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10 Things Every Business Web site Should Have
By
Abdillahi Abdillahi
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Business web sites are not
just like any other sites. Companies make them to reach a
lot of prospective customers around the world.Some times
people forgot a lot of good things their business web
sites should have. Today in this short article I list and
explain ten things every business Web site should have.
There might be more than these ten things but I find them
to be the most important ones for every business Web site
to have.All right folks, I guess that is enough talk so
lets get down into the topic ....shall we? OK then here
they come
1 Detailed About Us Page.
You might say there is nothing about us but this page is
very important.You should have it on your business web
site and write detailed information in it. You should
write about your company background, when you started it,
who started it , contact information at the end of the
page and if possible the pictures and names of your
company workers/managers etc.
People want to learn more about your company before they
can do business with you .Sometimes when I visit a site
selling something online the first thing I do when it
loads is to search for the About Us page and if I find a
link I click on it to I can learn more about the company
selling the products I'm interested in but I don't find a
About Us page or find it no having a lot of information
then what I do is just close the site and leave .
By having this page on your business web site you avoid a
lot of emails and questions to be sent to your email
because potential customers will find the answers to their
questions on it instead of sending an email to you and
asking those questions in the same time waiting a reply
from you so if you don't have one on your business web
site then it is the time to make one :) .
2 Detailed Contact Us Page.
This is another important page. In this page you should
provide all the ways your current and potential customers
can contact your company, don't leave anything. Customers
and potential customers want to be able to contact your
company by email, mail, telephone and fax etc. There are
some people who would rather phone you than to send an
email to you because they just want to get quick answers
instead of waiting them from you . For that reason make
sure you have a detailed contact us page on your business
web site.
3 A News Page.
People want to know the news about your company so you
should have a news page containing the news when your
company started and its latest news.Try to organize it by
year and month so it can be found and navigated easily .
4 Page Titles.
This is also important . Yo should have have detailed and
descriptive page titles on your business web site . I
visited many web sites which most of their page's titles
had Untitled Document and NewPage1. As you can see it is
not professional to have such titles on a business web
site
Great page titles help your site and your business in the
search engines as some SEO(Search Engine Optimization)
experts said a catchy title is better than a one that
isn't so a good way to make a good title is like this
companyname.com-page name e.g. Kooshin.com - About Us or
About Kooshin.com etc. These are just simple examples and
I'm sure there are many other ways that you can make a
catchy page title.
I use this for my site and sites of my web design clients
.Just open any search engine web site and type something
to see the search results .....I'm sure you see the
keyword you searched being the title of every page that is
in the search results.So give a lot of attention to your
business web site's page titles.
5 Page Names.
The page names are also important as the page titles. They
should be descriptive for example you can name the about
us page as aboutus.htm or combine the company name and the
page name like this aboutcompanyname.htm so it takes its
part in the search engine optimization .For that reason
you should give page names and page titles a lot of
attention because they simply work together and are good
for your web site.
6 Web Site Language.
Business web sites should have clear language no matter
what language you use for your site it should be plain ,
very easy to understand and if you use abbreviations then
make sure to explain and write what they stand for .I have
seen business web sites using slang throughout the site.
I find this very unprofessional language for a business
web site to use , I mean when you see a business web site
which uses this language - wazz up instead of what's up ,
we have 2 instead of we have to ,you can find a lot of
examples if you look around and mostly in chat rooms -
would you buy something from it?
You should stay around from using this language in any
part of your web site and make sure you spell check the
text on every page even if you checked it you need to
double check or use some spell checker software because
after all we are humane and we make mistakes!
7 Design, Colors, and Images.
These three are also important for every business web site
. Business web sites should have an easy to use design and
all of your products should be easy to find. If the
potential customer don't find all of the important
information about all of your products then they will just
leave the site and visit a competitor's site.
And about the colors you should use them carefully.
Business web sites should have a bright colors . Stay away
from dark colors not all but like the color black
shouldn't be used for any business web site .
Now for the images you should use images that have
something to do with your business and products . If you
have a lot of images , big ones then you should make small
thumbnails and link them to the big ones so they load
faster.
8 Free From Broken Links.
Well basically every web site shouldn't have any broken
links but it is very important for business web sites to
be free from having broken links. I remember one day when
I was on a site selling something online and I wanted to
order the products it was selling so I clicked on the
order link and guess what did I get? A 404 file not found
page .
At that time I no longer wanted to buy their products
because I said to myself if I need help later how will
they help me when their own order links are not working?
It was a very important question to me and I needed an
answer but I know I had to answer it to my self and said
they will not be able to help you
Now I guess you got the point but if you didn't get it
then it is because of those broken links you are going to
lose sales just like that site which I was trying to buy
something from did. For that reason and so many other
reasons which I can't gather them together here your
business web site shouldn't have any broken links.
If you ever change your file names then make sure you make
a custom 404 file not found page designed as a site map so
if a visitor visits a removed page from a search engine or
a site then he will have that site map as a new guide to
the new page.
9 Use Live Support and Ticket Tracking System.
Using live support system and ticket tracking system is
very useful for every business web site . Sometimes
potential customers want to get quick answers to the
questions they might have so by using a live support
system then they will be able to talk to a sales
representative live. There are some good free ones and low
prices ones which you can get and install and use within
minutes .
And about the ticketing system , it makes email management
a lot easier . You can track every email with a special
ticket number and all the answers will be organized as
threaded discussion. Most live support systems come with a
ticket tracking feature so make sure you get the best one
out there for your business web site.
10 SSL(Secure Socket Layer) Certificates.
Even though they can be used for certain parts of the web
site but in the same time they can be used throughout the
site.If you use some third party scripts and softwares to
make payment processing etc then you don't have to use SSL
because they are used for sending sensitive information
such as banking information, credit card information etc
and anything else you find sensitive through the internet
. You decide it whether or not you need to use one for
your business web site
Conclusion.
That is it, These were ten things every business web site
should have and you should consider them whenever you
design a business web site Of course any site can have
them all but they are very important for business web
sites to have. Until next time make sure you use the list
:)
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About
The Author
Abdillahi
Abdillahi is a web designer, founder and
president of http://kooshin.com,
a company providing affordable web hosting
and web design solutions to small to
medium sized businesses and individuals.
For more information , please visit http://kooshin.com. |
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