We do agree to the fact that creating a website is not an easy task. Not because a person needs to know about numerous languages, but the reason is that every website must be unique and have a soul. A website must have something which attracts people the most to grab their attention for visiting the page on a daily basis and not getting bored of it. Not just the website’s design, but there are numerous factors which can make a website efficient, beautiful, fast, useful and a quality one. This is a simple rule which goes perfectly with all kinds, sizes or types of websites, but here today, we will talk about 50 Small Business Website Features here.
No matter what type or kind or size of business you own, the major necessity is to have a website. It is really important for every business to be present online. Whether it is about the presentation of the activities or the promotion, the major tool which helps is the Internet and thus, it is important to have a website. Those days are gone when the websites used to display the occasional pictures with the long tables, but now, the websites are more about the real applications. If you think that it is enough to install Joomla or WordPress with cool templates on a free hosting is enough for having a successful website, then you are wrong.
Small Business Website Features You Should Know
Every web page must be unique because it has its own elements, some are important while some are not. But there are even those elements which are mandatory and are a must to have, regardless of the kind of page. At first, you might feel setting up a website, planning its layout and design with the images an overwhelming experience, but if you really don’t know where or how to put the keywords, logo, titles and more, then it can be detrimental to the success of your website. So, it is really important to follow the best practices. If you want to succeed further, then have a look at the 50 Small Business Website Features:
Header
1. Domain Name: A domain name helps in adding credibility to the business, mobility in the Internet presence, attracting walk-in business and building the brand. It is important to choose an easy to remember and a good domain name which can help in generating traffic towards your business, build a reputation and most of all it should be easy to remember. You can grab .com domain names from GoDaddy for less than $1.
2. Logo: It is crucial to have a clean and unique logo representing about your small business because it is the most important visible manifestation of the business. Logos are the face of the company which holds the unique identity of the company in a form of a graphical display.
3. Tagline: The tagline is all about what your business does and is the first thing after the logo which the customer sees. It is one of an essential component of marketing as well as branding strategy which is directly associated with the goals of the business. A tagline gives a quick impression about the business.
4. Phone Number: Voice communication for every business is being of a striking appropriateness and pertinence for its success both online and offline. Every business must have a secure way of communication with the customers, distributors, and the suppliers.
5. Call To Action (CTA) button: Most of the businesses having a call to action button tend to go a long way because it is essential to drive the conversions easily from the efforts of the business into their content marketing.
6. Top Navigation: The top navigation plays a crucial role when it is about the user’s experience. It is considered to be one of the best practices for SEO and usability. It shows that how well you handles the traffic and converts the visitors into the business’s potential customers.
7. BreadCrumb Navigation: The breadcrumb navigation is a really important aspect to consider for the SEO improvement of the website. It can do wonders to the small businesses as these provide the visitors with the links on all the pages for navigating through the website easily in one click. In simple words, they help in explaining the organization of a website.
Above the Fold
8. Slider or Image: The slider or image on the website of a small business is considerably an important factor to consider because it shows the major and most important thing about the business.
9. Crucial Business Information: It is really important to mention about the crucial business information on your website because none wants to lose their customers to their competitors. So, make it easy for the visitors to get in touch with you, to find you easily through the Google Maps location.
10. Testimonials & Reviews: Testimonials and reviews from your potential customers help your business grow stronger and the services, the products more real. It helps in attracting people and building trust about the business brand.
Below the Fold
11. Main Features: Just provide the main features not just about your business, but even about the products, services which you offer along with the office and business location.
12. Quality Content: Your website is the first impression to your visitors. So, it is important to mention all the details for which they are looking for and give them a reason to come back by providing them a fresh, quality content.
13. Internal Links: Internal links help in aiding in the navigation of the website, defines the website’s hierarchy and architecture as well as distributes the ranking power along with the page authority all over the website.
Footer
14. Contact Information: The contact information of your business must be clearly visible on the website including the address, phone number, and the email address. Also, provide an option for a ‘request more information, if needed.’
