10 Tips for Building an Effective Business Website

1. Make your site mobile responsive.

In 2016, OuterBox reported that more than 62 percent of shoppers made purchases using their cell phones, and the 2016 stats show that over 90 percent of shoppers use their smartphones even while in retail stores for comparing prices and looking at product reviews. Further, 40 percent of consumers will go to a competitor if they have a bad experience with a mobile website. "If you plan on running a successful eCommerce website, or any website, you absolutely must cater to mobile users," wrote Justin Smith, CEO of OuterBox, in his company blog.

2. Make it easy to find.

You need to have a domain name that describes your business or is your company name. You can even have multiple domains that point to the website. To learn more about what makes an effective domain name, read our article on choosing the best domain names.

3. Place your contact information above the fold.

If your business depends on people being able to contact you or call your sales team, put that information where they can find it easily. "Your contact information should be visible, preferably at the top of the home page, so that visitors don't have to search for a phone number or address if they want to contact the business," said David Brown, CEO of Web.com. If you use social media to connect with customers, then be sure to put links at the header or footer, where they are easily found.

4. Make it easy to navigate.

Dan Veltri, co-founder and chief product officer of Weebly, advised limiting your top-level navigation menu to five clearly labeled tabs with related pages organized under them. You should also have a clear way to get back to the home page no matter where your readers land. Very often, a search can take your reader to a page other than the home page.

5. Keep your pages uncluttered.

Paul Bolls, an associate professor of strategic communication at the Missouri School of Journalism, said that readers need to be able to put information in context. If a site has too much information, it overloads the mind, making it unable to retain the new information. Be sure you use a balance of text and graphics that present a clean page. One way to keep it simple is to cut the social widgets, such as a Twitter feed on your site. Ask yourself if you are adding information your reader cares about, advised Michael LaVista, CEO of Caxy Interactive. If your widget content does not support the purpose of the page, remove it.

6. Make sure it's accurate.

It should go without saying that inaccurate information will turn off consumers, whether it's a wrong number, outdated product information or simple grammatical errors. Not only should you proofread each page before it goes live, but you should periodically check each page, especially after making updates anywhere else.

7. Respect the need for speed.

A study by SOASTA, a website creation company, found that 88 percent of Americans surveyed said they have a negative association with brands that have buggy websites and apps, and 83 percent said slow websites cause them to have a negative reaction to a brand or company. Further, 28 percent of respondents said they will go to a competitor's website if the first website they visit takes too long to load. Make sure your website runs smoothly by keeping the software updated, optimizing videos and images for quicker downloads, and using a website host that can handle your bandwidth demands.

8. Have a call to action.

Each page on your website should entice the reader to do something – call, sign up for a service, buy a product, download a white paper. Be sure to have a clear invitation to do just that: a button, a link or clear verbiage. Keep it above the fold if possible so that readers do not have to scroll before finding the call to action.

9. Keep your design simple.

Limit the use of fonts, colors and animated gifs, which can distract and pull the eyes away from the focus of the webpage. Short paragraphs and bullet points also make the information more scannable and likely to be read. Ian Lurie, CEO of the marketing company Portent Inc., suggested paragraphs should be shorter than six lines.

10. Get personal.

Just as brick-and-mortar businesses invest heavily in their storefronts to represent their brand images, e-commerce retailers need to create a similar high-quality online experience in keeping with the brand perception, Tom Lounibos, CEO of SOASTA, told Business News Daily. To that end, your About page should not be a dry block of text about your company. Emily Brackett, president of design and branding firm Visible Logic, recommends including a good photo of yourself or your team. "A lot of customers want to know that there's a real person who's going to be working with them," she told Small Business Trends. "If companies want to remain competitive in the modern landscape, they need their web and mobile websites to engage the user and work as expected," Lounibos added. "Those that are creating a seamless and enjoyable online user experience are reaping the benefits."

How to Regain Your Prospect's Trust After You've Messed Up

It can be a difficult task to build trust and credibility with prospects and customers. It is even harder when attempting to rebuild trust after it has been damaged.

When this happens, the impact on even your longest and strongest professional relationships can be profound.

There's an elephant in the room that can feel uncomfortable to talk about -- but is impossible to ignore. And if you don't, advancing the client relationship will be difficult if not impossible.

How can you get past the elephant in the room to get back to selling? The following four-step process will help you rebuild trust with your customers and prospects.

1) Empathize

Empathizing is more than hearing your customers’ words: It is recognizing the meaning and emotion behind their words. Some customers will force recognition of both the issue and their feelings. Some won’t talk about what’s really bothering them, keeping it hidden below the surface. Expressing empathy will help you to coax out and reduce negative emotions.

Furthermore, it shows your serious intent to repair the breach of customer trust -- and that you truly care about your customer’s feelings.

2) Question

After you express empathy, it's time to delve into your prospect's reaction. You may feel reluctant to ask many (or any) questions about the misstep -- either because you are afraid to hear the response or assume you know the answer.

Open-ended questions and effective listening take courage and a strong stomach when trying to rebuild fractured trust. The payoff: The customer can vent and feels like they're heard.

Meanwhile, you show that you care and can develop a greater understanding of the client’s perspective. Probing, actively listening, and asking follow-up questions gives you a more complete picture. Only then can your plan begin to emerge for how to get past the elephant in the room.

3) Position

If you’re like most salespeople, your first reaction to a customer's anger may be to explain and defend yourself. While accurate, your comments will not be persuasive and may sound defensive.

Instead, after empathizing and questioning, link your solutions or suggestions to what you learned from the customer’s responses to your questions. Your customer will become more engaged if your ideas directly address their issues.

To position ideas effectively, you must know -- not assume -- three things:
The customer’s concerns
What solutions will address those concerns
How those solutions will positively impact their concerns

4) Elicit feedback

It’s easy to mistake a customer's silence for agreement. At best, silence signals that the customer is thinking about the solution proposed.

At worst, the customer has disengaged. Only by checking and using open-ended questions can you tell whether the proposed ideas hit or missed the mark. Try asking, “How well does this address your concerns about our dependability as a partner?”

Asking for feedback engages the customer and allows you to plan next steps. A positive response can lead to a discussion of actions, responsibilities, and time frame for implementation.

A negative or neutral response can signal that you need to restart the process, beginning with empathy or questioning, to see where the solution fell short.

Trust is a fragile thing: Hard to gain, easy to lose, and even harder to regain. Customers want a consistent commitment to them and their issues. Depending on the size of the elephant, you may have to use this process multiple times over multiple sales meetings. Your sustained effort will let you begin rebuilding trust and credibility.

It takes courage to face tough issues with customers. Sadly, wishing them away is never a winning strategy. Leveraging empathy, understanding, relevant ideas, and feedback will help you advance the difficult task of removing the elephant and regaining the trust of valued customers and prospects.