From small and medium size businesses, to startups, enterprises and corporate companies, these are the essential pages your website needs.
Your website can make or break your business. That might sound dramatic, but if you’re operating mainly online, your website is the face of your business, and if you don’t make a great first impression (I’m talking around 8 seconds), your potential customer will bounce to your competitor.
Here are the pages you absolutely need:
1. Homepage
This is the single most important page of your website and the one that will probably be the most frequently visited (depending on your content marketing strategy).
Your Home Page needs to grab attention in the first few seconds so that your potential customer carries on reading and doesn’t bounce. – Note: Your Bounce Rate is considered by Google when it comes to search rankings.
You need rich, benefit-lead marketing copy, and visuals that engage the user and gives them an overview of what problem your company is solving by selling your product or service.
Answer the user’s #1 question – “what’s in it for me?”
Both the marketing copy and design of your website inform the user’s impression of your company, so make sure to hire a professional copywriter and web developer/designer to create these elements for you.
You might also decide to create a sales landing page as the main page of your website, which aims to convert the sale all in one scrollable page. A sales page includes most of the elements I cover in this post. To create something like this, you need to hire a truly exceptional direct response copywriter.
2. About Us or About Me
This is probably the next most frequently visited page of your website and it does the job of answering some important questions that your potential customer might have.
Here are a few questions you will want to consider answering:
– Who are the founders/executives of your company?
– When was the company established??
– What is your unique selling proposition?
– Who are you as a team/individual?
– What is your company’s philosophy?
– Why are you in business?
– What problem are you trying to solve?
– Who is your core audience?
– What is the vision of your company – where are you headed?
– Do you have a unique approach to customer service/shipping/the way you operate?
It might sound like a lot to answer, but if you can provide a professional copywriter with the rough answers to these questions, they will craft it into a concise and compelling brand story that makes your business stand out as one the customer can trust.
And once you’ve done that important job, you can start to transform those customers into brand ambassadors.
3. Product or Services
This page is where you can include more detail about your product(s) or service(s). Again, all of the marketing copy should be rich, concise and benefit-lead.
A good trick is to include several ‘Call to Action’ buttons throughout a page, so you can capture the user at different stages of their user journey.
If you’re a product business, you can also use the sales technique of creating urgency with limited time offers and promotional messages.
4. Contact Us
This might seem like an obvious one, but I’ve seen so many websites that just have a ‘Name’, ‘Email’ and ‘Message’ field, plus a button that just says ‘Send’.
This is an almost criminal neglect of prime website real estate! Ok, now I am being dramatic. But seriously, this is a really important page to get right, because it can be the final touch point that your potential customer has with your business, until you get back to them.
At the very least, you need a friendly message before the contact form to say you’d love to hear from them. You need to provide an expectation of when the customer will hear back from you. And, you really need a better call to action button than just ‘Send’.
But why not make this page work harder for you? Include your contact information and a map, your phone number and your opening hours.
You should always think about where your customer is going to navigate to next. They don’t have to leave your website on this page. Why not highlight a new product or an offer, or send them to a blog post or business case study?
5. Blog
I can’t think of a product or service that doesn’t need a content marketing strategy for customer acquisition. Whether you’re selling a set of kitchen knives or Saas service, blogs are an effective way to increase targeted organic traffic to your website.
By creating engaging blog articles that answer your audiences’ questions and solve their problems, you will start ranking on Google for those search terms (How to… what is… where can I buy…) and your sales will grow exponentially form there.
So, invest in content marketing! (Give me a shout if you need help creating a content marketing strategy).
6. Testimonials
It’s essential to incorporate some customer testimonials into your homepage or sales landing page, but you also need a page where you can link to that shows a whole raft of testimonials. This builds trust and uses social proof to ultimately inform the user’s purchasing decision.
And yes, if your mom or best friend has bought your product, you can use their testimonial in good faith on your website. You have to start somewhere.
Great testimonials should answer your customer’s pain points or barriers to purchase.
7. Frequently Asked Questions
Not only does an FAQ page save you a ton of time answering questions via email, it is also a place to build more trust and sell in the benefits of your product or service. Again, you are addressing the customer’s barriers to purchasing your product, and if they’ve come as far as your FAQ page in the user journey, they are a serious buyer.
So take the time to craft great Q&As, because they will work hard for your business even when you’re asleep.
Not sure what questions to ask? Start by going through your email inquiries and pull out the most frequent or interesting questions. Again, think about the barriers your customer might have when deciding whether to purchase your service or product.
In addition to the above pages, you also need a privacy policy page and a terms and conditions page, but there are templates for those you can Google, so I won’t go into that here.
8. Case Studies, Gallery, or Portfolio
These page types are more for a service or local business.
A gallery of photos can show your product or service being used or enjoyed in real life. It allows your potential customer to identify with your audience (shown in the photos) and also imagine their life with your product or service in it.
If you’re a service business, well-written case studies can not only provide powerful social proof, but also allow your potential customer to imagine in detail what your service could do for their business. Think of case studies as a key part of your sales and marketing efforts, because they are powerful assets that can convert large paying customers.
A portfolio can be a powerful tool for creative service businesses and provides social proof and work samples. Only put your best work on this page!
So now you know what pages you will need, you can get started creating a website that will delight your potential customers. Alternatively, if you want some professional help from an experienced copywriter that knows how to get your website ranked on Google and how to craft rich, benefit-lead sales copy that converts – GET IN TOUCH WITH ME TODAY >>>