Features Every Modern Website Needs-Featured.jpg

Features Every Modern Website Needs

Your small business website is the main hub of your business online, and it’s where visitors will go to learn about your team and services and decide if you’re trustworthy. In other words, it’s where visitors turn into leads and eventually customers.

However, not all small business websites are made equal. If yours is outdated and doesn’t meet the expectations of modern internet users, it’s not going to be effective, and it’s going to prevent you from getting the kind of ROI you should be getting.

Here are a few of the features that make a website modern.

7 features that make a website modern

#1. Large, beautiful images

It doesn’t take long for people to form first impressions. According to Forbes, it actually only takes about seven seconds upon meeting someone to form a solid impression of them, and traits like trustworthiness are determined even faster!

When someone visits your website, they’ll form an opinion about your business and whether or not they want to trust you pretty much right away — before they can read your content or check out a video. That means that your images really need to make an impact.

Make sure you use large, high-quality, professional images for your website. And, make it a point to optimize them properly for faster load times and better SEO.

#2. Consistent branding on every page

Most small business owners assume that their homepage will always be the first page someone will land on. However, that’s far from reality, and no matter which page someone lands on, you want it to be obvious that it’s a part of your business website.

That’s why it’s important to represent your brand consistently across every page of your website. That means including your logo and business name, but also ensuring that colors, typography, tone of voice and imagery all line up.

Creating a style guide before starting your website will help you stay consistent across every page and build trust with your visitors.

#3. Lots of white space

There are all kinds of modern websites designs out there, but they all tend to have one thing in common — simplicity. One of the best ways to keep your website simple is to surround each element on your page with plenty of white space.

Effectively using white space will make your website look clean and professional, and it will help to direct visitors where you want them to go. With plenty of space around CTAs (calls to action), visitors will be able to clearly see them.

The effective use of white space also makes your text more readable, makes it easy to organize your content in a visually appealing way and increases conversations.

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#4. High-quality videos

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is probably worth a gazillion. But seriously though, video is absolutely something you want to use on your website.

People love to watch videos, and on average, they’ll stick around your website for longer if you have a good video to watch. Plus, video is eye-catching and engaging, and helps to generate interest in services and products.

Last but certainly not least, search engines love video and will rank pages that contain it higher in the search results.

#5. Responsive design

In order for a website to really be modern, it needs to meet the needs of modern users. And today, modern users spend most of their time online on their smartphone or tablet, and less of their time on a desktop or laptop computer.

You need to be able to provide all of your users with a consistent aesthetic and user experience, regardless of the device they’re on. That starts with having a responsive design that will reconfigure itself automatically for the screen it’s being viewed on.

Of course, there’s more to mobile-friendliness than having a responsive design, but it’s the first step toward success.

#6. Built-in SEO

Having a beautiful, modern website is all well and good, but only if people actually see it! That’s why it’s important to create a small business website that’s built with SEO (search engine optimization) in mind.

Content marketing is an important part of getting to the top of search engines, like Google and Bing, but there are a lot of other aspects of SEO that need to be considered and can be complicated.

That’s why Websites 360® websites have the technical aspects of SEO, like Schema markup, built right in. Plus, it’s easy to customize and optimize page titles, meta descriptions and other SEO elements yourself with a user-friendly dashboard.

#7. Fast load times

Like I said, people are going to form an opinion about your website and, therefore, your business, within the first few seconds of landing on it. And, if it takes too long for your site to load, some of your visitors won’t stick around.

Internet users have gotten spoiled with fast load times, and most expect any pages they visit to load almost immediately. Making sure your website loads quickly is a key part of getting your visitors to stay longer.

Another big reason to ensure that your site loads quickly is that it will help your performance on search engines, which will help to make your site more visible in the organic results.

Is your website outdated and in need of modernization? If so, you’ve come to the right place.

Websites 360’s easy-to-use website builder and professional design templates make building your own website easy and affordable. Plus, gain access to our expert website designers anytime you need them.

Start building your own modern business website today.

Originally published on 12/21/20