6 Most Critical Elements of a Successful Website

Your website is the face of your business on the web. And for many, it’s the face of your business – period. As such, it’s your most important platform for connecting to new, potential clients.

But for many people, their website is missing some very critical elements. These missing elements are often very simple – both to understand and to add to your site. Yet not having these critical elements keeps your website from helping you find new clients. What’s worse – it stops your potentially perfect clients from finding you.

Let’s take a brief look at what these 6 critical elements are and how they can make the difference between your website getting you clients or giving you a headache:

1. Clearly stating how you can help people: If your website is just talking about what you do and where you’ve trained you’re missing the whole point. A successful website much of it’s time communicating all the ways you help people solve the problems they’re dealing with.
2. Clear (easy to understand) presentation of services: If your asking people to pick packages or giving them tons of choices, you’re only confusing them – which is keeping them from contacting you. Make it simple. Explain the basic differences in your services focusing strongly on the benefits they’ll receive.
3. Easy navigation bar: If you’re trying to get every page on your site in your navigation bar you’re probably only cluttering things. Your nav bar should be short and simple, with very easy to understand titles for your links (no lingo or cutesy words). Then link all your other website pages from within your content. It has much more value to your site’s visitors there.
4. Call-to-action: If every single page of your website doesn’t have at least 3 calls-to-action you’re missing out (and I’ve seen many websites that have none). Once people are inspired to contact you – make it easy. Put your calls-to-action (e.g. email signup, contact, etc) in a number of places on every page – say, a sidebar, the middle of your content and at the bottom of each page. The more they see it the more the chance they’ll click on it.
5. Measure and use your web stats: If you’re not tracking your website traffic you need to start doing so yesterday. And then you need to start paying attention to how many people come to your website, from where and what are they reading. And one very important statistic (called exit rate) is what pages are causing them to leave your website most. While stats can be overwhelming, the basic 8 or so are very simple to understand and can give you massive insights into what’s working on your site and what’s not.
6. Keep your website’s design simple: I tell people all the time: your website is not for you – it’s for your potential clients. So stop thinking of it as your personal ‘work of art.’ Instead, work with your designer (I can recommend someone) to develop a site that’s focused on what your potential clients want. Keep the layout simple, elegant and easy for your visitors to find what they want.
7. BONUS: An action plan for getting visitors: Your website can’t be successful without people seeing it. And the more the better. So you need to know how to get people to your website on a regular basis. And this usually requires some sort of action plan. Not just ideas, theories or tricks. But a simple, step-by-step plan you can do each week (give or take) to get a constant stream of people to your website.

So many websites I see are lacking many or all of these critical elements. Honestly, they’re not difficult to develop nor to add – especially if you’re using WordPress. Often, the biggest key is to get started. And the great thing is you don’t have to do this alone.

Every day I help people just like you find clarity in their business, develop a website to support their business, and a create simple action plan you can do yourself regardless of how overwhelming it may seem. And that’s the point – I can remove the overwhelm for you just like I have for hundreds of other people I’ve worked with.

Remember, you don’t have to do this alone. You can get the help you need to get unstuck, find clarity and overcome the overwhelm of having a website that works. I’m here to help you. And with my current offers, this is a prime time to get the help you need.

Let’s talk…