15. Business Hours: For a small business, mentioning the business hours on their website is crucial as it helps the visitors to contact during the time of availability.
16. Social Media Buttons: We have already stepped into the online connected business environment, and it has made social media one of the most important tools to consider for the small business promotion and marketing strategy. It is the best way of connecting with your customers and allowing them to learn more about your and your business.
17. Online Chat Feature: It is another method through which your visitors or customers can contact you easily. It is a lead-generation tool which helps in converting your visitor into your customer. Also, it helps in building a rapport with your business’s prospects by answering to the queries of your visitors and interacting with them.
18. Newsletter Signup Form: The newsletter signup form is of utmost importance for the business and its customers as they help in maintaining their contact with each other. It is one of the most important marketing aspects for the businesses.
19. Navigation: This navigation feature is about the footer navigation on the website which is one of the highly visible features on all the websites. It can include copyright, sitemap, privacy policy, terms of use, contact, address and much more.
Inner Pages
20. Contact Form: These are the online data forms which the visitors or the customers can fill up online to request more information from you and about your business as they serve as the lead-generation tool.
21. Captcha or Anti-spam Feature: Captcha or anti-spam by Google helps you to avoid any bot attacks on your website. Either the bot is trying to log in or comments; the Captcha will prevent such attempts by giving a small test. Captcha is designed to make tests easy for humans, and only humans can pass those tests.
22. Personalized ABOUT US Page: The ABOUT US page of your website is all about the brief introduction about you and your business. The information mentioned on this page help the visitors in knowing about the products and services which you offer as well as helps in building a rapport.
23. Inner Pages Content In F Pattern: F-pattern is the fast pattern, and that is how the eyes of the visitors move with amazing speed for reading the precious content on your website.
24. Privacy Policy Page: It is one of the most important features for a website as it details about the procedures as well as the views of the business on the collected information from the visitors. It is a legal document which must be easy to understand as well as accurate.
25. FAQ Page: FAQ page on a website is crucial not only for the business but even for your customers as well. Visitors visit this page when they have less time, but need to find more about the business.
26. Blog Page: A blog page on a website helps in adding value to it as well as encourages the user interaction and helps them in keeping engaged with the brand.
Blog
27. Search Function: The search function helps your visitors or customers to find the information by just searching through the keywords.
28. Social Media Share Buttons: Social media is one of the best places for marketing your business and thus, it is important to have the social media share buttons on the blog section of your website. They help in increasing the online presence along with the engagement and traffic.
29. Comment Feature: The comment feature on your blog helps in increasing the blog activity and telling your readers that your business is open to all the complaints and the suggestions. It even helps in increasing traffic, making the business come close to the people and allowing you to check out the geographic and the demographic information of your brand.
30. Sidebar: Include a sidebar on your blog section of your business website which must include the bio of the business along with the email opt-ins. Make sure to add the sidebar on the right-side of your blog.
Other Design/Content Points to consider
31. Links Those Are Easy To Recognize: The links provided on the website must be easy to recognize and clearly visible to the visitor.
32. Clean Font With Easy Readability: All the contents mentioned on the website must be perfectly aligned with the clean font. The content must of high readability.
33. Mobile Responsive: Nowadays, people are using their smartphones for surfing the websites. So, it is really important to create a mobile responsive website to provide people with mobile-friendly experience. Make sure you avoid nulled or pirated themes on your blog.
34. Hamburger Menu On Mobile Site: The hamburger menu is three stripes displayed as a bun-meat-bun sandwich. It is used to hide the menu in mobile websites so that readers can see more of content on small screens like mobile.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
35. Automatic Sitemap Creation: It is an important factor for your business as it helps the Google spider robots and checks the sitemap about the site update and simultaneously ranks the website or the page.
36. Ability To Easily Update Page Titles & Meta Description: It is important to update the Meta description and the page titles so that they are SEO-friendly and must include a keyword as well.
