4 Features Every Great Website Needs

Your company website is the most important aspect of your inbound marketing campaign. The website serves a number of different functions: it must work to increase web traffic and then once users are on your website, it must work to generate and capture leads to help increase your customer base.

If you want to know how to improve a website, then you want to be sure to include the following four features:

1. Well-Designed Web Pages

You may have great content on your website, but this won’t matter if your website is poorly designed. The following are a few features of a website that is designed properly:

• Mobile-friendliness — More people not only own mobile devices around the world, they use them as their primary way to access the Internet. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile use, then your website will be difficult to navigate on mobile devices and you’ll lose thousands of potential leads.
• User-friendliness — Your website needs to be easy to navigate — meaning it needs to be clear where the menu is and how to get to different pages. If a user wants to contact you, they shouldn’t have to look for the contact page for more than a second. Also make sure to break up text and use plenty of visual components and blank space.
• Fast load times — There’s nothing that annoys an online user more than clicking on a website that takes forever to load. Most people will simply leave the site before it’s done loading. Make sure your site doesn’t take more than a few seconds to load.

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2. A Compelling USP

Every brand should have a USP, or a “unique selling proposition.” Basically, a USP is what sets you apart from all the rest of the businesses out there that provide similar products or

services. The following are a few of the elements of a strong and compelling USP:

• Entice consumers — Provide an offer to consumers that entices them to use or buy your products or services. For example, a pizza delivery company may guarantee delivery within a half hour or else the pizza is free.
• Understand the scope of the USP’s appeal — Does the USP appeal to everyone? No, and it shouldn’t. The more specific you are with your USP, the more compelling it is for your specific audience.
• Make sure it translates — Your USP should be effective both on your website as well as in other marketing avenues you use.

3. An Active Blog

Absolutely every company should have a company blog that is updated on a regular basis. The following are just a few of the benefits that a blog will provide:

• Establish your brand as an expert — By providing high quality content to readers, you’ll help to build a reputation as an expert in your field. This, in turn, will help increase brand loyalty.
• Increase web traffic — By using SEO keywords in your blog’s content, you can help increase organic traffic to your site. With great content and active promotion and republishing, social sharing can increase traffic more quickly than organic traffic.
• Capture leads — By including call-to-actions at the end of each blog, you can entice readers to sign up for your email list.
• Increase brand awareness — The better the content on your blog is, the better your chance is of having your content shared by readers throughout social media.

4. Lead Capture Forms

If you’ve put the effort into creating high quality content that entices readers, then you’ve generated new leads for your brand. You’ll want to obtain the contact info of these potential customers with the use of lead capture forms like this form below.

Use the following to create effective lead capture forms:

• Provide incentives — Visitors won’t give up their personal info without a strong incentive. Offer free content, such as an ebook, in return for their information.
• Make the form simple — Most people won’t fill out a long form. Their first name and email address is all you really need.
• No extra links — The landing page should only have one link, and that’s to your lead capture form. You don’t want to risk having your leads disappear because they followed a different link.
• Add trust elements — People are generally wary about providing their personal info, so add trust elements such as testimonials, a download count, which shows how many people have taken advantage of your incentive, an anti-spam statement, media mentions and more.

These are four features that will help with to improve your website. For more expert advice on how to improve a website, be sure to download our free report, 25 Website Must Haves for Driving Traffic and Leads.

Trent Dyrsmid writes at BrightIdeas.co, where he shares proven marketing strategies you can use to attract more traffic, increase conversions, and maximize profits. For bright ideas on how leverage content marketing and marketing automation, join his free newsletter.