What Your Business Really Needs in a Website

Many businesses are either designing a new website or refreshing their old one — a modern and functional site is key to marketing efforts because:

• You need a website to link to your paid ads
• More and more customers are searching for and buying products online
• A website is necessary to drive organic traffic through SEO

If you’re in or about to be in this design process, you may believe your website needs elements such as attractive images and up-to-date information about your business; you may even look for fast loading speeds and responsive design. However, there are several elements that often go overlooked, and that are key to your website’s success as a marketing tool.

Fonts

The fonts you use in your site should be consistent with your brand, but also appropriate for a web browser. On a website, a font needs to be easy to read — and it should appear the same across operating systems and browsers. Make use of different font weights (bold, medium, regular, light) to highlight information and guide the reader through your content.

Make sure the font you choose has a web version that you can easily access. This is because there are web fonts and print or desktop fonts. Desktop fonts are meant to be used for print, and won’t work for your site without a web font version available. 

A great way to maintain consistency in your branding is to choose a desktop font that can be optimized for the web, and make that your signature font. If you’ve already chosen a desktop font for your brand, and it’s not optimized for the web, then your web designer can recommend one that is web-safe and fits your brand. If you need some help finding the right web font, you can also search for open source fonts through Google fonts.

Colors

For your website, you’ll have to extend the color palette of your logo, as logos often have only 3-4 colors for printing purposes. Your website has many elements, including buttons, sections, menus, headings, and more, which will require this extended palette.

It’s important to remember that this extension of your colors should remain consistent with your original color palette and branding. The new colors should fit into your branding and feel like natural additions to it, not random splashes of color. A good rule is to use this extended palette in subtle ways, so that your users are introduced to them more slowly.

Images

For your website’s images, it’s worth it to invest in a photographer and/or a graphic designer. Not only will they make sure your images match the tone and style of your brand, but they can ensure that all the technical aspects are on point.

For example, images should be clear and sharp, but not be too large or heavy, so your site will load quickly. Your designer can find the balance between the lowest possible file size, while not sacrificing too much quality.

Consistency will show that your business is reputable, trustworthy, and professional. Maintaining the same look while taking web requirements into consideration will help your customers recognize you the next time they encounter your brand, while retaining a positive experience.

A website is where you exist online, and today’s most basic digital fingerprint. You can leverage your website to get more customers and more sales by ranking higher on search engines through an SEO strategy.

But your website needs to be ready for your SEO efforts, and depending on the platform your website is created on, it may become difficult to do SEO. WordPress is your best option for an SEO-ready site.

How WordPress Primes Your Site For SEO

Creating your site on WordPress ensures that any SEO campaign to start afterwards is possible. Here are a few reasons why:

• WordPress allows you to edit your header tags and meta descriptions — and do it easily, without going into code. This kind of metadata is incredibly important, as it tells Google about your page, which helps Google rank it. Other web builders don’t allow for metadata optimization, which can hold back your SEO.
• Images are easily optimizable on WordPress. Just like metadata, optimizing an image’s tags and descriptions is vital for SEO, and WordPress allows you to make those changes based on your keywords and more.
• WordPress is very secure. If your site gets hacked, or it doesn’t have a proper SSL certificate, it can drop in rankings very quickly. WordPress has excellent security and their team stays on top of any issues.
• WordPress’ SEO plug-ins are top-notch. WordPress is well-known for its many helpful plugins, and their Yoast SEO and All-In-One SEO plugins are incredibly useful for various SEO tasks. And that’s not all: there are many useful SEO plugins to explore. Other web builders don’t offer these tools.

Growing your online presence is not just key to your marketing, but one of the top reasons to have a website at all. Make sure your website is ready to fulfill this purpose.