Your startup’s website is the gateway to your company. Here users will quickly learn about what you do and feel even more connected to your business. If people don’t like what they find, you’re going to lose customers and sales.
So, a website for your startup is one of the most important things you can have. Not only does it look professional, but it will also act as a landing page for new potential clients.
The problem is that most startups don’t have a website, or their existing website doesn’t stand out enough to help them get new leads.
In this article, you will learn what are the essential factors your website must have in order to succeed.
Keep reading to learn more.
A Home Page
The home page is the most important page of any website, it is the first point of impression for your visitors.
It offers a great opportunity for your business as it describes what you do, who you are, and what you offer.
The presentation of your company on your home page must be very clear, you must make the design of the home page attractive and eye-catching if you want to generate trust and engagement with your customers.
Use a reliable website proxy for your site. Using a proxy server helps improve your website performance by caching common resources. It also enhances security by filtering out malicious requests and makes your website safer.
About Us Page
An about us page creates an opportunity for your visitors to get to know your company or organization in depth. This page provides an opportunity to present the company’s values and personality to your consumers.
With a well-organized about us page, you can reveal the people who started the company. It also helps establish a human connection. If you tell the story decently to your target audience, there are chances that your website visitors will trust you and remember you.
Remember that people buy from organizations they trust.
Testimonials
Showing real testimonials can be enough to gain the trust of your customers because it is the first and foremost proof that your business is real and not a scam.
Testimonials that contain positive reviews from previous customers create a good impression on your visitors. The more reviews and ratings you have on your website, the more likely your visitors are to believe that you are a reliable business.
Products/Services Page
A product or service page discusses the company’s products or services. Through this page, visitors can come to know about your specializations.
The product or services page is mainly created to grab interest as well as push the visitors to purchase a product or service that you are offering.
To effectively communicate pertinent benefits as well as selling points, it is advised not to add unnecessary information, therefore, keep everything to the point and simple. Provide all the important information for the customer or visitor to understand why they need the product.
Contact Us Page
The contact us page plays a vital role in turning your visitors into customers because the visitors can find all your contact details here.
Possible customers and partners will most likely get in touch with you through this page.
Blog Page
Having a blog page on your website is more crucial than ever for your startup. Nowadays, brands use blogs to communicate ideas and promote products or services. Also, a Blog is an initial point to becoming an industry leader.
In short, adding a Blog page helps your company in many ways, such as:
- Driving traffic
- Building credibility
- Promoting products and services
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) Page
The FAQs or Frequently Asked Questions page is a good way to improve your visitor’s experience. It enables you to clear frequent doubts about your products or services.
Frequently asked questions represent an additional way to connect with and engage your target audience, and it helps to reduce friction in the buyer’s journey.
What Else Should I Keep in Mind?
So, now you know what are some of the most important sections any website must have. However, what else should you keep in mind in order to make your website succeed?
Well, you should keep your website updated, fix all the technical issues, and create compelling content.
Let’s dig deeper into these factors.
Page Speed
Website loading speed is very important if you want your business to succeed. If your website does not load quickly, many users will close it and visit a website that sells similar products or services to yours but that provides a better user experience.
So, make sure that every page of your website loads swiftly. The ideal load time of a website is 1-2 seconds. Yes, you read it right!
Logo
A brand logo is certainly the first interaction visitors have with your company. Hence, it should be unique, self-explanatory, and attractive. Logos are important for a website because:
- It grabs the attention of the visitors
- It makes the first impression sturdy
- It is known as the foundation of your company’s brand identity
- It separates your business from the competition
So, if you want your customers to remember your brand, one of the first steps is to have a good logo.
Compelling Content
Compelling content builds the trust necessary to give your visitors the understanding that they are dealing with the experts.
However, creating compelling content is not a simple task, it requires discipline and clear processes to create high-quality content that really makes a difference.
To create content that is compelling you must leverage headlines to generate curiosity, make use of storytelling, back your facts and data with reliable references, and give the users an action plan to follow next.
Index / Follow Tags
All pages of your website must have the index/follow tags properly configured. Otherwise, search engines like Google won’t index important pages for your business.
On the other hand, there is the possibility of search engines indexing pages that you don’t want your users to see.
Canonical Tags
In short words, canonical tags are a tool that you can use to avoid duplicate content in search engines.
If you run an eCommerce website, you will find canonical tags especially useful.
For example, let’s say you have an e-commerce website, and you offer different color shirts, of course, you will not create several pages for the same model, but only one page with different color options.
In most cases, you will get a separate URL for each color:
https://www.example.com/category/product.html
https://www.example.com/category/product.html?color=blue
https://www.example.com/category/product.html?color=blue&Size=S
In these cases, you want to set a canonical URL to the main page, which is https://www.example.com/category/product.html. That way search engines won’t index multiple URLs of the same product, which can be considered as duplicate content.
That’s why canonical tags are important, the sooner you learn about them, the fewer problems you will have in the future regarding duplicate content.
Image Alt Text
Image alt text or alternative text is an HTML attribute used to describe an image. This attribute is very important because:
When people with visual imparity access your website, they will hear the alt text of your images using screen readers
The Alt text is shown when an image has failed to be displayed
Alt text providers context to search engines, so they can index images properly (if you want your images to rank better in search engines, you need to implement alt text)
What are some good practices when writing alt texts for your images?
- Be as descriptive as possible
- Add keywords when it is possible (DO NOT do it if the keyword is not relevant, a descriptive alt text is a priority over an optimized one)
Duplicate Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions
Duplicate content in any way is an issue, however, there is a common issue that is presented over and over again on a lot of websites, that is duplicate meta titles and meta descriptions.
It is well known that Google rewrites meta descriptions most of the time, so despite having meta descriptions as an issue, it is not as severe as having duplicate meta titles.
Meta titles are extremely important because search engines use them as a strong signal to understand what the page is about, and having duplicate meta titles can heavily affect the indexability of your pages.
In order to avoid this issue, we recommend using a crawler like Screaming Frog to audit your website and fix these issues as soon as possible.
The Bottom Line
An engaging and informative website is the best way to reflect your startup’s personality. The more time and effort you put into developing your site, the more potential you’ll have to succeed online.
Take some time to consider which features will be valuable for your business, and work on improving those areas of your site. This way, you’ll be able to attract investors, customers, and brand ambassadors that help your business succeed.
