4 Essential Elements Your Website may be Missing

No matter what the purpose of your organization’s website, it needs to help you meet your online goals. When it comes to getting more business in a competitive market online, having a website that is optimized effectively for your customers’ best experience will help you set yourself apart. This list includes the things that we consider to be “must haves” for  an effective website that we often see missing on many B2B sites.

1. Sharing Capabilities. With social media as popular as it is, it would be a waste for a corporate website not to have sharing functionality available to its users. Sharing functionality includes: email this to a friend links and the ability to post on social media and social bookmarking sites. Giving your audience the ability to readily share your content and information can only help to spread word of mouth about your company.
2. Valuable content.  If your visitors don’t get immediate value out of your website, then they’re not going to stick around. This is more than just telling them why they need you (your value proposition) and is more about giving your customers instant gratification in the form of resources, content and tools that help make their lives easier and inform them about your industry, products, services and company. 
3. In-site search functionality. This is more than just a general usability best practice; it is a common standard that users expect to see when they arrive at a website. When a prospect visits your site they want to be able to get what they came for simply and easily and will expect to be able to search your site. No one wants to have to click through and explore and entire site if they’re looking for something specific. 
4. A powerful value proposition. The last thing you want when a user arrives at your site is for them think, “So what?” Having an effective value proposition that gives them a reason to care and positions your organization as a solution to your target audience’s key problems is an important way to engage prospects.

Posted by Amberlie Denny at January 18, 2011 8:15 AM

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