Websites are powerful sources of leads and organic sales for businesses. And for startups that are in MVP development stages and do not have generous marketing budgets for promotion, it is often the main way to make themselves seen.
It is estimated that nearly 200K new websites are launched daily. Many of them are built with the help of a professional software development company or a contractor. However, not every website generates equal opportunities. Some websites, including the Emphasoft website, are able to reach the top of the search engines’ ranks and deliver a continuously excellent user experience, while others might not function properly and damage the company’s brand.
Today, we will look at the three main features that every high-performing website needs to have. A lot more goes into creating a successful website, but the features below would give you solid ground that you can build on.
#1 Intuitive navigation
You spend so much time and effort building pages of the website, don’t let them go to waste with a tricky navigation system.
Customers that land on your website, whether for the first or the tenth time, need to be able to navigate it easily. If the menu and the pages’ structure don’t make sense, users will be disincentivised to browse, and the business will be missing out on sales. A high-performing website is built with the end user in mind across all steps. From reading about the solution that you provide to locating the tech team’s details – it all needs to be easy to figure out.
#2 Calls to action (CTAs)
As defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, a call to action is something that encourages people to take action toward solving a problem.
The CTA on the website can look like a lead form where users provide their contact details, subscribe to an email newsletter, purchase a product, or contact the company (for example, by phone or via messenger). The action that the user is encouraged to make has to be directly linked to the company's goals and the page where the user is situated. Ideally, every page of the website has to have a CTA because you can’t guarantee that users will go to the selected pages where you think calls to action are appropriate.
CTAs act as the extra nudge that many people need before they can look further into the product or make a purchase. They are especially crucial for digital or software products, where it’s not possible to go into the physical store to feel and touch them. That’s why calls to action are integral parts of a high-performing website.
#3 Mobile friendliness
Statista reports that 45% of internet traffic in the US alone was generated from mobile devices in the first quarter of 2023, and this number will only be going higher. Affordable smartphones and tablets enable more users to go online, and mobile-friendly websites are irreplaceable in areas with poor bandwidth.
Companies with unoptimised websites risk pushing away a significant chunk of their target audience by not offering a mobile-friendly experience with quick loading that enables users to find what they need fast.
Mobile-friendliness can be achieved through multiple things, such as optimised image sizes and shorter texts, rejection of pop-ups, a search feature, and building a responsive website that adapts to every user’s device.
How to estimate if your website is high-performing?
There are many factors one can consider when evaluating whether their website is high-performing. If you’re running your website evaluation, consider the following:
- Availability across devices.
The website can’t be considered high performing if it fails to load properly on all mobile devices. - Speed of loading.
Web Pages and all their elements must load quickly, without making the users wait. - Security. |
Websites, especially those that collect personal data, must be secure. - SEO optimisation.
If search engines can’t crawl and analyse your website, you will be missing out on organic traffic.
Why is a high-performing website important for the startup?
High-performing websites have an influence over a lot of things for startups and enterprises alike. Bulky, slow, and cumbersome websites make us look bad in the eyes of customers.
If the website doesn’t look secure, users will be far less likely to consider your products and services secure. And if pages load too slowly, few will have the patience to stay on the website when they can find countless alternatives in a matter of a few clicks. Same with everything else – availability on different tablets, how easy the website is to find, and what functionality it offers.
Often, the website of the company is the first thing that the future customer sees. And once they open the website, you have very little time to make a good impression. Whether we like it or not, people will be judging us by our websites. And even if our product is number one in the world and we have the most revolutionary ideas, the user who had an underwhelming experience on our website will most likely go to our competitors.
Why trust the software development company with building a website
Website creation and launch are important steps for any business, especially a starting one. Yet, when our resources are limited, a choice needs to be made of what to prioritise. Delegating website development to a professional is a powerful way to make the most of your time.
Software development companies have many advantages when it comes to web application creation:
- Broad experience that comes from working with different types of clients with wide ranging requirements.
This means that the company can not only do the work but is able to consult and guide you on some of the key decisions. - The website development workflow is practiced to perfection.
This minimises the risks, chances of errors, and resource waste. They have a polished project management system in place, and they will get to successful end results faster. - The team of specialists is fully set and available, so additional hiring and onboarding are not required.
You get instant access to developers, designers, and other professionals who are on top of the latest tools, and technologies and have all the skills, including every major programming language, that are necessary to do the work.
The most vital benefit of outsourcing website development to someone else is that you get to keep your time free for important tasks that nobody but you can deliver. Startups and established businesses alike deal with a constant inflow of opportunities and issues, and they should only really work on vital strategic elements of the process that can’t be delegated.
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