5 must haves for your website

When I was approached about writing this article I thought “Oh my, I could easily write pages and pages on websites, marketing strategy, online search presence, the do’s and don’ts of using specific tools”, but no doubt you may fall asleep after the first page!

So, I decided to look at the top 5 things that small businesses often ask...

1. ENSURE YOU HAVE HIGH-QUALITY IMAGES

There is some logic to this; our brains process visual stimuli differently and faster than processing text.  We tend to gravitate to imagery before reading text, high-quality imagery helps in building trust of your brand.

2. CONTENT IS KING
A search engine is a machine if you don’t tell it what you do, how will it know where to categorise and rank you?  A content strategy plan (including keyword research) is a must-have as its main objective is to meet your user’ expectations and fulfil your business plan.

3. GOOGLE ANALYTICS
You want to be able to the performance of your website and how people are interacting with your website.  Google Analytics is a free tool from Google and is an essential & tool to help you measure how people are interacting with your website.

4. GOOGLE MY BUSINESS

 This is another free tool from Google and is a way of allowing you to manage your online presence across Google, such as Google Search and Google Maps.  This year Google has been enhancing the features available on GMB including allowing you to post news, product launches etc along with your business information for free! 

5. MOBILE FRIENDLY

As more and more of us do research on our phones and tablets it is essential that your website is mobile friendly.  Google now ranks mobile sites before desktop versions.  There are 2 types to think about:  a responsive design vs an adaptive design.