Setting up your first business website can be a little daunting. Especially when your web designer asks – So what pages would you like in your website? Your business website is your 24 hour international shopfront, and interactive brochure promoting your business. It’s important to have the right amount of content – not too much so your message gets lost, and not too little so your potential customers don’t understand you.
Some pages suitable for one particular business, may not be suitable for another. So it’s important you take the time, and consider carefully the pages you want on your business site.
So here is a quick guide to some options you might consider for pages on your website.
1. About or About Us
Research has shown, that after the homepage, the “About” page is the most popular page visited next. So regardless of your business industry, or type of business, the “About” page is critical.
Your “About” page should NOT be generic – eg – We are a professional team of professionals, etc… You get the idea. It should include your business mission, some business history, and details of your staff. This is the page that can build trust, and tells your customers exactly who you are.
2. Products/ Services
This page is all about what you’re selling. Is your business selling products? Does your business provide services? You may even decide to create one page per product or service that you are offering.
You need to be specific on these pages, communicating the benefits to your customers for buying your products, or enlisting your services.
3. Contact or Contact Us
It is so important that you make it as easy as possible for your customers to contact you. This page needs to be very easy to find, or you might even consider placing your contact details on every page.
Include your address, telephone number/s, and rather than just displaying your email address, it is best to incorporate a contact form, so that people can let you know exactly what they want.
4. Disclaimers/ Legal Pages
These pages don’t need to be highly visible but they are still important in a business website. You should include:
- Disclaimer Page – Including your Terms of Use, Copyright Policy and Refund Policy (if applicable)
- Privacy Policy – Privacy is a big issue on the net, and it’s important your customers and potential customers know where you stand if they ever send you their personal and private data.
- Other – You might even consider a blog commenting policy if you have a blog on your business website.
5. Testimonials/ Product Reviews
Previously there was a lot of weight on the “Testimonials” page, but with the boom in Social Media, this page is holding less power as the real comments, feedback and testimonials on the social networks can help more. This is also where a blog, with your customers commenting below, can be as good as or even better than a testimonials page.
If you do decide to have this page, provide as much detail as your can about the person/ customers providing the testimonial. The more info, the more believeable it is. So provide their full name, company, job title, link to their website, and even a photo if you can. Video testimonials are proving very popular lately, so if you can get these they can really help.
6. FAQs
If your business gets a lot of Frequently Asked Questions, it might be a good idea to include a page detailing the questions, and then written underneath, the best answers you usually give.
This can be a great tool to build trust and show your expertise and knowledge in your area.
7. Resources/ Links/ Tools
This is a great page to add value to your website. By showing your customers and potential customers extra websites, software, documents and tools that can help them, you build extra credibility. You may even link to complimentary businesses here. For example, if you are a hairdresser, you could link to a make-up artist, or a beauty salon. These additional services could benefit your target market.
8. Events Calendar
This page is only suitable for a small selection of businesses. If you are a speaker giving talks, or an artist doing performances, having a page that shows your customers where they can find you or where they can see you, can be an excellent idea.
9. Photo Gallery
A picture is worth a thousand words, so it’s a good idea, no matter what your business does, there are so many opportunities to provide photos:
- Photos of your business premises
- Photos of your staff
- Image files of your business cards, leaflets and brochures
- Photos of events your business might attend
- Photos of your customers
The options are endless and the more you provide, the more real you can appear to your customers, and the faster you will build trust.
10. Portfolio
Again, this page may be restricted to artists and designers, or anyone who does original work that may want to showcase it. Your portfolio can even be case studies of businesses that you have helped.
Some businesses go overboard with this, and might be tempted to feature every single piece of work that they have ever done. But this can be a little too heavy, and usually a careful selection of the best, or most recent pieces of work will do.
11. Blog or News
Having a blog page in your business website is a recent trend, due to the power of having a dynamic website, with regular updates in content. However do not just include this page in your business website for the sake of it.
If you decide to build a blog into your online presence, you also need to make a committment to update the content, either with news or an article, at least monthly. I’ve seen too many websites with one or two blog posts from one year ago, and then nothing since.
Not only does this not help your business website, it actually works against it, because it shows you cannot be bothered to write your latest news and content.
A blog can be an amazing and powerful tool, and if you commit to including this in your business website, and you update it regularly, it will look good to your customers but also the search engine spiders like Google, that can rank your website organically.
12. Online Store
If your business sells products, you need an online store page or pages built into your website. Online shopping will only continue to grow, and if you do not position your business website to take advantage you WILL miss out, and your customers will buy from another site, or even worse, an overseas site.
Don’t let them get away. It is very,very easy to build an online store and shopping cart into your website.
Feedback and Comments?
Do these pages look correct? Did I miss any? Feel free to share your thoughts, feedback and comments below.
