10 Things Every Business Web site Should Have by Abdillahi Abdillahi



Business web sites are not just like any other sites. Companies make them to reach a lot of prospective customers around the world.Some times people forgot a lot of good things their business web sites should have. Today in this short article I list and explain ten things every business Web site should have. There might be more than these ten things but I find them to be the most important ones for every business Web site to have.All right folks, I guess that is enough talk so lets get down into the topic ....shall we? OK then here they come

1 Detailed About Us Page.

You might say there is nothing about us but this page is very important.You should have it on your business web site and write detailed information in it. You should write about your company background, when you started it, who started it , contact information at the end of the page and if possible the pictures and names of your company workers/managers etc.

People want to learn more about your company before they can do business with you .Sometimes when I visit a site selling something online the first thing I do when it loads is to search for the About Us page and if I find a link I click on it to I can learn more about the company selling the products I'm interested in but I don't find a About Us page or find it no having a lot of information then what I do is just close the site and leave .

By having this page on your business web site you avoid a lot of emails and questions to be sent to your email because potential customers will find the answers to their questions on it instead of sending an email to you and asking those questions in the same time waiting a reply from you so if you don't have one on your business web site then it is the time to make one .

2 Detailed Contact Us Page.

This is another important page. In this page you should provide all the ways your current and potential customers can contact your company, don't leave anything. Customers and potential customers want to be able to contact your company by email, mail, telephone and fax etc. There are some people who would rather phone you than to send an email to you because they just want to get quick answers instead of waiting them from you . For that reason make sure you have a detailed contact us page on your business web site.

3 A News Page.

People want to know the news about your company so you should have a news page containing the news when your company started and its latest news.Try to organize it by year and month so it can be found and navigated easily .

4 Page Titles.

This is also important . Yo should have have detailed and descriptive page titles on your business web site . I visited many web sites which most of their page's titles had Untitled Document and NewPage1. As you can see it is not professional to have such titles on a business web site

Great page titles help your site and your business in the search engines as some SEO(Search Engine Optimization) experts said a catchy title is better than a one that isn't so a good way to make a good title is like this companyname.com-page name e.g. Kooshin.com - About Us or About Kooshin.com etc. These are just simple examples and I'm sure there are many other ways that you can make a catchy page title.

I use this for my site and sites of my web design clients .Just open any search engine web site and type something to see the search results .....I'm sure you see the keyword you searched being the title of every page that is in the search results.So give a lot of attention to your business web site's page titles.

5 Page Names.

The page names are also important as the page titles. They should be descriptive for example you can name the about us page as aboutus.htm or combine the company name and the page name like this aboutcompanyname.htm so it takes its part in the search engine optimization .For that reason you should give page names and page titles a lot of attention because they simply work together and are good for your web site.

6 Web Site Language.

Business web sites should have clear language no matter what language you use for your site it should be plain , very easy to understand and if you use abbreviations then make sure to explain and write what they stand for .I have seen business web sites using slang throughout the site.

I find this very unprofessional language for a business web site to use , I mean when you see a business web site which uses this language - wazz up instead of what's up , we have 2 instead of we have to ,you can find a lot of examples if you look around and mostly in chat rooms - would you buy something from it?

You should stay around from using this language in any part of your web site and make sure you spell check the text on every page even if you checked it you need to double check or use some spell checker software because after all we are humane and we make mistakes!

7 Design, Colors, and Images.

These three are also important for every business web site . Business web sites should have an easy to use design and all of your products should be easy to find. If the potential customer don't find all of the important information about all of your products then they will just leave the site and visit a competitor's site.

And about the colors you should use them carefully. Business web sites should have a bright colors . Stay away from dark colors not all but like the color black shouldn't be used for any business web site .

Now for the images you should use images that have something to do with your business and products . If you have a lot of images , big ones then you should make small thumbnails and link them to the big ones so they load faster.

8 Free From Broken Links.

Well basically every web site shouldn't have any broken links but it is very important for business web sites to be free from having broken links. I remember one day when I was on a site selling something online and I wanted to order the products it was selling so I clicked on the order link and guess what did I get? A 404 file not found page .

At that time I no longer wanted to buy their products because I said to myself if I need help later how will they help me when their own order links are not working? It was a very important question to me and I needed an answer but I know I had to answer it to my self and said they will not be able to help you

Now I guess you got the point but if you didn't get it then it is because of those broken links you are going to lose sales just like that site which I was trying to buy something from did. For that reason and so many other reasons which I can't gather them together here your business web site shouldn't have any broken links.

If you ever change your file names then make sure you make a custom 404 file not found page designed as a site map so if a visitor visits a removed page from a search engine or a site then he will have that site map as a new guide to the new page.

9 Use Live Support and Ticket Tracking System.

Using live support system and ticket tracking system is very useful for every business web site . Sometimes potential customers want to get quick answers to the questions they might have so by using a live support system then they will be able to talk to a sales representative live. There are some good free ones and low prices ones which you can get and install and use within minutes .

And about the ticketing system , it makes email management a lot easier . You can track every email with a special ticket number and all the answers will be organized as threaded discussion. Most live support systems come with a ticket tracking feature so make sure you get the best one out there for your business web site.

10 SSL(Secure Socket Layer) Certificates.

Even though they can be used for certain parts of the web site but in the same time they can be used throughout the site.If you use some third party scripts and softwares to make payment processing etc then you don't have to use SSL because they are used for sending sensitive information such as banking information, credit card information etc and anything else you find sensitive through the internet . You decide it whether or not you need to use one for your business web site

Conclusion.

That is it, These were ten things every business web site should have and you should consider them whenever you design a business web site Of course any site can have them all but they are very important for business web sites to have. Until next time make sure you use the list



About The Author

Abdillahi Abdillahi is a web designer, founder and president of http://kooshin.com , a company providing affordable web hosting and web design solutions to small to medium sized businesses and individuals. For more information , please visit http://kooshin.com