The Critical Components of a Healthy Website

Your website should be like your company’s virtual front door. It doesn’t matter whether you are in the Home Services, Consumer Marketing, or B2B industry – a quality website is part of doing business in the Twenty-First Century.

There’s a lot of DIY tools out there for those who feel inclined to flex their creative muscles, but in reality, for serious companies and organizations, just having a basic website is no longer a viable option. There are many things to consider if you want to have a significant digital presence, and if you want your website to bring in leads, and results! If you want to convert visitors into clients, your website needs to have these critical components working together in unison.

Design

The visual aspect of your website is the best chance you have to connect with your audience and make a good first impression (granted that your website loaded fairly quickly, but more on that later). According to the latest research, it takes a user only a few seconds to decide if they trust you. Having a professional-looking, clean and modern design goes a long way in establishing that trust. In a previous post on this subject, we talked about the most important factors in a successful re-design. We discussed information organization, navigation structure, establishing trust in the brand, and more.

Another factor we didn’t elaborate on in the last post is how responsive design is an absolute must. Your design must be created to be scalable on all devices, from phones, to tablets, to large screens. A good design is one that works across the board, and that gives users and business owners results, but it’s not the only driver of success. To our surprise here at ABORG, we are still always amazed that many business owners think that just having a website online will make them rich. Like we said, your website is a doorway, your vehicle, but even vehicles can’t go anywhere without roads!

Marketing

Sticking with the same analogy, if your website was a car, then marketing would be the roads. Think of these roads as your channels. Traditional marketing is like local roads; not very fast, but safe and comfortable. Highways (digital marketing) will get you quick and broad access to a lot of new areas. And paid services, like Pay-per-click and Adwords? That’s the passing lane!

In all seriousness, business owners need to think about these things if they want their website to be successful. Services such as Blogging or Content Creation, Social-media Advertising, PPC Management or Re-marketing and E-mail Newsletter Broadcasts are all examples of crucial elements professional digital marketers can help you with.

Hosting

So where does that leave hosting? Choosing a good, reliable web hosting company is like choosing a good mechanic. Price needs to be considered, sure, but really, you want to know that you can trust them, and that they will keep you safe. If you rely on your website for lead generation or have an online-based business, you need to be sure that your server is configured correctly, that your site is secure, and that the neighbors on your shared-hosting server are not hurting your business. But more importantly, you want your site (like your car) to move fast! Users won’t wait very long before they ditch your page for another if it’s not loading instantly.

Do you want your re-design to bring in fresh leads? Are you looking for a blazing-fast, super-safe web hosting provider? Then drop us a line. We would love to help!