37. Easy To Update URL Structure: Simple the URL structure, the best it is. The URL must be SEO-friendly, and it must be easy-to-update. Do you know which is the best WordPress permalink structure?
Server/Hosting
38. Good, Reliable & Fast Hosting: It is an important to factor to consider because it helps in good reputation of the brand with an excellent uptime track record. We suggest InMotion Hosting and A Small Orange.
39. Security: It is really important to have a secure hosting because security issues can result in identity theft or loss of income of your business. It is must to choose the hosting with the best SFTP, SSL and server maintenance.
40. Auto Website Backup Feature: Choose the hosting which performs auto website backup regularly in order to protect the website from any problems.
Technical Requirements & Backend
41. Use A Content Management System (CMS) In The Backend: Using the content management system in the backend helps in instant updates, sitewide changes, ease-of-use, security and simple workflow.
42. Cross Browser Compatible: The website code or theme code/script should be such that it is compatible with all browsers. If a website only looks good Google Chrome and not on Opera, then you are losing a lot of traffic. Website coding should customize for all browsers.
43. Google Analytics Integration: It is one of the most powerful tools that helps you analyze as well as monitor traffic on your website. It also helps in providing information about the visitors visiting your website and the type of content they are looking for.
44. Google Webmaster Tools integration: It is one of the most useful SEO tools for a website as it helps in offering the vitalities of SEO business insights.
45. Speed, Fast Loading, Optimized Code: The faster the website loads, the more people wants to stick on it, and even Google ranks the fast loading website to the top. So the coding or script of the website should be such that it should open in an instant. Any script which slows your website should be removed or optimized to perform better or load fast.
46. Use Browser Cache To Increase Speed: The browser cache helps in increasing the speed of the website by creating an unchanging or static HTML files followed by saving them to use them later.
47. Schema.org: Using the Schema markup on your business website will help you in boosting the SEO. It can help the boosting of your website in the SERPs.
Things To Avoid On Your Site If You Can
48. Don’t Use Flash Elements: The flash elements are not SEO friendly and not even help in updating the content on your website. Also, they are not mobile-friendly and are not considered to be a platform for future.
49. Avoid Background Music: Avoid adding the background music if you have a professional website. Your website loses its credibility as it affects the bandwidth and maximizes the loading times. It can be added if you own a music website.
50. Do Not Upload Videos On The Website Server: The videos are quite large and thus, affect the bandwidth. There is also a limitation of the storage space and the file size limits and many more reasons.
So, guys, these are the best 50 features small business websites must have. And if you think that designing an efficient and an effective website is really a difficult task, then it is not because it is all about your understanding of the importance of having a proper website.
If you are not sure about how to stack up a website of your small business with all the important features, then do take some time in auditing the current website and checking the areas where you need improvement. Equipping your website with all the essential features will help you in increasing the consumer conversion and building an effective website.
One problem I see with BreadCrumb navigation is that whenever you will be seeing your post in Google it shows your BreadCrumb instead of your URL Priya. Any solution for that to avoid? Kindly mention if you have any idea how to get rid of that in Google SERP results. 🙂
It depends mostly on your website, if you have a website with not so good url structure like an ecommerce then breadcrumbs will only help in Google. Visitors will exactly know where they are going to visit on the website. But if you have a good url structure like a blog and if you want your preferred URL to show then not having breadcrumbs is also good.
Breadcrumbs mostly help in guiding your visitors on your website.
Hello Priya, Nice post. You have covered each and every features for any small business website. Thanks for sharing it.
A vote of thanks to Pradeep Kumar Also to initiate the new thing by linking some good post in his blog post. Keep Up the Good Work.
Hey Nayan!
Thanks a lot for your appreciation.
Nothing to say on article. As usual great.
It’s a start of a new sereis of
linking out to relevant articles from Hellbound FB group members blogs.
Well Start and well initiative.
Thanks Priya and Pradeep
Cheers
Hey Riju Debnath!
Thank you so much!