website’s SEO is still good. An SEO audit will show you what some SEO weaknesses of your website are, so that you can fix these issues and become more visible on search engines such as Google. If you continue to audit and improve your website’s SEO, you’ll continue to gain visibility and get more traffic.

  1. Professional e-mail newsletters

Any professional website will prompt visitors to sign up for their e-mail list. However, what you do with these e-mail subscribers is even more important than actually obtaining them. You should be using e-mail newsletter templates from tools such as MailChimp to set up clear and concise newsletters that will be sent out to your subscribers with updates about your business and special offers. One of the most important things to remember is to not come across as annoying or spammy. This means you can’t send out e-mails every day. Once every two weeks is often enough. If you send e-mails out to your subscribers too often, you’ll lose subscribers as they’ll get annoyed and unsubscribe. People also tend to pay more attention to e-mails that come through if they recognize that this particular business doesn’t send out e-mails very often.

  1. Well-designed navigation

A website is only beneficial to your business if it has clear, easy and well-designed navigation. Make sure you use a top bar with legible categories and logical names for the various pages of your site. The obvious ones include ‘about’, ‘services’ ‘FAQ’, ‘testimonials’, ‘contact us’, etc. It’s up to you and your website desinger to make sure your website is not too cluttered, easy to navigate and cleanly designed. While some websites hide certain categories at the bottom bar rather than the top, the most important categories should be clearly visible at the top of your website.

  1. A good mobile version

Mobile visitors who use their mobile device to navigate to your site will make up a huge percentage of your site’s visitors. This means that your website had better look clean, legible and professional on a handheld device.  Your mobile version should not be missing anything important, and it should have a navigation side bar. Sometimes, you’ll have to pay your web developer extra to design a mobile site in addition to your desktop version, but this is an absolute necessity.

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