1. Keep your website up to date

If your website is outdated it can give the impression that you’re unprofessional or unreliable. Keeping it up-to-date will help build trust between you and your customers, and could give you an advantage over the competition.

2. Use a straightforward layout and keep pages clean

If a website has too much information, it overloads the mind, making it difficult to retain the new information. Be sure to use a balance of text and graphics that presents a clean page.

3. Tell visitors what you do at a glance

Through images, descriptions or both, visitors to your website should easily figure out what your company does.

4. Implement calls-to-action

Each page on your website should entice the reader to do something like read it or making a call or a payment.

5. Stay mobile friendly

If potential customers land on your site but find it difficult to read or navigate on a mobile, they may simply abandon you in favour of a competitor. If a competitor is mobile-friendly and your website isn’t, yours could get pushed down lower in your customers’ search results – mobile responsiveness is a major factor in how Google ranks websites in its algorithm.

6. Be secure

Make sure you have an SSL certificate (the little padlock on the corner of the domain that ensures the connection between the web server and the browser is secure and not intercepted, it also means the website will perform better in Google search rankings).

7. Make contact info easy to fin

Make sure visitors can get in touch with you quickly and conveniently.

8. Highlight your USP

What makes you stand out from the competition? Your unique selling point tells visitors why they should stick around and do business with you, rather than clicking back on the search results to a competitor.

9. Show off customer testimonials

The best way to tell people how great your company is is through someone else’s words.

10. Link to other websites and have others link to yours

Outbound links can help improve SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and make you look like a valuable resource. Inbound links are just as valuable.

Your Website Should NOT….

1. Have every widget and form crammed onto your home page. Clean and to the point works much better.

2. Use flashy animation, moving text, fancy cursors or music. These are unnecessary and annoying to most visitors and increase loading time.

3. Post images without ALT text or captions because search engines can’t read images, so descriptive text helps SEO.

4. Have dead links or links that lead to an error page. Check links frequently to make sure they still work.

5. List all your products/services in one long, continuous scroll. Break things up naturally and use smart widgets to help visitors find what they need.

Take a look here to see how we can help you create a new website or a website re-design!