9 Things to Put On Your Website & 7 Things to Get Rid of

A website is often the first impression your audience has of you or your business. Whether you’re running a small business, personal portfolio, e-commerce store or blog, what you choose to include – or exclude – on your site can determine whether visitors stick around or leave within seconds. To make your website work for you, you need to strike a balance between useful content, clear design and functionality. Below is a detailed guide on what to put on your website and what to remove to ensure it’s both effective and user-friendly.

10 things to put on your website

1. Clear proposition

Your customers and new visitors to your website need to know what you do, who you are, what you offer and why it matters. You can do this easily by using a strong headline or tagline on your homepage in order to summarise your core message in one sentence. You can also ask a professional copywriter, such as the ones here at Kumo, to write your website copy for you. This will encompass everything that needs to be detailed on your homepage to make your website stand out from the crowd.

2. Have a simple navigation menu

Keep navigation intuitive. Use 5-7 main menu items at the most to avoid confusion and to keep things simple for easy navigation. This is especially useful for people who have never visited your website before. It’s also important to have a website with simple navigation if you’re offering services that are more complicated when compared to other services that a business might offer. Keep things as easy to follow as possible with a simple navigation menu that can be easily understood.

3. Display strong calls to action (CTAs)

A CTA is your time to shine. Use it as an opportunity to bring in and entice people. You’re trying to persuade them to do things for your business. You want them to contact you. You want them to make an inquiry. You want them to make a sale or purchase. You want them to sign up for newsletters and emails. Whatever it is you want visitors to your website to do, make sure you include it in your CTA. CTAs are usually placed at the end of website pages, where they’re most likely to be seen and can be located away from the main body of text. 

4. Make sure your website copy has a personality

You cannot have a website copy that is bland and that has clearly been written by robots. You want to make sure that your brand and personality shine through the copy on the page. This is what will set you apart from your competitors. If your website copy shows more personality than the copy displayed on a competitor site, then a prospective client or customer will choose to contact you over the competition, most likely. Use your website as a platform to showcase you, what you offer and what you’re about. 

5. Contact information that is accurate & up to date

Your contact information must be as up-to-date and accurate as possible. It could be the difference between making a sale and losing one. This includes having the most up-to-date phone number, email address and company address displayed onsite.  If your website visitors are supplied with the wrong information, then their inquiry will likely lead nowhere, causing your competition to hoover up the customers you’ve lost. Don’t let out-of-date information be the reason for profit loss.

6. A mobile-friendly design

These days, more people are using their mobile devices to surf the net than their desktops. With this in mind, while you still need to make sure your website looks great on a desktop computer, it still needs to be designed for mobile use. If your website cannot adapt to the changing formats and sizes, then it could spell trouble for you with certain demographics, especially young people who aren’t likely to use a desktop to search the web. Your website needs to be responsive on all levels and for all formats, not just desktop. 

7. Display trust signals

Trust signals are anything from a review carousel along the bottom of your website to listed testimonials and well-written case studies. Your customers need to see that you’re trustworthy and deliver a good product. Your morals and ethics need to be reflected in these trust signals so as to earn yourself some leads and conversions. You could also include any certifications or awards your company or certain products you sell have won in order to entice them even further towards you and away from your competitors.

8. Have a blog situated on-site 

A blog might seem like a pointless addition to your website, but it gives you the opportunity to showcase your work, like case studies. It can also give you a platform to display your specialist knowledge to the world. It allows people to see that you know exactly what you’re talking about when it comes to the industry and the goods and/or services you’re offering. For example, if you own a waste management company, you could write a blog post detailing how people can check that a waste management company is legitimate. This also helps to boost trust and credibility, in much the same way as the trust singas we touched on earlier.

9. Fast-loading media 

Having a high bounce rate is not a good thing when you run a website and rely on it solely for inquiries, leads and conversions. Your bounce rate needs to be as low as possible. According to the BBC, most internet users will wait for less than three seconds for a website to load. If you can make sure that your website loads as quickly as that, then you’re onto a winner.

7 things to remove from your website

1. Pop-up ads

Pop-up ads aren’t popular with internet users, especially when there are a lot of them. Having just one that is well-timed is the best thing to do if you absolutely have to have them displayed on your site. Multiple pop-ups can ruin the user experience (UX) of a website visitor, causing them to leave, therefore resulting in high bounce rates, which we don’t want.

2. Outdated content

Old blog content or website copy is a no-no in the world of marketing. Whether it’s something simple like a change to your product or service, or something more major like price hikes or an amendment to your legal policy,you need to make sure the copy displayed on your website is up to date and accurate for all to see.

3. Poor quality images 

Images that are low quality do not belong on a professional website. It screams amateur and low-budget. You want your website to look as polished and as professional as possible, and part of that is simply using high-quality imagery, even if it’s stock. You can purchase quality images whether you’re on a small or large budget. You just need to do your research first.

4. Slow-loading elements

We’ve already touched on the fact that internet users will not wait for longer than three seconds for a website to load. You need to, therefore, eliminate anything that could be slowing these loading times down. From large images to clearing the cache, and everything in between, there are multiple troubleshooting things you can do to help speed up the performance of your site. If you need assistance with this, then employing the help of a professional, like us here at Kumo, is a great way to make sure that your website is in top shape and performing as expected.

5. Broken links

Nothing frustrates internet users more than links that lead to nowhere. There are plenty of marketing tools available that will allow you to pinpoint the problem links at any location across your website. This way, you can find those broken links and either fix or remove them, ready to welcome more visitors to your website.

6. Cluttered sidebars

Sidebars are an important element of any website. This is where certain information is displayed, like service pages and product pages. Cluttering this space up is not a good idea, as it can hinder the visibility of the important aspects of your site. Keep product and service pages visible by reducing the clutter on the sidebar. 

7. Excessive ads

Loads of adverts, whether they’re popping up or not, are not a good look for any website. In fact, many adverts will slow down the website load speed, therefore hindering the UX. If you must have adverts on your website, choose a couple and strategically place them elsewhere on your website so that they can still be viewed, but aren’t in the way of the important stuff.

Kumo provides customised digital marketing solutions for businesses throughout the UK. From our Nottingham city centre base, our skilled team specialises in SEO, PPC, content development, web design and more. If you’re looking to expand your business, reach out to our approachable team – we’re ready to support your success.